The Man Who Wasn't There

Rating:
Summary: Dead Man Walking
Review: You know, I like the Coens. This one didn't connect with me, for the same reason it didn't connect with the film's most enjoyable character, Freddy Riedenschnieder (Tony Shaloub): no jury'd ever buy it. A nondescript barber (Billy Bob) realizes his wife is cheating on him; he extorts $10,000 from his wife's lover to buy into a dry-cleaning scam; the money disappears; murders and misunderstandings follow, UFOs, Brahms, pigs at weddings, yadda yadda yadda.

There comes a point when plotting gets in the way of story, and this is an example of that. Sometimes the Coens just go crazy and riff with abandon, like in "The Big Lebowski" and "Raising Arizona." This isn't one of those movies. In "The Man Who," the brothers gets so wrapped up in the feeding and care of the labyrinthine plot that the movie has absolutely zero room to breathe. I dunno. Maybe claustrophobia was the point; it's certainly the result. Shouts to Roger Deakins for the great B&W cinematography and whoever in makeup did Billy Bob's piece. Otherwise, a pass for me.

Rating:
Summary: You are an enthusiast
Review: Yes he is. But who knows? Who would imagine a quiet barber with a boring job has a sincere attempt to reach for something finer, more meaningful in life? There are many Ed around us, there are many Ed among us.

Rating:
Summary: NO END (OR BEGINNING) TO INNOCENCE
Review: An earlier reviewer referred to one of the characters in "The Man Who Wasn't There" as the "innocent piano girl." Evidently the cause of the car accident, her attempt to perform fellatio on Billy Bob Thornton's character, Ed, went unnoticed. That's the point. Nobody in "Man" is innocent. At one point, Ed tells the piano girl that he has been dealt some bad cards, or not played well the cards he's been dealt. Neither has anyone else. Every character expresses the irony of the title. No one is really "there." Gandolfini's character turns out to have lied about his exploits in the war. His society heiress wife believes her husband was abducted by UFO's (outside Eugene, Oregon, no less). McDormand's character met Ed on a blind date and they've been blind to each other ever since. This is the meaning of Shalhoub's lawyer's speech: The more you look, the less you see.

This is why "Man" held my interest. Across the arc of my life I have thought I knew certain persons very well. Let a certain set of events take place, though, especially if I set them in motion, and something unrecognizable appears. That's the deepest tug of "Man." Even when we look, there's no face to see. Manipulation cannot save Ed or anyone else; well-intentioned efforts cannot save; the most expensive lawyer cannot save; neither can fantasies of flying saucers or the return of the dead. The ending of the film, with its hope that somewhere Ed and Doris can really talk with each other, hints at the faith and hope that are required to persevere.

One other comment: The reviewers who observe that "Casablanca" is not an example of film noir are right. "Man" is a worthy reinterpretation of the genre, what "The Maltese Falcon" would have looked like if it had been made today. O.K., one more comment: The script never claims that Big Dave killed the pansy. That's the meaning of his obvious homosexuality. In 1949, that lifestyle was even more dangerous than it is today.

Rating:
Summary: The Man I didn't Care About
Review: I'm a BIG Cohen brothers fan and was looking forward to this movie.So many of the actors I really like and am familiar with so
I anticipated a very enjoyable movie. Billy Bob's character is so dull and unlikable that there wasn't any suspense! Dull!
Don't rent this, rent "Blood Simple" instead. That is a good Cohen Bros. "Film Noir".

Rating:
Summary: Shades of Grey
Review: We have become so accustomed to viewing movies in color and associating black and white films with casts long since dead, that when the "simpler" medium is used, it is startling. When color is left out for appropriate films imagining them in color invariably seems incorrect. Steven Spielberg filmed, "Schindler's List", in black and white but for a few moments and a very small element of red. The time period he was documenting is associated with almost exclusively colorless images, his subject one of the most shocking in history. So when he used a touch of color he placed an additional exclamation point after the horror he was sharing.

"The Man Who Wasn't There", would have worked in color, but once viewed in black and white it is hard to imagine the film in anything other than the shades between the two extremes. "The Road To Perdition", was filmed in color, and it too is hard to imagine in an alternative black and white presentation. The Cohen Brothers who directed the film chose to film it in the brilliant resolution often associated with the finest silver gelatin, still photographic paper. Areas approaching white appear almost as silver, and the blacks are completely opaque, the delineations between light and dark are razor sharp unlike the films made in the early days of cinema.

Black and white also removes all manner of distraction that color can cause. Watch any film with Billy Bob Thornton, and then watch this work. Never has his appearance been more crystal clear, there are only gradations, as opposed to infinite alternatives to view a person or a scene. The smoke from a freshly lit cigarette is interesting to watch, and when blood pools on the floor, no amount of color could increase the impact.

The movie is so good primarily due to Thornton's performance and that of Tony Shalhoub as a clever and self absorbed defense attorney. Thornton appears to be harmless and indistinct to the point of being missed. He is there to view, but mainly to those of us in the audience. Even when he becomes the catalyst for the first event that leads to a continuing spiral of destruction, he seems to exist on the fringe of events that he is solely responsible for. When he attempts to tell an attorney that he is responsible for an event, he is literally laughed at and dismissed, a dream if the person is guilty, when even a confession is ridiculed.

The creators of the film turn the traditional storyline upside down. A person commits an act that normally would be condemned, but extenuating circumstances make the behavior reasonable. In another instance no crime is committed at all, yet a life is taken by the accused. And the ultimate irony is when the innocent are found guilty with nothing but irrelevant circumstantial evidence. The more concrete the crime, the less likely it will be punished, the reverse of absolute innocence will gain be rewarded with the ultimate punishment.

Rating:
Summary: Coen's Finest
Review: Gorgeous looking...this film was just great to look at. The black and white cinematography was breathtaking. The story moves a bit slow, but you don't really notice it or mind, because the score and the look of the film is so great.

A great Oscar performance from Thorton.

Rating:
Summary: Polish, But No Passion
Review: The prolific Coen brothers (Raising Arizona, Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou?) try their hand at film noir with The Man Who Wasn't There. Set in 1949, the movie stars Billy Bob Thornton as Ed, a bottom-of-the-pecking-order barber in a sleepy California town. Shackled to boozy, overbearing wife Doris (Frances McDormand), who is having an affair with her slimy boss Big Dave (James Gandolfini), Ed dreams of breaking out of his quietly desperate life. Opportunity comes knocking in the form a small-time entrepreneur who bustles into town looking for an investor in his nascent dry-cleaning business. Ed decides to take a flier on the business, and raises his $10,000 stake by anonymously blackmailing Big Dave. Thereupon - as you just know they must - the complications and the corpses begin to pile up.

"Gritty" is a word that generally applies to film noir, but not so here. The Man Who Wasn't There is a nearly endless parade of sumptuous black and white frames that are as glossy and airbrushed as George Hurrell glamour photographs. The movie is like chiffon cake for your eyes, begging adjectives like "rich" and "creamy." The elegance of the sets and cinematography are strangely at odds with the dark subject matter and the middle-class insignificance of the characters. (The film's title refers to Ed, a man who is so much a part of the wallpaper of his environment as to be virtually unnoticeable.) Still, the genre's conventions are observed: violent death, secrets, a faithless dame, a slick lawyer - and a decent enough guy who gets in over his head. It may be a Dove Bar, but it's still vanilla.

The top-notch cast all deliver polished performances. The protean Billy Bob Thornton, especially, once again proves how uncannily he can inhabit the skin of his character. Here, he somehow manages to wring from the laconic Ed an impressive spectrum of feelings and responses using little more than facial expressions, body language, and finely gauged pauses. McDormand and Gandolfini likewise manage to imbue with complexity characters that would be scarcely more than cardboard cutouts in the hands of lesser performers. And Tony Shalhoub, as napoleonic big-city lawyer Freddie Riedenschneider, is flat brilliant.

Despite the formidable craftsmanship that went into the movie, though, it's not an easy film to like. For one thing, it tends to dawdle a bit, lingering over its own beauty like Narcissus at the water hole. There's not a lot of variety in the pacing. Even the pivotal murder scene plays out deliberately - not slow motion, just slow. More than that, though, it's hard to find anyone in this movie really to root for. The only character we get to know well is Ed - the film is largely his voice-over, first-person narration - and there is something ultimately repellant about his fastidious, self-contained nature. In the end, The Man Who Wasn't There sports a great wardrobe, a swell manicure and a terrific shoeshine - but not enough heart.

Rating:
Summary: Heavens to Betsy, Birdie!
Review: What a great movie. Only for movie lovers, that is. Most people will find it kinda boring... My 24 year old sister fell asleep 15 min into the movie, I guess you can't account for taste! Then a movie buff friend like me found it wierd and funny, black & white yet colorful....
Anyways, see it first.

Rating:
Summary: Dead Man Walking
Review: Since their first film nearly 20 years ago, Ethan and Joel Coen have established themselves among that rather select group of true geniuses of American cinema. "The Man Who Wasn't There" only further solidifies their status, and ranks among their finest films. It is quiet, low-key, yet nonetheless powerfully searing character study, and an exploration of a culture -the post World War II years - that seemed to harken in that peculiar homogenized American madness, which is all the more dangerous for its near imperceptibility. Ed Crane(brilliantly played by Billy Bob Thornton) is the very embodiment of T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men": a cadaverish, dour and taciturn human being whose near-fossilized facial expression makes a cigar store wooden Indian's seem animated by comparison. He is utterly devoid of spirit, humor, gumption or direction. He is a small town barber only because he lacks the drive or ambition to be anything else. The fact that his wife Doris(Francis McDormand) is cheating on him with her department store boss barely fazes him ("it's a free country", he muses). That is until an absurd and sleazy traveling "entepreneur" tempts him into investing $10,000 in "dry cleaning", the latest technological marvel, American-style. It is then that he endeavors to blackmail his wife"s lover for the money. Without divulging further plot developments, suffice it to say that events spin lethally out of control in ways that recall the Coen's earlier "Blood Simple" and "Fargo"... "The Man Who Wasn't There" is a haunting and quietly powerful dissection of an American "everyman", as well as an indictment of an alienated society,and the "pathology of normalcy" it breeds. The Coen's slyly reinforce their point of view by referring to the nascent flying saucer mania growing at the time, its paranoid element, as well as its significance as a mass wish for escape. Do not miss "The Man Who Wasn't There", the latest gem from the Coen Brothers' seeming cornucopia of daring, original, and innovative film artistry.

Rating:
Summary: The Movie That Wasn't There
Review: I am very hit and miss with the Coen's. Their films are slow-paced and all of the air is vacuumed out of the movie, leaving one with an uncomfortable, queasy feeling. First off--this film is NOT a film noir (neither is Casablanca, as one other reviewer opines). It is more of a send-up of film noir, and very smartly and stylishly utilizes the conventions of the genre. That being said--the film does look great, with some of the best B&W textural work I've ever seen. I like the fact that the BBT character doesn't say much, in fact he hardly even moves! He reminds me of Chance in Being There--he says very little but everyone is reacting to him as if he's given the State of the Union Address. The plot device (blackmail scheme) is very clever and simple, and it is a marvel how much momentum builds from that simple note. I really did not buy the scene where Gandolfini seeks out BBT for advice on what to do about his cuckoldry--come on, Messrs. Coen--he would not be that dumb or brazen. Heck, they didn't even seem like close friends! The scene where Gandolfini & BBT have it out is as intense as can be, and the shark lawyer is monstrously wonderful. I thought the last section of the movie (after Doris kills herself) just fell apart,however, and I was bored stiff to be honest. I had a similar reaction to Barton Fink--there was greatness and there was lameness, and it kinda added up to a big nothing in the end. A lot of delicious artifice that leaves you wanting for real depth and meaning--kind of like cinematic meringue.