The Man Who Wasn't There
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Movie Reviews of The Man Who Wasn't There
Movie Review: No " there" there in Coen Opus, But That's the Point
Summary: 5 Stars
I was unable to find a theater to show The Man Who Wasn't There film in 2001 when it came out. So I had to be satisfied with watching a VHS copy of it some six months after it appeared in theaters.
I should point out how fitting it is that the film has disappeared even from Video store shelves where I live. Fitting, because this is a story about the Man Who Wasn't There. For many Coen Brothers fans, The Big Lebowski and Raising Arizona are the great films. For them, the Man Who Never Was doesn't exist.
This overlooked gem IS one of the great Coen Brothers films. I had to put it in my Netflix queue to get a copy. There wasn't one available locally just a year after the video came out.
Lately I've been making DVD copies of favorite films. The Coens' distributors at USA films actually took the trouble to encrypt this one with Macrovision. Not that macrovision stops one. There are free programs on the net like DVD Decrypt and DVD Shrink to dispense with copying problems. It costs money to encrypt a tape or DVD, though; makes it difficult to make back your costs. Since this film is quietly disappearing anyway, distributors might just as well have skipped coding.
After making the copy I sat down and watched it with the sound off and the captioning on and realized how much detail I missed four years ago when I first looked at the film. I 'read' the film this time.
Billy Bob is a local barber. He is overshadowed by everyone., his wife, the local department store manager played by James Ghandofini, even by the chatterbox lead barber he works for at the shop. Crane, our hero's name, explains his story mostly in Noir voice over. Crane's wife married him because he keeps his mouth shut. The result is the two know little about one another. Man Who Wasn't There is peopled by some very forgettable folk. There's a sense of small town failure here. Everyone knows everyone in Santa Rosa, but who'd want to know any of them? A con man comes to town setting the plot in motion. Behind the small town verities, there is a Noir story dripping with deceit and personal despair. In a scene near the end, Crane is driving down a country road with a young girl. The scene reminds one of a similar scene in Cain's Postman and also of Bogey talking to the girl whose gimp leg he is trying to get fixed in Raoul Walsh's High Sierra. This film really rattles a filmophile's memory.
I noticed all the references: A Place in the Sun, James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, assorted Twilight Zone images from the Rod Serling teleplays that took place at night in suburban neighborhoods. Santa Rosa reminded me of the fictional Santa Mara of Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Hitchcock and Rod Serling both put their marks on the Coens. I understand Shadow of A Doubt was also set in the bland small town of Santa Rosa, outside Sacramento. Shadow is a great metaphor. There were always waving tree shadows flitting over Billy Bob Thornton's Wan Face in the night air.
Looking at the film in closed caption, I was struck by how misled I was mostly just watching the images and listening to the dialog when I first saw the film. The devil was in the details. I now know the whole story as I did not before when I took in the film, consumer style.
Anyway, its a bit of a disappearing act, isn't it, this film? I keep forgetting its correct name. The Public never noticed in the first place. McDormand, Ghandofini, Billy Bob, the Coens are all part of the disappearing Man Who Never Was.
Maybe that was the point.
Movie Review: Barberic issues..
Summary: 5 Stars
I normally wind up with mixed emotions when it comes to films from the Coen brothers but I think they've got all their tricks in line with this one. Those in the know with classic literature will easily notice that the "Man who wasn't..." is based on Camus' famed book "The stranger". The equations between this great book and the film are well balanced: the book is provoking and so is the film.
The plot is about a barber working in a small town. His life has all the tell-tale signs of a "nobody-special" man like him: his job isnt taking him anywhere, his marriage is a flat and boring non-relationship, his wife is double-timing him with one of his "friends", and he himself, well he doesn't seem to bother much about all that, or actually he doesn't seem to care about anything.
Life drags dully on, until the arrival of someone who tells the barber of his plan to hit the market with a new revolutionary business plan: dry cleaning. The whole scheme sounds attractive and has money-making potential written all over it but the missing element is the capital. The barber's mind goes on an interesting vortex of planning. He blackmails his well-off friend who has the affair with his wife for a nice bulky sum. That seems to work, the money is given, and then given on to the dry-cleaning guy and then, well, perhaps predictably, the wheels of the wagon start coming off in disturbing and untimely manner.
Without fully realising how it all happened, the barber winds up in a plot which involves a murder he commited, his wife in jail accused for it, the dry-cleaning guy gone with the dough, him looking for a good lawyer to save his wrongly accused wife, and in the midst of it all, he still seems to deal with this nicely unraveling disaster very apathetically.
But his apathy isnt rewarded much as thing keep becoming more intricate and more threatening.
Just as it had been with his wife, he tries to start a relationship in extremely platonic terms with another young woman, but alas, that comes to spell his ultimate doom. No need to reveal the cool bringing-it-all together ending of the film especially for those that havent seen the film.
But besides a great story line, "The man who wasn't..." is blessed with other assets too, mainly the stellar performances from Thortnton himself who gives apathy a new look, and F.Mcdormand who (as usual) is exemplary in her role. But also the usually underrated J.Gandolfini is great as are all the second characters as well.
The Coen bros. do wonders with the camera, the lights and the reenacting of the 30s atmosphere making this an unheralded masterpiece.
While the film is actually a take on the philosophy about life, or to be more specific, an approach that reads "who cares really, let it all unwind and see what happens", it will go down easily with mostly anybody. The characters portrayed here are as real-life as they come and the depiction of the basic faults (?) of human nature is given to perfection.
Greed, scheming, extreme selfishness, hypocrisy, and all the things that are products of the above come in display. And in the end as the "hero" from the barber shop sees it all collapse in smouldering flames he thinks: "maybe all this means that I'm going to a better place. Who's to say"..And that's the thing really: who's to say?
Great film in all possible respects and quite probably the best made by the Coens so far.
Movie Review: 7 million dollars at box office-No one was there to see this movie
Summary: 5 Stars
The Man Who Wasn't There is a movie by the always unpredictable Coen brothers. Their movies have such a great variety of topics and genre that it's fun to see what they've come up with next. Out of the ones I've seen, my thoughts are mixed. I mean how can you make a goofball hilarious comedy like Raising Arizona, then one of the best movies of all time with Fargo and then go terribly wrong from there? Then you've got the Big Lebowski, a movie with a huge cast and huge amounts of cussing and huge amounts of weirdness. Not what I call a good movie. Then there's the Ladykillers, a ridculous and stupid movie that was a pathetic atempt at doing anything. So they're just getting worse by age, right? Wait! Let's go back two years to 2001.
It was in this year that this unheard of movie was made. Of course, its originality was probably too intense for most people to handle. And that's the beauty of this gem. The cinematography. The look of this world and the 1940s feel it's good is brilliant. But it's the shadows you see and this cinematography that makes it stand on its own. It is a beautiful movie for that reason and for many others. But first, let's talk about the plot of the movie.
Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thorton) is living in California in the 40s with his wife, Doris (Frances McDormand). Doris is part of a community that talks and talks. But not Ed. Ed narrates this story...his story. He sees it in black and white or maybe that's the way it really is. You've got to think. Ed is a barber and is proud of his job. He only says a few remarks orally but we hear all of the thoughts in his head through his narration. So here, there is some more originality, brilliance and beauty. When he finds out that his wife is cheating on him with her boss, Big Dave (James Gandolfini), he reacts with harshness. He blackmails Big Dave but something goes wrong. Big Dave finds out and Ed kills him out of defense. And this all happens in the first 30 minutes. Doris is accused of doing it and from then on, you're in for a real treat.
When Ed isn't narrating, like I already said, he isn't talking. So what he does is smoke, cut hair and listen to a young girl nicknamed Birdy (Scarlett Johansson) play piano. Her tunes flow through his head all the time and that adds some more beauty.
Tony Shaloub steals the show in his role as lawyer Freddy Riedenschneider. He's a big shot who talks and talks. Keep an eye out for for his awesome speech with the "you don't know" repeated a bunch of times. Believe me, you'll know when you're hearing it.
The movie is a sad and tragic tale, a tale showing how badly one man's life can go in a world that isn't for him. He's different. It's like he is wearing a hot pink shirt and everyone else is wearing a blue one...he stands out because he's different.
The Man Who Wasn't There is hands down an excellent movie. It is a close second to Fargo in the Coen's movies.
My last point is that the rating association gets on my nerves. This movie is rated R for a scene of violence? Is that a joke? That scene was in black and white and showed NOTHING! You people really have no idea what you're doing. Pulp Fiction (R)=The Man Who Wasn't There (R) Get it straight people, your ratings are horrid. James Bond flicks have worse content than this.
Movie Review: Story of a man who gets entangled in a web of his own making
Summary: 5 Stars
I had never heard of this 2001. And yet it won a academy award for its cinematography and was nominated for several others. It's not the kind of film that gets big box office receipts. It's a small character-driven film that goes deeply beneath the surface. And the kind of film that actors are proud to have worked in.Written and directed by the Coen Brothers, it's set in small town in 1949 and photographed in black and white. Billy Bob Thornton works as a local barber. He's a quiet man who is content to just do his job. He's married to Frances McDormand, who's wears lots of makeup and drinks hard. She's employed as a bookkeeper in the local department store that is rapidly expanding. Her boss is a loud-mouthed braggart, played by James Gandolfini, with whom she is having an affair. Billy Bob is aware of this.
In an attempt to raise money to go into business for himself, he has a plan. It involves blackmail. But it soon turns to murder. The wrong person is accused. There's a tragedy. And the plot keeps thickening. Another fine actor, Tony Shalhoub, is called in to act as a defense lawyer. More complications ensure. The central character, Billy Bob Thornton, keeps getting wrapped more tightly in a web of his own making. Throughout it all, he keeps is quiet stoic personality. He's "every man" who's ever had a dream and see spin out of control. His dialog is always simple, and yet it is always meaningful. The audience gets to know him on an interior level and it is rare that I've seen such deep character development in a film. This was a film where the slow pace was intentional because it was part of the story. I found it a fine drama and became completely involved in it.
As an added feature on the DVD, there was a long interview with Roger Deakins, who did the cinematography. I learned a lot about the technical aspects of the shooting as well as the choices for some unique and original shots. For example, during a prison scene there is harsh sunlight shining through the bars and washing out the face of the lawyer. He uses silhouettes a lot of dark and light contrasts which all added to the mood of the film.
This was a fine and thoughtful film. I give it one of my highest recommendations.
Movie Review: Just A Little Off the Top
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of those films that plants itself in your brain and keeps popping up. Deceptively simple, The Coen brothers' "The Man Who Wasn't There" tells the story of a man who is run over by life. Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) is the ultimate introvert, about as passive a man as you could imagine. When he finally decides to take action, he does something remarkably stupid that has fatal consequences for several people. Thornton's performance is stunning; he keeps us guessing- can he really be that passive and lacking in affect? Is there something going on in there? Can the irony of his life get any heavier?Things I loved: the black and white, post-war, film noir look; the portrayal of small-town 1949 America; Jon Polito's sleazy salesman (reminding me so much of Jackie Gleason); James Gandolfini's portrayal of a sleazebag likable in spite of himself; Frances McDormand as the domineering unfaithful wife (the scene where she asks her husband to shave her legs in the tub is amazing). Other things I love: the superb use of Beethoven's music (who would have ever guessed it would fit so perfectly in a film noir?); the usual Coen plot twists (the innocent girl wants to do what?); the settings of the department store and the barber shop; the "wave of the future"-dry cleaning.
I bought the French version of the film from amazon.fr. The film title in France is "The Barber," and it won the prize at the Cannes 2001 film festival for Mise en Scène. The three-disc set has the film in black and white, a color version (which I haven't watched yet. I suspect the film will lose a lot of its power in color), and extensive bonus features-- audio commentary from the Cohen brothers and Billy Bob Thornton, a 49 minute documentary on film noir, an interview with the cinematographer, etc.
Come to think of it, this is very much a French film: no car chases, explosions, special effects, just an intimate and profound look into a tragic soul.