The Man Who Wasn't There
(2001)
|
The Coen brothers' THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE is a brilliantly photographed black-and-white absurdist noir set in Santa Rosa, California, in 1949. Ed Crane (the outstanding Billy Bob Thornton) is a slow-moving, barely talking barber who doesn't seem to want much out of life. He has virtually no relationship with his wife, Doris (Frances McDormand), who has more fun with her boss, Big Dave (James Gandolfini). But when a strange character (Jon Polito) lets it be known that he's looking for a silent partner to finance his dream business (something he calls dry cleaning), Ed sees a possible way out of his doldrums. Just like any good James M. Cain novel (which the Coens cited as a major influence on the story), blackmail, deceit, violence, murder, and double crossing ensue, all with the magic Coen twists and turns. |
Screenshots
It would be simplistic to call this period crime drama from the Coen brothers a pastiche of film noir. Certainly it is set in small-town California in 1949 and involves an ordinary Joe embroiled in a murder plot — and it's shot in black and white — but the veneer of homage masks something far more complex and clever. The story, in which Billy Bob Thornton's inscrutable barber Ed Crane attempts to escape from his humdrum life through blackmail, is typical of the Coens. But, instead of the comic mania of Raising Arizona or The Big Lebowski, we see one man's decline told in slow, meditative terms. With its dash of flying-saucer paranoia, it's also tempting to interpret the film as a broader examination of western existential dread. Sublime acting from Thornton and Coen regular Frances McDormand, aided by the stunning photography of Roger Deakins, makes this movie the most introspective in the Coen canon. It's certainly on a par with Fargo, if a lot more demanding of a modern audience.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Stylish, stylized, highly polished, and leisurely thriller in the tradition of film noir, in which the guilty are undone by their own failures of character; it is impeccably written, photographed and acted.