Michael Andrillon | Contributing Writer
It was at a friend’s wedding that their eyes met, and he offered her a drink, marking the perfect beginning to a budding romance. Yet, it was at the side of the road, at a Burger King, sharing onion rings, that this love story really began to take flight.
Boy meets girl, David meets Sarah, respectively played by Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie, who traverse a long stretch of road reflecting on ex-lovers, family matters, and why they’re both just so single. All whilst exploring various settings typically imbued with tropey romance.
American fast food, late-night drives, and a parking lot are given the same feel of intimacy and space as lush green landscapes, and a shadowy museum embellished with paintings, as our couple muses not only on the paintings themselves but also on the memories surrounding them.
The schmaltz is all too real, but it’s schmaltz with dare I say even more heart.
Our protagonists don’t demand an explanation for the forces at work, for like us, they are in many ways at the mercy of time and context, and the variety of moments leading from one to the other, without negating action and the desire to find meaning in said forces.
It’s a sincerity that is encompassed not only in the witty writing & heartfelt score by Joe Hisaishi, but also in the very references the movie harkens back to.
From the Kafkaesque as well as the Dickensian, the darkly literary is given a metamodern twist. And I’m caught comparing Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Punch Drunk Love” with its quirky and colorful postmodern flair, with a touch of Wes Anderson’s whimsy.
Imagery associated with Kubrick’s visions, dark monoliths across the vast coldness of outer space, is instead represented as dreamlike doors on Earth, connected thematically to familiar and humanistic spirit, along with memory, nostalgia, and introspection, rather than the future transcendent. And a HAL-inspired GPS interface with a voice invites our protagonist to the odyssey rather than to their demise.
All of these elements, an amalgamation of class and camp that reminds us that human connection, love, empathy, action and some of the most important moments can come to us even in the most seemingly innocuous places.
It’s elegant in its simplicity with enough subtle touches to have left even me pleasantly surprised, and despite being in the minority coming to its defense, its door remains open to those willing to enter with both mind and heart.
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