Punch Drunk Love Analysis

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“Punch-Drunk Love” is above all a portrait of a personality type. P.T. Anderson utilizes many techniques to synchronize the experience of the protagonist, Barry, and the viewing audience, in order to effectively immerse the viewer in the universe Punch Drunk Love inhabits. Barry Egan has been damaged, perhaps beyond repair, by what he sees as the depredations of his domineering sisters.

It drives him crazy when people nose into his business. He cannot stand to be trifled with. His world is entered by alarming omens and situations that baffle him. The character is vividly seen and the film sympathizes with him in his extremity.

Music was an important mise en scene element through out this film. Music in this film plays two main roles: representing Barry Egan’s crippling,sometimes violent, anxiety and

First scene starts with fade in to show the contrast between the large area and the small desk which is located in the corner of the large empty area.

A wide angle lens is emphasizing Barry’s smallness in it. Limited light emphasizes on Barry, and the limited light and limited colour will be important during the movie to show the abstract meanings. The first sound of the movie is heard by the Barry’s phone conversion with the Healthy Choice’s representative to take advantage of the loophole in the promotion campaign of the firm.

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The phone calls are important during the movie which show the isolated Barry from the community and show the way of communication with people. He expresses himself clearly via telephone then contacting with face to face. The shade of blue on the warehouse wall and on the suit Barry wears are nearly same colour. Concept of the colour is an important mise en scene fort his movie, that is why some basic colour is used during the whole movie. While he is on the phone he hears something.

Punch Drunk Love Online Free

When he hangs up he picks up his thermos and walks across the room to understand the reason of the sound. The camera follows him into what seems like complete blackness while he is walking from the corner of the room to the door. Then the abrupt, rackety sound of the large metal door opening upward fills the soundtrack, and we see the dirty blue haze of a Los Angeles dawn. Barry shuffles outside and the camera swoops around his head, making sure to capture the tranquil ambiance of the morning atmosphere, and looks in the direction Barry’s looking. The parking lot is out of focus, but after a few beats, the focus pulls back and we see everything that Barry sees. He looks down a long alley, which leads to a main road. It introduces the audience to its unorthodox presentation of its maladroit main character, startling noises, quirky humor, suggestive lighting, alternately static and sweeping camerawork, and complete spatial reorientation.

Barry is then shown at the mouth of the driveway, looking out at the road. The color of his surroundings has become dull and darker than they first appeared. The street is deserted, and the camera’s perspective is now assumed to be Barry”s. As the ambient noise dies down, the audience now views the street from the protagonist”s point of view, fixed on two cars approaching from the distant left corner of the screen. Suddenly, one flips without warning, loudly tumbling closer to the viewer as the camera follows it down the street. The accident, a taxi immediately pulls up to the driveway, leaving a harmonium. Stunned and confused, Barry walks up to it and examines it for some time. Once more, the ambient noise fades away, and he is shown in an extreme longshot from the other side of the street. Suddenly, a truck noisily passes by, prompting Barry to quickly pick up the Harmonium and run to his office.

The second secene starts with Barry (Adam Sandler) is making a business talk over the phone on his desk. After his phone call, he goes outside to look for the piano. In the mean time a car entered to his offices garage. This is the time when Barry meets Lena Leonard (Emily Watson) with her attractive red drees. She asks him to look after her broken-down car (In the future he meets Lena Leonard again. She is introduced to Barry by his sister Elizabeth, one of her co-workers). It seems like she dropped her car off because she wanted to see him after seeing a picture of him with Elizabeth. When Lena leaves the garage, Barry he hides back of the door and gasps of breath. Scene ends with when Barry watching Lena from back the door. It seems like he is attracted from her.

Second scene starts with Barrys phone call with a medium shot giving an impression of the Barry expressions. The shot emphasizes the color blue the visual backdrop is slightly tinted, and Barry`s suit is also dark blue. Then the camera moves tracking forward when Barry walks out of his office. A long shot is made when Barry is looking to the piano and with the enterance of Lena`s car. At the mean time the audience hears natural sounds like the voice of the brake. The camare stopped at the medium shot to show Barry`s and Lena`s conversation and their acting more clearly. The audience sees that Barry is acting weird (it was like he gets excited). Steadicam shot follows Lena from behind as she is walking away from the camera, but Anderson holds it for longer than we expect and through it we somehow understand all we need to know about this woman.

Then Lena turns back to see Barry and a subjective shot made from Lena`s point of view. Camera exits from subjective shot and turned into a long shot. A cut made and camera starts to show Barry in a dark corner. Again we heard the sound of klaxon of the truck (natural sound). Anderson is using the sound as an additional form of expression, used to heighten the connection with Barry’s emotional and psychological feelings. So the audience understands that something happens in the emotions of Barry. A shallow focuses (the opposite of deep focus, which keeps only one plane in sharp focus, Direct the viewer’s attention to one element of a scene) used which makes audience`s attention to Barry with an extreme close up to his eyes.

Anderson uses a different visual technique in the second scene is the lens flare. When Lena and Barry is talking a lens flare appears (looks like a rainbow) with a mixture of colors red, blue, white, yellow. Anderson is embracing the lens flare as a form of expression in this film. The lens flare is does heighten the emotion of a particular scene. Ultimately the lens flare is representing the presence of love. Through the use of the lens flare, Anderson is heightening the feeling Barry and Lena have for each other as an additional form of visual expression

In the scene the most important mise en scene element is the blue suit or the blue color. Blue is used throughout the film as an indication of Barry’s emotional state of loneliness. Obviously the most notable example is the blue suit Barry is seen wearing throughout the film. Blue is found in both Barry’s home and at his office, and very much represents a part of him.

This scene is the first time that Barry feels something to woman (meta movement). Additionally this scene foreshadows that the life of Barry will change after meeting with Lena Leonard, the loneliness will end. However the audience can have absolutely no idea what will happen next.

One more interesting thing that the clip shows is after the main theme starts To swell; the film cuts to several slowly moving, colorful, nondiegetic images. Over The colors, a collage of all the different types of music can be heard. In a way, this Scene gives away the whole movie (at least musically), which implies a sort of fate For Barry and Lena.

The artwork (even in short moments) is beautifully breathtaking, and seem to work perfectly within the mood and flow of the films narrative. Anderson is essentially stretching the boundaries of cinematic narrative with this visual expression.

Aside from Blake’s artwork, Anderson uses several key colors to express the emotions and narrative of the film. The most obvious is the use of Blue, Red, and White. Throughout Punch-Drunk Love, Anderson places these colors within the emotional and physical environment of Barry’s character

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

Analysis of excerpt [09:35-10:35]

The movie Punch-Drunk Love, tells the story of a small-business owner, whose mundane life starts to become interesting after he finds a harmonium and meets a woman, with whom he then falls in love.

The excerpt consists of two shots.

The first shot takes place in an office, where the main character is in a dialogue with a supporting character.

The shot begins with a Medium Long Shot and becomes Medium Close Up as the main character moves towards the camera. The character is centered and the camera follows the character from inside the office to the outside, which is actually a warehouse. The cam seems to be a steady cam, because the image seems stable, it is probably a Dolly cam. The door of the warehouse was observed to be open in the previous scene, so while we were only hearing a slow background music at the beginning, it is then mixed with the street-noise, as the main character gets out of the office, into the warehouse. After that, we hear the sound of another person, a possible customer, who just entered the warehouse and took the attention of the main character. He then, turns to the camera, which is an example of “Frontality”.

The scene decor consists of ordinary office equipments and in contrast to that, a harmonium in the middle, which is the point of interest of both the characters in this shot. The light looks like a natural light without much contrast difference, it can even be considered as dark. The costume of the supporting character is daily work clothes, but the main character wears a suit, which surprised the supporting character in the previous scene. This shows that the main character put extra effort on that day, because of a certain reason.

The second shot is basically, a continuous change of images and colors, fading, changing forms and colors, then changing into an image, which looks like a sky full of stars, that shine spontaneously and then again fades and changes to a different type of color shapes.

This shot can have different meanings, but considering the next scene, where the characters have the same clothes on, but seems like a different time; this shot shows that it is just an ordinary day, just like the other days, no distinguishable differences. It just indicates a time difference in the same day.

The music in the background is still the same as the previous shot; a slow-music, which sort of moves with the changing colors and images. But the noise from the street is filtered in this shot.