Punch-Drunk Love
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Laughing Matters (and Not)
The Squid and the Whale The Squid and the Whale was, for Noah Baumbach, a rare and blessed thing: an honest to god new beginning. Baumbach’s directing career started strong (his first two films, Kicking and Screaming and Mr. Jealousy, were both released before he turned 30) but sat idle for eight years between Mr. Jealousy and the 2005 Sundance premiere of The Squid and the Whale, which brought Baumbach back with a passion. Watching the film, you get the sense that the wasteland years created within him a burning passion to scream this autobiographical story as furiously as possible […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 20, 2016 -
Watch: A Video Analysis of Punch-Drunk Love as Superman-Inspired
As Spinal Tap observed, there’s a fine line between clever and stupid, and there’s a similarly thin divider between convincing argument and tenuous grasping. Is this 12-minute analysis of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, which argues that it refers heavily to the 1978 Superman, reaching too far when claiming e.g. that the harmonium leading Adam Sandler to Emily Watson could be a stand-in for the Fortress of Solitude? Probably, but it’s an enjoyably go-for-broke interpretation regardless. In this formulation, Sandler’s Barry is Clark Kent — meek and mild at some times, superhumanly strong and violent at others — and Emily […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 10, 2014
