Paul Thomas Anderson’s experimental romance is difficult and prickly, an aggressively insular work that makes very few concessions to its audience. It’s also the work of a supremely gifted director and his excellent actors in search of a movie. Where “Magnolia” found Anderson blissfully embracing his large ensemble of misfits (the same type of people he humiliated in “Boogie Nights”), here he doesn’t quite know what to make of the two characters (played by Adam Sandler and Emily Watson) he chooses to center on. They seem exaggerated and disconnected with the rest of the world and their reactions to their surroundings and each other are clearly unusual (their lovemaking, for example, involves violent imagery as endearments)—they seem almost like comic book characters. (It seems intentional. The similarities to Superman are great: Sandler’s character’s name has the same number of letters—Barry Egan/Clark Kent—and is seen only in the same blue suit with, as the film progresses, red ties; and his love interest’s alliterative name—Lena Leonard—resembles Lois Lane.) Sandler is superb because the director doesn’t try to reinvent his recognizable characteristics, just place his barely concealed rage in a different context than the usual slapstick. But that context itself is troubling: the rage here stems from lifelong abuse at the hands of his seven sisters and a phone-sex worker who tries to extort money, and aside from Watson’s luminous redemptive powers (and even she’s somewhat unstable) the film has nothing but contempt for women. Anderson’s clearly out to upset the apple cart, bringing a percussive discomfit to a love story awash in pastels (the magnificent steadicam cinematography and drum-heavy score are by Anderson’s brilliant collaborators Robert Elswit and Jon Brion respectively) and, while it’s well-worth seeing, it’s arty, an American-made foreign film filled with long, uncomfortable takes, very heavy pauses and the distinct feeling of being underwritten. It has a very peculiar rhythm and takes an inordinate amount of time to get started—if you’re not with it by the second reel you stand a good chance of not getting with it at all.
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