Revisiting Jackie Brown as the Precursor to Punch-Drunk Love
Quentin Tarantino blasted onto the film scene as a director with 1992's Reservoir Dogs. The hyper-violent crime drama went on to make a splash at Sundance, before becoming a cult hit on VHS. He followed that up with Pulp Fiction in 1994, winning an Oscar and paving the way to became a worldwide sensation.
Following those first two outings would be no easy task and the hype was at an all-time high when Jackie Brown finally premiered in late December, 1997. Against that backdrop, though critically celebrated, the film felt like kind of a let down at the time.
Viewing the film twenty-three years later, Jackie Brown has a sense of maturity not found in many other Tarantino movies (random bikini-clad impromptu sex scenes aside). Elmore Leonard's 1992 novel Rum Punch was Tarantino's blueprint for the film, and Jackie Brown is still to this day the best adaptation of any of his novels.
The film is good - though like all Tarantino films post Pulp Fiction, it could stand to lose at least twenty minutes - but its lasting impact is that culturally, it paved the way for Paul Thomas Anderson's romantic masterpiece.
PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE
While on the surface, the two films don't seem to have much in common. Jackie Brown deals with guns and drugs and Punch-Drunk Love stars a comedian who, before P.T. Anderson, was known for primarily as a purveyor of fart jokes.
But under the surface, both films focus on characters who feel out of place in the world. Both Jackie Brown and Sandler's Barry Egan are stuck in a menial existence and look to air travel as their true escape to find happiness. Brown works for an airline as a flight attendant while Egan has developed a scheme to accumulate airline miles to escape.
They even both wear the same costume: Brown in a blue flight attendant's uniform and Egan tracks down a blue suit, which he wears for the rest of the film.
The theme of simmering rage also flows through both films. Egan has anger management issues after years of being demeaned by his sisters and Robert De Niro's character (spoiler) murders Bridget Fonda's character in a broad daylight parking lot after she belittles him.
Both films end in the escape the the character had always dreamed of. Jackie Brown finally connects with her bail bondsman Max Cherry (played by Robert Forster). They kiss, and then she leaves him, to escape from the confines of LA. Barry Egan also gets the escape he's always desired, taking his newfound love (played by Emily Watson) with him, also escaping Los Angeles.
One stark difference is in filmmaking. Punch-Drunk Love is by far Paul Thomas Anderson's most tightly crafted film, clocking in at just 95 minutes, whereas Jackie Brown is a bloated 154. The lighting and cinematography almost seems as they though each one belongs in the other movie. Jackie Brown is much flatter in its light, more akin to a romantic comedy, whereas Punch-Drunk is dark and contrasty and takes chances in it's approach to light. The camera movement in Jackie Brown is surprisingly pedestrian, especially given Tarantino's bold use of tracking and zooming and booming found in later films like Kill Bill, while the camera is artfully and thoughtfully maneuvered throughout Punch-Drunk Love.
Punch-Drunk Love is like the best of Elmore Leonard writing combined with the wit and art that was so wrapped up in a younger Anderson's outlook on life. Anderson's later film, Inherent Vice, though based on a novel by Thomas Pynchon, seems to be a later careered P.T. Anderson giving in to the excesses that Tarantino embraced too early on.
Jackie Brown will live on in the canon and lore of the cult of Tarantino, as well as on its own right as an entertaining film, but it's greatest contribution to cinema was that it entered the zeitgeist at the right moment to pave the way for Punch-Drunk Love.
