Is Chris Barry Egan?
We went to see Punch-Drunk Love Thursday night, and I've found myself thinking a great deal about it over the last couple of days. It's by no means the tour de force that Magnolia and Boogie Nights were. It is to them what Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 was to his V. and Gravity's Rainbow. Which is not to say that Paul Thomas Anderson isn't still trying to be the next Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, or Robert Altman, or that he's not succeeding. Though calmer and more modest than his other movies, Punch-Drunk Love is exquisitely crafted and powerful, full of beautiful flourishes.
It's as accurate a portrayal of what it feels like to be depressed as I've seen on film--the skittishness, alienation, urge toward violence, and bursts of emotion are all there. And to answer my own question, Adam Sandler is quite capable of artistic expression. He doesn't fall prey to the phenomenon of an actor stretching to play a damaged person, like, say, Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man (a phenomenon I was reminded of yesterday watching an episode of Mr. Show, wherein David Cross plays Borden Grote, the world's most dedicated film extra, who has his frontal lobe removed and replaced with bubble wrap in order to play a patient in a mental institution). Instead, Sandler seems to have found his own depressive core.
11:17:47 AM 
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