The Adam Sandler performance Timothée Chalamet called “the most culturally impactful”
When I was growin up, there were three Adam Sandler movies that acted as my pillars of understanding. But these three pillars weren’t built on diversity, showing the various ways in which he could evolve as an actor. No, they were built for bona fide fun, nothing more and nothing less.
Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy and Billy Madison were about as far as my understanding of Sandler’s work, and like many other film fans from my generation, I viewed him as sort of a sugar rush comedian. Distracted by the slapstick and cheap laughs, I failed to see what existed beneath the veneer and how, despite the irrelevance of the performances, there was an actor existing within who could tap into something deeper.
Because in those three films, there were glimpses of sincerity. A sincerity and nuance I was fully confronted with in the 2019 film Uncut Gems, when his turn as Howard Ratner captured all the desperation of the lead character in a somewhat conflicting way. It wasn’t entirely clear whether we should sympathise and grow frustrated with his character, and his acting trod that line so delicately.
But those who followed Sandler’s career weren’t entirely surprised by the performance. Because in 2002, he produced a performance for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love that was similar to Uncut Gems, followed a character who lived a conflicting life. This time, one of fraught anger yet vulnerability and loneliness.
It was a performance that captured the attention of a young Timothée Chalamet, who recently sat down with Sandler for Vanity Fair, and passionately expressed his appreciation for the performance. He said, “To actors across all ages, but really to my generation. It is one of the most important performances, important is not even the right work, it’s like, impactful, deeply moving.”
He continued, addressing the way in which Sandler’s mainstream filmography distracts people from realising this truth. Chalamet said, “I think because you’ve ascended to such commercial heights, and I hope I don’t make you uncomfortable by talking like this, that the people that aren’t really in the know, like, don’t understand how impactful that performance was and how incredible and nuanced and deeply lived in and heartbreaking it is”.
Adding, “Because really as a young actor and knowing you for your comedic work and then seeing that thrown against the context of your other work, I went, ‘wow, this is an incredible actor’. I hope I can give a performance like this.”
Sandler was perhaps a surprising casting for Paul Thomas Anderson, but in reality, he was the perfect actor to play a role that needed both light and darkness throughout the performance. Removing himself from the main production role that he took on with many of his own comedies, Sandler enabled a director like Anderson to mould his irreverence into something more artistically delicate.
Ultimately, it was a performance that started a chain reaction for Sandler, who, over 20 years on from Punch Drunk Love, is being heralded as one of this generation’s most beloved actors.
