23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Undeniably compelling, March 6, 2002
By A Customer
After the crowd-pleasing knockabout comedy of the 30s-set "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" - a cheery, New Deal proposition which played out like "I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang" under the direction of the Keystone Kops - the new Coen brothers movie adopts the grimly fatalistic tone of a 50s noir thriller, its brooding shadows cast by both the Second World War and the resulting paranoias. If "O Brother" was the "before" photo of an America singing its way out of a Depression, then "The Man Who Wasn't There" is the snapshot labelled "after". It's cold and dark, and is certain to put off as many visitors to the Coens' world as "O Brother" attracted.
Thornton, his nicotine-stained voiceover containing enough tar to merit a Government health warning, is Ed Crane, a small-town barber forever sweeping up after those around him. The most passive of active smokers, Crane barely moves for himself until the one false move he makes to kill off his wife's lover and set off a chain of events leading to his own demise; it doesn't come as too much of a surprise when this hero goes out not in a hail of bullets, but sitting down to die.
One of the great joys of a Coen movie is that they cast, right down to the minor roles, people who can act to the extent that it's a pleasure to spend every moment of a longish film in the same room as them. (Even in the non-speaking roles, the brothers cast fascinating faces.) "The Man Who Wasn't There" offers - aside from the more-than-capable Thornton, McDormand and Gandolfini in the lead roles - a supporting cast including Tony Shalhoub as a preening peacock of a lawyer, Jon Polito as the gay dry-cleaning entrepreneur who sets the story in (so far as one could call it) motion, and Michael Badalucco as Crane's verbose brother-in-law, getting the movie's most obvious, "O Brother"-style laughs in riding around on the back of pigs and winning pie-eating contests for the benefit of his young cousins.
Otherwise, the humour is muted and deadpan, existing in throwaway asides: this is a small town whose hotel, we learn, names its suites after operas. The film's funniest lines are those ascribed to other characters passing (unintentional) comment on the motionless hero: "Is he awake?," asks a physician at Crane's bedside, just after a road accident sparked by a young girl's assertion that the emotionless Ed is actually "an enthusiast".
The major talking point may be the look of the film. Whatever the ins and outs of the technical process whereby the brothers arrived at this quality of film stock, Director of Photography Roger Deakins here has access to aesthetically purer blacks and whites than any seen on the screen in the last forty years, and he makes notable use of the tonal palette this facilitates: you get a depth of field which allows an amazing grasp of the distance between a veil and a woman's face, or of the detail apparent when Ed submerges his wife's razor in her bath water, shaking hundreds of microscopic hairs to the bottom of the tub.
This sense of depth also applies to some of the themes apparent in the writing. Characterised by his lawyer as "the modern man", Crane is often framed in one-man-against-the-mass shots, walking against the flow of the crowd. This, I think, ties into the late 40s/paranoid 50s idea of "a modern man" as someone destined only to stand still - or, perhaps more expressively, doomed to do his own thing - while everyone else, their collective stock raised by the prosperity of the post-War boom years, gets rich quick around him. This was a period in which, if the McCarthyites didn't get you, the Commies would; if the Commies didn't get you, the A-bomb would; and if the A-bomb didn't get you, the Roswell aliens certainly would, so Ed's fundamental fatalism is perhaps entirely understandable. More importantly, "the modern man", in the Coens' eyes, is a sensitive type - Crane bemoans the fate of chopped hair - with no obvious outlet for what he's taken from life's hard knocks until it's just too late; his tentative and trembling relationship with a young pianist (Johansson) is exactly the sort of relationship the doomed hero of a 50s thriller would take up in the hope, for him as for us, of a last-reel redemption which invariably won't follow.
This idea of a hero unable - or unwilling - to do anything about his plight, and the Coens' trademark emotional reticence about such plights, means the film won't be for all tastes, but there's something undeniably compelling about the manner in which the filmmakers have humanised the old "what if a tree falls in a forest" riddle and wrestle with the resulting melancholy conundrum that haunts "The Man Who Wasn't There": what happens when a man who talks to nobody has nobody left to talk to?
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35 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another winner from the Coen Brothers, May 23, 2002
Here's a film that falls into the category of "classic noir," all but perfectly presented by the Brothers who are, in many ways, reinventing the movie. With stunning black-and-white cinematography and splendid performances by Billy Bob Thornton and Frances McDormand (who, arguably, is one of the best actresses anywhere), the voiceover narrative of the unsmiling "hero" of the piece recounts the events leading up to his demise.
There is so much to like about this film: its faithful adherence to the exploration of small lives that become enlarged as a result of haphazard circumstance; its beautifully moody lighting and crisp images--where shadow has as much significance as light; and an overall evenness of tone that never for a moment hits a sour note.
Thornton, as the never-smiling barber with an acceptable life that is bereft of humor, of love, and of any viable friendship, gives a remarkably controlled performance that is perfectly matched by McDormand's barely contained appetite for love, for humor, for life, for something beyond the inertia of her marriage (to Thornton.) This is a film in which what goes unstated has as much power as what is; it also has what used to be referred to as a "sting in the tail" at the end.
Nothing can be anticipated in this film; the brothers exercise such great control over the material that even when the viewer thinks s/he knows what's coming, the surprise is there in the ironic ending.
A fine example of top-rate film-making, not to be missed.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Previous reviewer is a Jackass., November 18, 2002
By A Customer
I am typically too lazy to write, however the previous reviewer stirred me enough to demand a response. If you're interested in fast moving color films with stereotyped performances whose sole purpose is entertainment, then stick with Spielberg. I find it amazing that someone with such a poor understanding of film dares comment on it.
If you have an interest in film as an expressive medium and as a reflection of an individual's (or brothers') creative aspirations, you will perhaps at least appreciate the film. Furthermore, the cinematography is absolutely phenomenal, among the best I have ever seen (I dare rank it along side 'Last Year At Marienbad' in this respect).
This is the best Coen Bros. and among the best releases in the past several years.
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