Unsung Heroes: The Sound Design of Punch-Drunk Love

Michael C here from Serious Film.



The opening moments of Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love feature a prolonged stretch of silence broken by the crash of a truck doing flips down the street. In most movies this would be the cheapest trick in the book, giving the audience a jolt by hitting them with a loud noise out of nowhere. It doesn't feel that way here. The sound design in this scene, as in the rest of the movie, is wired to the off-kilter psyche of Adam Sandler's Barry Egan. He too harbors the constant threat of sudden violence under an ocean of surface calm.

The sound work on Punch-Drunk Love is a study in discomfort. It's not just a case of Jon Brion delivering yet another brilliantly original score, though there is no question he does that. It's the fact that the score doesn't behave according to any of the rules audiences have been trained to expect from years of movie watching. Punch's score comes and goes at right angles to the material, sneaking in unnoticed only to drop out suddenly giving the viewer a cold splash of silence.

In the early sequence when Barry is hounded by incessant, abusive phone calls from his seven sisters, the sound mix works with them as a team to drive Barry over the edge. The twitching, relentless score is layered over top, ratcheted up until it competes with the dialogue, so that we are having as hard a time focusing on work as Barry. The tension mounts steadily as the score gives way to the sound of his sisters' chatter. The wall of sound builds until Barry is forced to smash a glass door to get a few precious moments of peace. With barely any exposition we know all we need to know about Barry and his rage and repression issues. The sound design is as big a part of the story as the dialogue.

Most other movie soundtracks are there to soothe the audience, to underline emotions and essentially pat the viewer on the back for feeling what he feels. Not here. The soundtrack doesn't bother to take much note of actions that would have most scores swelling like mad. It keeps the same steady rhythm whether Barry is doing his memorable little soft shoe shuffle in the supermarket or he is attacking the brothers with a crowbar. Even the use of a pop song breaks with the expected. The movie's main love theme, Shelley Duvall's sweet and goofy rendition of Harry Nillson's He Needs Me, may climax with that swooning embrace in Hawaii but it meanders its way there, beginning over talk of pudding. The soundtrack, like Barry, cannot get in step with the rhythm of normal behavior.

The sound design of Punch-Drunk Love incorporates all the story's elements into a seamless piece, from the gentle sliding motif of the harmonium through the sickeningly matter-of-fact realism of the violence. We feel like we know what Sandler is thinking or feeling at any given moment, since, whether we register it consciously or not, the sound has given us a map of Barry Egan's mind. It accomplishes without words what most other movies require a voice-over narration to do.

The Master Is Dead! Long Live The Master

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JA from MNPP here. In case you missed the news, it seems that Paul Thomas Anderson's next film The Master - which was to star Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the leader of a new Scientology-like religion in the 50s with Jeremy Renner as his disciple and Reese Witherspoon as his wife - has turned into a pillar of salt and gone poof. It's E-meter done gone and flat-lined. I'm sure it supposedly being a thinly-veiled critique of a religion intertwined with a large portion of the Hollywood establishment had nothing whatsoever to putting a pox on PTA's house, I am sure. Sure. Why not.

Anyway this is depressing news for those of us that worship upon the altar of Paul Thomas Anderson. I promised him my first born and all I get are empty promises! It's enough to make you not believe in a higher directing power after all. My faith in movie-making is shaken! I am having a crisis of cinematic conscience! To quote a well-known philosopher renowned for his wise words and his hammer pants, what we need to do is pray. But who does one aim this sort of prayer towards? Christian God is too busy editing all the boobs out of movies to get them down to PG-13. Muhammad doesn't show his face at the cinema. And unless you're willing to sing and dance it Bollywood-style Buddha doesn't take movie requests. Who is the god of movies? Is it Morgan Freeman too?

..Can you hear me, Morgan Freeman? It's me, JA.
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In all seriousness, if this movie is indeed dead as a dead dormouse, what should PTA turn his attentions to next? Something to get the tweens with their sexting and such on-board could definitely raise his stock I think. Maybe a Love Story 2010 with Zac Efron and his girlfriend. I know, he could remake Boogie Nights and have Katherine Heigl play Amber Waves! It's genius. Fifty million dollar opening weekend in the bag!
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