Man Who Wasn’t There
Sometimes it is truly amazing to see the kind of stuff that the Brothers Coen (Joel and Ethan) come up with literally off the top of their heads, because whenever they write up an original story and screenplay (with the exception of the awful No Country For Old Men), it’s at least guaranteed to be unique. Thus is the case with this 2001 release, which stars Billy Bob Thornton as a small town barber in 1949, going about his business cutting hair and purposely overlooking the fact that his wife is sleeping with her boss. Then one day he gets a fast-talking gay customer in his shop (Jon Polito) who throws out an interesting proposition about what he says is the wave of the future: dry cleaning. Problem is, he needs $10,000 capital to open up his own shop and is trying to find an investor, which gets Thornton to thinking: Why don’t I just blackmail my wife’s boss over their affair, get the money, and see if this thing works out? And as a result, the path to his personal ruination begins, as this simple scheme soon leads to murder and other bad situations. As clever as the script is with its neo-noir tendencies combined with the existential themes that were used in the Big Lebowski, the problem is literally with how the Thornton character itself is presented, almost to the point where he can be called The Lead Character That Wasn’t There: Despite the fact that he narrates the story, we as viewers never come to care enough about Thornton to really be concerned about the ever more precarious situation he has gotten himself into, all the way up to his final fate, perhaps because the Coens as screenwriters overdose on the idea that he may possibly be a little too laconic for his own good, and if the main character doesn’t give a shit about ANYTHING, it’s hard for the viewer to give a shit about him as well. As for the rest of the cast, Frances McDormand is much more appealing than usual as Thornton’s wife; James Gandolfini as her boss is a convincing fast talking asshole; Michael Badalucco as Thornton’s brother in law and fellow barber is as braying and annoying as intended; Scarlett Johansson as the teenage daughter of a family friend provides one of the more amusingly unexpected moments; and Tony Shalhoub pretty much steals the movie with the best performance (a first for him) as the sleazy, slick, fast talking lawyer brought in to defend one of the characters from a murder charge. The Coens and their usual DP Roger Deakins do succeed in creating an amazing visual atmosphere with their black and white photography that gives it the style of an old school 40s noir homage, complete with excessive cigarette smoking to complete the effect. Overall, an effective exercise in style even with an unlikable and inaccessible main character…
7/10