THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE
US, 2001, 116 minutes, Black and white.
Billy Bob Thornton, Frances Mc Dormand, Michael Badalucco, James Gandolfini, Katherine Borowitz, Jon Polito, Scarlett Johansson, Richard Jenkins, Tony Shalhoub.
Directed by Joel Coen.
This is a fascinating film. It is more of an art-house drama, but it should interest and entertain those interested in good moviemaking.
One of its qualifications is that it was made by the Coen Brothers. In fact, they shared the Best Director award for the film at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Over the last seventeen years, Joel and Ethan Coen have reworked most of the familiar Hollywood genres, giving them new life. They are highly inventive, both of them writing the screenplays, with Ethan Coen producing and Joel directing. There is their delightful chain gang and escape comedy with George Clooney, O Brother Where Art Thou. Their best known film is probably Fargo, that odd mixture of comedy and abduction and murder gone wrong, Fargo. Joel Coen's wife, Frances Mc Dormand, won a Best Actress award for her performance in Fargo. She also stars in The Man Who Wasn't There.
She plays the wife of a perfectly ordinary barber in a perfectly ordinary small American town fifty years ago. The humdrum routines, the small town rituals, the inflating of importance by big fish in small ponds make for ironic black humour. And the fact that the characters are barbers, salesmen, owners of department stores means that the drama works differently because it does not deal with affluent or glamorous characters who are larger than life.
But the focus of the film is on the barber. He is played in an effectively laconic, dead-pan way by Billy Bob Thornton. Thornton seems an unlikely film star coming, as he does from being a screenwriter (including his Oscar-winning Sling Blade). He has moved into film direction (All the Pretty Horses) but has become a versatile character actor. His barber is the introvert par excellence. He scarcely speaks in real life and then only in the most plain, obvious - and brief - ways. However, he does the voiceover commentary, telling us how he thinks (and doesn't think), how he feels (and doesn't feel). He seems incapable of decisions, just drifting through life, loving his wife and doing haircuts. And suddenly he is involved in a squalid web of murder and blackmail.
But what the Coen Brothers are doing this time is being inventive with the film noir thriller. Their film is made in black and white rather than colour. One of their main points of reference seems to be that marvellous noir film of 1944 on betrayal, insurance fraud and murder, Double Indemnity, with Billy Bob Thornton as a deadpan Fred Mac Murray. As the barber tells his story, he begins to ask himself some questions about himself and discovers more about his motivations, especially his capacity for jealousy and violence.
A theme that interests the Coens is that of justice and justice being seen to be done. They show people literally getting away with murder but then experiencing retribution for something else. Justice seems to go round.
1. Impact of the film? Acclaim? Decision? Cinematography? Performance? The work of the Coen brothers, writing and directing? Their range of interests, eccentric characters, the world of crime, laconic characters, ironic presentation? The visuals? The musical score?
2. The clarity of the black and white photography, symbolic black and white, the tradition of film noir, the atmosphere of films made in the late 40s, the characters and dialogue, situations, speech, the conventions, the differences? Crime, justice, poetic justice?
3. The strength of the cast, the quality of performance?
4. Ed’s voice-over, Billy Bob Thornton’s tone, timbre of voice? Ed’s look? Confiding in the audience? Irony, laconic, self-knowledge or not? The final irony that he was writing for a magazine to get some money?
5. Ed Crane? As the barber, his interactions with Frank, his explanation of the set-up, the ownership of the shop, talking or not? Frank and his incessant talk? His skills, customers? The story of his marriage, meeting Doris, the short courtship, her reasons for marrying him, his drifting into marriage? Expectations? Married life, routines, going home, the bingo? No children? Big Dave, friends? His encounter with Creighton Tolliver? The talk, the haircut, visiting him in his room, the idea of dry-cleaning, the issue of the ten thousand dollars? Doris’s family, the Italian background, Frank and the other relatives, the family picnic?
6. Big Dave, his reputation, with the store, his wife, his war record and his talking about it? His issue of the money and the blackmail? The deal? The agreement with Tolliver, Tolliver’s advance and Ed’s rejecting it? At home, with Doris, worrying? At the party, Big Dave and his confiding in him, later and Dave realising the truth? The confrontation, the anger, the fight, the knife – and Dave’s story about the Japanese and the knife? The irony that Dave had killed Tolliver because of the rash judgment that he was blackmailing him?
7. Ed, the aftermath, covering himself, listening to Birdie play? Entranced by her? His friendship with her father? Contemplating? The aftermath of the killing, his character and adjusting to the situation, continuing his work?
8. Doris’s arrest, the police coming to him in the barbershop and his shock, in the prison? Riedenschneider’s rhetoric, the possibilities, his language?
9. Riedenschneider and his being full of himself, his style, talking to camera, his ideas, ignorance? Wanting to get Doris off? The preparation for the trial? His being upset at Doris’s death? His return, defending ed, the lack of money, his sense of failure?
10. Frankie, his dismay at what had happened, being upset for Doris, his getting the new barber, the new barber and his talkativeness, his anger with Ed?
11. Birdie, her age, experience, playing, the performance? Her boyfriend? Ed, his silences? Arranging the audition, her playing, the impresario saying that she was not a good player? Riding in the car with her, her offer of sex, the crash?
12. The visualising of the crash, slow-motion, the wheel turning, the dream of Doris, the salesman, the interaction? His waking up?
13. Dave, his character, his wife, two-timing his wife? The store? Wanting to put Doris in charge? Their being together at the bingo, their laughing together? Ed and his quiet observations? Doris, her character, the affair with Dave, at home, relating well to Ed, taking him for granted? Her arrest, the repercussions, her killing herself?
14. Ed waking up after the accident, the police present, the arrest, the charge? The murder of Tolliver? His going to prison, Riedenschneider not helping him? The accusations – and his decision to write his memoirs? Getting the money? Possibility for Birdie?
15. A film noir at the beginning of the 21st century, the tradition from the 1940s? The popular style, the characters? Issues of character, guilt, fidelity, betrayal, murder? Poetic justice?
