His Mean
Left Hook

by Nathaniel
of The Film Experience

Some filmmakers start slowly and learn as they go. Some auteurs are infrequently inspired but have one or two masterpieces in them. Some directors do sturdy work but never create cinematic magic. But there are a select few who start spectacularly well and accelerate famously to the top. They become mythologized because their early efforts are so fully realized.

The myth of the wunkerkind in Hollywood filmmaking has been around forever. Orson Welles wasn't the first or last young director to ignite the screen with a fully formed aesthetic or narrative gift. Spielberg and Scorsese erupted in the 70s. Quentin Tarantino was the indie-fueled mainstream discovery of the 90s. M. Night Shyamalan has recently been anointed by some eager media types. But right about now, P.T. Anderson is the one who is sitting pretty somewhere knowing (and rightly so) that he is God's gift to the American cinema. He knows it in the same way that Quentin Tarantino once understood his own vitality. But since Mr. Anderson seems to be intent on making pictures rather than being an abstract celebrity, it feels a lot more meaningful this time around.

Punch-Drunk Love proves to be an extremely appropriate title for Anderson's fourth outing. It has surprising swirls of violence, it veers around in a dangerous fashion like an inebriated driver, but it's mostly a love story. To its credit, all of the elements work in that same dangerous palette of feeling. The jokes sometimes feel like jabs in the gut. And though Hollywood has trained the audience to view the protagonist of any picture as their safe zone, this picture won't allow that lazy comfort. There's no telling when Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) will explode and smash something nearby - he does so early in the picture. Yet once you get the hang of the movie's furious rhythms, the off-kilter surprising narrative is really fun to follow (it's a crying shame that many critics will spoil it for you). But after the sprawling epic of Boogie Nights and the spiritual grandiosity of Magnolia, it's hard not to wonder if Punch-Drunk Love isn't just a big time director blowing off steam. For the first time in a P.T. Anderson picture, the acting takes a quiet backseat. No grand statement seems to emerge.

But however minor the picture may be, it comes together in a major way. Beautiful things happen all around in the choreography, cinematography, scoring, and editing that suggest a filmmaking team led by a maverick at the top of his game. Unlike Soderbergh's summer entry Full Frontal (a similarly fast and loose personal exercize from a top director), it feels very cohesive and supercharged. Punch-Drunk Love is a little, but giddy, experiment that, perhaps appropriately, packs a big punch. Though it lacks the emotional weight and resonance of Anderson's previous efforts, it is so blessedly itself that it becomes moving anyway.

When Barry and Lena (Emily Watson) embrace halfway through the picture in a busy walkway I felt as carried away as the rush of the passersby, swept off my feet and up into their sudden love. It wasn't the performances, it wasn't the love, it was the energy of the filmmaking. Given that Love is inexplicably odd and has a rage-filled nature (even the love story avoids sweetness and light), it will end up infuriating many. It will have more detractors than Anderson's previous efforts. A good litmus test might be the amphibious storm in Magnolia. Want a whole picture like that? See Punch-Drunk Love! For those viewers who barely made it through Magnolia's musical number but exasperatedly gave up hope when the biblical plague struck, P.T. Anderson's latest film may be Hell on Earth to sit through.

To tell the truth, I wasn't even sure from moment to moment whether or not I liked it myself . But watching Punch-Drunk Love, I perversely felt like my enjoyment was beside the point. The picture, slight and bizarre as it is, is simply too vivid to dismiss. I have a feeling that certain sequences are going to have staying power. And, you see, Paul Thomas Anderson, with three terrific features under his belt, has earned his right to show off a little. And show off he does. Armed with a blatant disregard for convention, he has spectacularly honed his lyrical gift for imaginative leaps into the beyond. If more American filmmakers take his cue, Hollywood could reclaim its title as the dream factory in no time.

If one were to create a recipe for FEAR, a good healthy spoonful of "the unknown" would place high on the list of ingredients. So, unfortunately for the makers of Red Dragon, this recipe was always going to be tough to pull off. The most it might hope for is some unexpected flavor. After all, at this point in time, Dr. Hannibal Lecter has become the new Darth Vader of pop culture. While he was initially frightening, he's now far too familiar to inspire anything so energizing as fear. The cannibal is now more fit for the peal of giggles that follow a surprise "BOO!" for your trick-or-treating audience. With our hero...er, the infamous villain, out of the picture as far as scares go, the audience must rely on the inspiration of the filmmakers and the new and less familiar characters for any thrills that will presumably follow.

Unfortunately, Red Dragon seems to suffer in the imagination area. Here we have the same art-directed dilapadated house in which reside all scary killers. The same baroque musical scoring to accompany all moments of violent terror. (Has there been any innovation in horror scoring since Bernard Herrmann?) The same lazy, telling reliance on anti-intellectualism that seems to be part and parcel of the American obssession with the mythology of serial killers. Never mind that statistics on real-life serial killers don't seem to back this up - we presumably like our monsters with doctoral theses in hand, and classical music playing in the background. Perhaps the whole serial killer genre is now too much like Hannibal himself; too predictable and too conventional for true terror to emerge.

The filmmaking team never colors outside the lines. The singular lack of inspiration is perhaps most evident in the screenplay (Ted Tally) and direction (Brett Ratner). They rely, structurally speaking, heavily on the famous Silence of the Lambs predecessor. The push and pull of the FBI agent interviewing the killer behind glass just doesn't have the same electric (what will they say next?) spark that it did a decade earlier. "Quid pro quo", no longer fills the screen space with a palpable sense of "what's next?" And the one true chance to thrill us anew is also blown: Upon our first meeting with Francis Dolarhyde (Ralph Fiennes), we know exactly what his issues are (we hear them in voiceover) and exactly what he does to people (the hero tells us) and presumably when he will do it again. Though it may seem like common sense to the viewer, the film doesn't seem to understand that "Fear of the Known" just doesn't work the same terrifying voodoo as "Fear of the Unknown."

Despite the flaws and lack of creative sizzle, Red Dragon is not without its thrills. They're just of the competent by-the-numbers variety. For those in the audience who haven't read the books or seen the original Manhunter film (that would include myself) there's a mildly intriguing story we haven't seen before with adequate to good performances from a still startling array of acclaimed actors. Presumably most of them are out for paychecks to subsidize their less crowd-friendly cinematic efforts. Thankfully, for them and us, there are a few entertaining jumps and jolts along the well travelled way. Though the heartbeat unfortunately never quickens, the time with this thriller passes quickly enough.

©2002 Nathaniel Rogers
CineScene