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The Man Who Wasn't There film review
THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE
Running time: 116 mins
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, James Gandolfini, Tony Shaloub, Michael Badalucco, Scarlett Johansson, Jon Politto, Richard Jenkins, Katherine Borowitz
The title is as enigmatic as the film, but that hardly comes as a surprise. Every film the Coen brothers make is as compelling as it is beguiling. The pair's impenetrably black sense of humour occasionally allows a few dappled rays of sun to peek through and they find themselves temporarily welcomed into the commercial fold from the margins of the independent tundra. However, the lush and buoyant shenanigans of last year's O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a world away from the film noir austerity of The Man Who Wasn't There, a masterful and melancholic ode to regret and acceptance.
From the moment the shadows of the opening credits drift across a wall below a Hopper-esque barber's pole you are spellbound. Cinematographer Roger Deakins has bathed every scene in an evocative and sensual glow. By first shooting in colour, he has been able to provide warmth to the traditionally cold look of black and white and the use of chiaroscuro transforms every frame into a thing of beauty. Without meaning, such imagery would be devalued, but when focussed on the troubled life and etched brow of Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), it adds depth as well as purpose.
Thornton has never been better than as the lugubrious and taciturn Crane who grinds out his days as a barber at his garrulous brother-in-law Frank's (Michael Badalucco) salon. Stuck in a loveless and childless marriage to Doris (the ever resonant Frances McDormand), he seems resigned to his lot, his circumstances guided more by fate and the influence of others than anything he's done himself. "Life has dealt me some bum cards," Crane bemoans in droll noir parlance, "but maybe I haven't played %u2018em right. I don't know. " With his dapper suits, neatly coiffed hair and a cigarette permanently welded to his bottom lip, Thornton resembles a worn out Fred MacMurray. It's an extraordinary and contained performance. His ability to convey everything by doing nothing is one that with any justice should see him in the running for another Oscar.
Even the realisation that Doris is having an affair with her boss, Big Dave Brewster (James Gandolfini), does little to stir anything other than disappointment in Crane and that's just because he doesn't care. It's only when a business opportunity involving the revolutionary new process known as dry cleaning presents itself in the form of the sleazy gay huckster Creighton Tolliver (Jon Politto), that Crane sees it as a chance to take control of his life for the first time while also enabling him to exact revenge on the adulterous couple.
Inevitably things go wrong. The resulting litany of blackmail and murder shatters Crane's eventless life, causing him to reflect dolefully, more to himself than the bemused Frank, as he contemplates another customer's head, "This hair, do you ever wonder about it? It's part of us, we cut it off and throw it away." In his effort to resolve things, borne more out obligation than desire, he turns to his lawyer friend Walter, played with a delicious comic flair by Richard Jenkins. But it's Walter's teenage daughter Birdy (Scarlett Johansson) who begins to occupy Crane's thoughts. It's through her and her piano playing talents that he sees an opportunity to fulfil the potential he has failed to achieve.
As always, the Coen brothers inhabit their films with eccentric and memorable characters like the brash and imperious attorney Freddy Riedenschneider, who is given full reign by the always inventive Tony Shaloub. The film's deliberate and unhurried pace, with its acres of silence punctuated sporadically by droll non-sequiters, is always absorbing, your attention divided between the inexorable fate of its protagonaist and the elegant photography. The Man Who Wasn't There may look black and white, but its style, wit and pathos are blindingly vivid.
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