Suggests: HFA Film Screening: Punch-Drunk Love

Asked what his next film would be after his 1999 epic Magnolia, Hollywood wunderkind Paul Thomas Anderson replied, “Somebody I’d really like to use is Adam Sandler. [...] I’m determined it will be 90 minutes. I’m gonna show the whole world…” With this attitude, the director also chipped away at many of his flashy trademarks: sprawling narratives, kaleidoscopic ensembles, voyeuristic camerawork and hubristic protagonists struggling to overcome themselves. In short, Punch-Drunk Love represented a leap of maturity and willingness to be unabashedly vulnerable. When toilet plunger salesman Barry Egan stumbles his way into an almost fairytale romance with his sister’s coworker, Lena, his mundane reality is elevated to the near-mythic—entailing a Herculean battle of love against hate (and phone-sex operators) that Barry must win when it begins to endanger his new sweetheart. Aided by Jeremy Blake’s impressionistic animations versus the scrappy pastiche of textures in Jon Brion’s sentimental score, Anderson…