The Man Who Wasn't There [Blu-ray]

Judged strictly by the usual cinematic standards, "The Man Who Wasn't There" doesn't deserve five stars, but closer to three. However, like Stanley Kubrick's "2001," this isn't so much a drama as a novel of ideas on celluloid. The core idea here is the hollowness of modern bourgeois life. I confess that I don't much like that as a theme, and dozens of filmmakers--often European--have justified my skepticism. Almost all previous explorations of that territory have been by self-styled artistes, who use their films to spew their contempt for ordinary folk. Such efforts generally produce unwatchable results; in less skilled hands, this film, too, could easily have joined that inglorious tradition.The Coens make it work because they eschew "art" in favor of superb craftsmanship. They put story and character above mere "messaging," weaving one of their usual complex film noir tales, in which just about everyone is guilty of something. But most of all, this film works because the Coens don't look down on their characters. I don't agree that bourgeois existence is necessarily hollow, but if we assume so for the sake of argument, then it's a common human problem for all to contemplate, not a self-evident justification for the elite to despise the masses.Ed Crane, played with both intensity and restraint by Billy Bob Thornton, is the archetype "Man Who Wasn't There." A barber in Santa Rosa, CA, in the late 1940s, Ed is practically invisible: to his fellow citizens, his customers, his boss, and even to his wife. Ed talks very little, and doesn't like chattiness in others. He has a vague sense that he's supposed to be content with his life, an equally vague longing for something more, and nothing but will-o-the-wisps to satisfy that longing. Ed's actions and reflections throughout the film show that he is invisible even to himself. He learns that his wife is having an affair with her boss. He then blackmails the boss to get money for a shady investment, and ends up killing him in a subsequent fight. Next, he watches his wife get tried and executed for the killing he had committed; and finally he gets executed himself, for a different crime he didn't commit. Through it all, he neither shows nor feels any emotion--as if his own life is just a boring, black-and-white movie that has put him halfway to sleep.But the Coens show us something more, which I confess I failed to appreciate seeing the film on its initial release. All of the major characters share Ed's emptiness of life; they differ from him only in that they manage to lie to themselves about it. Ed's wife, Doris (Frances McDormand), doesn't know why she married Ed; she gets neither sex nor financial support (her own salary supplies her needs) nor emotional sustenance from the relationship. Her boss, Big Dave (James Gandolfini), is in an equally loveless marriage with the heiress to the department store he runs. Like Ed, his only hope for a better life involves stealing and deceit: sleeping with Ed's wife; embezzling from the family business; claiming to be a combat hero of the Pacific campaign, whereas in fact he spent the war as an Army clerk in San Diego.Big Dave's wife, Ann (Katherine Borowitz), is resigned to an empty existence. She believes that her husband withdrew from her because he was abducted by aliens, who must have done something to him before bringing him back to Earth. Local attorney Walter Abundas (Richard Jenkins)--the closest thing Ed has to a friend--is an unhappy, boozy widower whose hobby is genealogy: that is, he spends his time symbolically searching for his own identity. After Doris's execution, Ed tries to bond with Walter's gorgeous, high-school aged daughter, Birdy (Scarlett Johansson), on the pretext of helping her develop a career as a pianist. Ed takes Birdy to meet a world-famous piano teacher in San Francisco; the teacher says he can't help the girl because, while her technique is OK, she lacks the inner spirit of a true musician--she has nothing inside.The task of voicing the movie's theme goes to Ed's pricey out-of-town attorney, Freddy Reidenschneider (Tony Shalhoub). At Ed's murder trial, Freddy tries to sow reasonable doubt with a meaningless bit of high-sounding schtick, loosely based on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. He tells the jury they can't be sure what happened, because, with Ed, "the closer you look, the less you see." That's the nub of it: from a distance, Ed looks like any decent, respectable resident of Santa Rosa. But up close, he disappears. And so do the people around him.It's a dangerous concept for a film: the main character is not a hero, nor even an anti-hero, but just a nullity. That's why, as I said, by the conventional rules of drama, the story just does not add up to anything. But, unlike 99 out of 100 movies that are supposed to "really make you think," this one does.

Coen Bros. are almost always exceptional. This is a great picture. Incredibly well written and great pacing. The entire cast is excellent, especially Billy Bob Thornton.

“The Man Who Wasn’t There” is the Coen brothers most confounding film. While it shares the nihilistic themes of their most original work (“Barton Fink,” “Fargo”) it is mercilessly bleak and, save for a brief, bravura turn by Tony Shalhoub as a maniacal lawyer, almost wholly devoid of humor.If James M. Cain had tried to write “The Stranger,” he might well have come up with this strange cocktail. The central conceit is that our taciturn protagonist’s existence is so insubstantial it manifests the quantum notion of superposition. (Heisenburg’s uncertainty principle even makes a cameo.) Filmed in color by the great Roger Deakins, who then desaturated and remastered the final stock into a terrifically crisp black-and-white print, the plot’s many twists and turns play out before the solemn rhythms of Beethoven.As usual, The Coen’s language is gorgeous, and their screenplay contains some of their most thoughtful musings on life. The cast, featuring many of the Coen’s “regulars” (Shalhoub, Frances McDormond, Jon Polito, Michael Badalucco) are their usual sturdy selves.And overall it is achingly close to perfection.But.As much as I may admire the script’s originality and wordcraft, its cinematography and ensemble work, Carter Burwell’s score, etc. I can not get past Billy Bob Thornton, inexplicably cast in the lead role of barber Ed Crane. Look, I am sure Mr. Thornton is a nice, intelligent guy. And some of his line readings are fine (his last speech, in particular, is perfectly delivered)….But to me, too often there is something ineffably off about his performance. It is too mannered, too self-aware; and in moments dangles perilously close to parody. The Coen brothers have such a grand repertoire of fine actors with whom they have worked, so many of whom would have been better suited to the laconic lead role circa 2001: John Goodman, John Turturro, Steve Buschemi, etc. What on earth convinced them to cast Mr. Thornton?Sigh. Despite my misgivings about the lead, I greatly admire The Man Who Wasn’t There, and put it in my Top Three Coen Brothers’ works.

Great Movie!

If you like the weird David Lynch movies like Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive, you'll like The Man Who Wasn't There.In a nutshell, this is a movie about a 1940s dull, deadpan, chain smoking man of few words living a boring life. He tries to get a more interesting life, but to do that requires the other people in his life to cooperate. And they are as flawed as he is dull and boring. He fails. Badly.I say this movie is David Lynch-like because the characters are weird. No one acts like they should. No one has normal intuition. Then throw in some interaction with alien spaceships. But do all of this with good actors and excellent camera work and a decent story line, and you get this movie... annoying but interesting.The art house snobs will definitely give this movie five stars. I give it three because in the real world, there's enough logic and normal people to prevent most of the things in this movie from ever happening. Oh, and the likelihood of the teenage girl played by Scarlett Johansen trying to orally service the dullard, deadpan, chain smoking lead character - as he's driving her home - is slim to none. Even the art house snob watching this movie should knock it out of the five star range for that stupid scene alone. No teenage girl, living or dead, would ever want to put lipstick on this guy's dipstick.So three stars. You'll finish watching the movie, but you won't be raving about it afterwards.

Great movie.

son loves it