The Man Who Wasn't There

2001 existential neo-noir

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 18/20)

Plot: Ed cuts hair in his brother-in-law's barber shop. One day, he decides he's not content with his life after listening to a customer go on and on about plans to start a dry cleaning business. Ed decides to invest. The problem is that he doesn't have any money to invest. He comes up with a dumb plan, probably because he's a dumb guy, to blackmail his wife's boss. Things don't go as planned.

This is one of the best-looking black 'n' white movies I've ever seen. The Coen brothers sure know how to use blacks and whites, and their homage to noir is complete with twirling smoke from omnipresent cigarettes, dark shadows, gratuitous fedoras, and sharp contrasts. The Coens throw in all the elements of classic noir and just to keep things interesting, add UFO's into the mix. That genre's existential themes, here more obvious with repeated lines of dialogue and the sort-of narrated epilogue Billy Bob has, are also present here. With Ed, we've got a character who can't find his niche in the world, a character trying to mold some sort of existence for himself, a character who's lost and transient and directionless. And perhaps better than any other filmmakers, the Coens are able to incorporate imagery and symbolism to help nail down that theme, from the beginning shot of a rotating barbershop pole (of course, spiralling down and without the striking red and white) to the chair and razor at the end of the movie (a parallel image to the chairs and razors associated with Ed's profession) and all the numerous circles, hubcaps, lights and shadows, hair references, sonatas, and UFO 's in between. Thornton's deadpan performance is disarming. He's a man suffocated by his own existence, yet he seems oddly unaffected by the mess he's gotten himself in. Lots of faces familiar in the Coen universe, those typical oddball characters that inhabit their stories. I thought Frances McDormand was especially good, and Tony Shalhoub (not to be confused with Shooby Leboof) seemed like he was born to play the hotshot lawyer Freddy Riedenschneider. The story's got some left turns and it's not always clear exactly what's going on, but it's all told with such a remarkable visual flair and an abundance of style, that it doesn't really matter. It's not all noir moodiness and fatalistic despair either. I thought a lot of the movie was pretty funny, but there were times when I laughed or almost laughed and thought, perhaps because of the somber tone of the movie, that it was inappropriate, like (SPOILER ALERT!) in a car crash scene where a car flies absurdly across the screen. Like a lot of Coen bro movies, I can't quite put all the pieces to this haunted stroll through a barber's nightmare together, but it's definitely fun to meditate upon. I saw this way back when it came out and didn't remember it so well. I don't know why I'm surprised that I liked it as much as I do.