Punch-Drunk Love

You ever just watch a film and it's like, everything just clicks for you? Every shot composition, every writing decision, everything just feels right. It's not even that the movie is a masterpiece; it transcends even that. It's as though the film is talking to you in a language only both of you can understand. Punch-Drunk Love is just that; I love this! Punch-Drunk Love is an extremely off-kilter, surreal romantic comedy that follows Adam Sandler as he finally finds love in his life. I didn't know what to expect while watching this film, but I was so pleasantly surprised to find that it was far from being just another charming but ultimately predictable romantic comedy. I love Barry Egan. So much. He's awkward but earnest, a coward but also capable of courage. He's a ball of repressed anxiety and rage, and honestly it makes watching his life so much more stressful than it should be. I genuinely had Uncut Gems flashbacks to how chaotic this film gets with people talking and screaming over one another. Barry Egan is a complete and utter mess, but he's still a sympathetic one. You root for him to find some sort of order, some sort of peace within himself. His bursts of violence are also not meant to be taken literally. To view what happens in this movie literally is to believe that Adam Sandler destroys four blonde men through the power of love, and held a detached phone all the way to Utah just to scream at Phillip Seymour Hoffman. It is a surrealist comedy. This movie establishes pretty early on that the world of Punch-Drunk Love takes place in this almost Lynchian surreality in how things happen. Within the first ten minutes, a truck flips over and a harmonium is dropped off the street with zero context. None of this is explained by the way, because why should it be? It's subtext, stop being terrified of it! Punch-Drunk Love honestly opened my eyes to PTA's films, I'll even give One Battle After Another a rewatch after this. I haven't even begun talking about how impeccably shot and composed the entire movie is. Maybe I'll go deeper into it on a rewatch, but for now I'll just say that it turns every mundane scene into something truly extraordinary. In the first five minutes alone I knew this movie was probably going to be one of my favourites even though nothing really happens, sometimes you just know through how everything is shot. There's so much I love about Punch-Drunk Love. Is the romance the most fleshed out or compelling? Nope, but that's not the point. Punch-Drunk Love is an ode to those who have given up on finding love, a reassurance that maybe someday, you'll find harmony in your life. Or it's about Barry Egan defeating a Matress Man who runs a phone sex scam ring through literally the power of love. It's perfect. EDIT: Some people have pointed out that this is an autistic movie. While they're probably not serious, it WOULD make a lot of sense why the film clicks this much for me.