The barber: l'homme qui n'était pas là

Ed Crane is a barber who quietly wants more from his life. When he meets a man with a business proposition he decides to go for it. He suspects his wife is having an affair with her boss and anonymously blackmails him – however things in noir are never straightforward and blackmail leads to murder and a series of events are sparked off around Ed.

I must say I'm surprised this is as high up the imdb charts as it is, but I'm not surprised by the lukewarm reception it had from multiplex audiences. This is a slow, moody homage where things just happen, rather than a neat `start-middle-tidy finish-bad guy dies' type thing. The Cohen brothers have a reputation for the old quirks and here is no different – mixing the steady noir narration with talk of haircuts and bingo makes for a strange if humorous mix. The plot is good but the noir feel mixed with weird going-ons may alienate many audiences.

Thornton is a perfect choice – his features fit well in the black and white shadows and his voice suits the noir narration. McDormand is good and Gandolfini gets another good role and does well. The support is very good – Badalucco, Shalhoub, Polito are all very good. Some elements of it are like a spot the TV face – we have Benrubi from ER, Higgins from Ally McBeal and Abundas from Six Feet Under all in small roles. It's even nice to see a cameo from McDonald.

Overall this isn't as funny as it was billed, simply because it is a noir. As such the Cohens mix the familiar themes of that genre with all new subjects and create a great effect.

since i have seen my first coen-brothers movie, i think, it was Fargo, i'm a great fan of these film-makers.

i can't remember how often i watched this movie, because every time i get fascinated by the interesting story and the excellent characters. the slowness of the movie is fascinating. in spite of the slowness i never felt bored. the whole time i'm watching and thinking of the misery ed crane stepped into.

the next highlight is the great soundtrack. Beethoven was and is the greatest composer ever. and the songs of carter burwell are awesome, not only in this movie, in every movie of the coen-brothers.

i recently read in a comment on this movie, that someone could not imagine that somebody around the age of 25 votes high for this movie. I'm 21 and there was nothing that disturbed me.

without doubt the man who wasn't there is one of my favorite movies.

What a difference a good director makes! Billy Bob Thornton, who was sadly misused in Bandits, gets to recover himself in his brilliant characterization of Ed Crane in this film directed by Joel Coen. His performance is so detailed and subtle that he uses his face to great advantage in the close-ups while the narration goes on in the background. The use of black and white heightens the atmosphere of this 40s-style film noir. The brilliant cinematography is incredible in the use of shadows and dark tones that enhances the story to such an extent. Frances McDormand is incredible in the film as well. And what could one say about James Gandolfini? He gets better and better all the time. The atmosphere of the era is captured even in the small details. It's very refreshing to see the Coen brothers get over their last disaster of "State and Main" with such panache, aided of course by their star, Billy Bob Thornton and the ensemble cast and a great and ironic story.

It starts as another Coenian postmod pastichey picaresque: Noir Guy (Billy Bob Thornton), a barber, has a souse of a wife (Frances McDormand, floridly cast "against type") who loves bingo and her boss at work, a scheming fat man named Big Dave (James Gandolfini). When a comically inept con man (Jon Polito) comes to town, wanting to find a partner in a new business called "dry cleaning," we can see the signs a block away: Blackmail, best-laid-plans, murder ahead. The emphasis in this extremely academic take--more academic even than the Ph.Dish MILLER'S CROSSING--is on the sociological and political roots of noir. The postwarness, the cold-warness, the sunshine-boomtownness of the movie's mythical Santa Rosa (the ___location of SHADOW OF A DOUBT--but really, it's just early-Ellroy L.A.) are all underlined and double-underlined.

So far, so cool--and the movie is far easier to enjoy as a series of Abstracted Noir Components than the similarly suspension-of-disbelief-free LOST HIGHWAY. But then Noir Guy starts contemplating hair. He is the Sisyphus of Noirtown, performing a perfectly stupid task that never ceases to repeat itself, without gathering the slightest meaning. He even, in his blank way, waxes philosophical, like a Marine-town Woyzeck: "I want...I wanna put hair with...dirt, regular house dirt." "Ed, what the heck are ya talkin' about?" "I...Skip it."

And soon the movie metamorphs into a fedoras-and-Pall-Malls riff on Camus' THE STRANGER. Why does the Man Who Wasn't There kick off the chain of events that brings down all manner of ruination? Jealousy? Boredom? No ordinary human motives will do. And the Coens slyly insert a shyster lawyer (Tony Shalhoub) who's full of dime-store variants on post-structuralist touchstones: he uses the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as a sort of Twinkie Defense, and claims that his client is "Modern Man himself!...Indict him, and you are indicting yourself!" All of which, the Coens make clear, is so much malarkey--a way of kidding oneself, substituting entropy for dogma, avoiding the scary unknowableness of being alive.

Ethan Coen described THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE as "the movie Martin Heidegger would have made if he had come to Hollywood"--unusually forthright for two guys who are just, aw shucks, entertainers. Like Spielberg's A.I., it uses a perfectedness of technique to render the world as an arrangement of totemic abstractions--pixilated dots that don't add up to a coherent object. The movie gets you, terrifyingly and melancholically, inside the head of a guy for whom the simplest, table-and-chairs stuff is ceasing to make sense. And the brothers use Carter Burwell's variant on Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" in a way that's as crazily persistent, and ceaselessly effective, as the insanely repetitive romantic theme from Godard's CONTEMPT. (Not even Godard has used late Beethoven so aptly.) Like BARRY LYNDON, another movie whose central question is "What kind of a man are you?," THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE has an elusive, smokelike plangency. It's a picture you'll puzzle over, and sigh achingly at its images, for many years to come.

The 2002 Cohen brothers film is a delight. "The Man Who Wasn't There" combines everything I like in the Coen brother's unique way of telling a story. From the comic of the situation witnessed in the famous "O Brother Where Art Though" (2000) to the originality of the scenario seen in "Barton Fink" (1991), not to mention the singularity of the characters and their lack of control over the situation in the excellent "Fargo" (1996), all those "hints" have been gathered to built this well thought story. Joel and Ethan directed and wrote this picture about a bored and boring chain-smoking barber admirably played by Billy Bob Thornton (best role for this under-rated actor)who blackmails his wife's boss and lover for money to invest in dry cleaning. As you sense the plan goes terribly wrong. I believe this story is a pretext to show us how little is our grip on the reality of our lives. And to demonstrate how justice easily becomes a comico-pathetic masquarade when given by men. On the contrary true Justice eventually lies in the wrinkles of men's destiny. As a conclusion you are better off expecting a landing of an alien spaceship than a fair and clear trial in a court of law. Whether we agree or not to this demonstration, it does not take away the pleasure of watching these terrific actors putting into play the original and dark scenario of the two brothers. Billy Bob Thornton is a master portraying to perfection Ed Crane (the laconic barber). Since Dead Man (1995) I don't recall a lot of movies where directors have capitalized on his enormous talent. Frances McDormand (Doris Crane) is as usual fantastic. We remember her in Wonder Boys (2000) and of course as the sheriff in Fargo (1996). Here she plays wonderfully the barber's wife going from bitterness to sorrow. Some characters can be seen as "cliche" like Freddy Riedenschneider the lawyer played by the good Tony Shalhoub, however they are all enjoyable to watch: James Gandolfini is terrific as "Big Dave" and Jon Polito very colorful as Creighton Tolliver, not to forget the very talkative and sincere Michael Badalucco as Franck Raffo or the great job done by Scarlett Johansson in the role of Rachael 'Birdy' Abundas the not very straight and quiet adolescent you would expect. The Black and White picture is more an artistic exploration from the Coen brothers and I don't think has anything to do with the chosen period (late 40's). However the black and white picture is very well shot by Roger Deakins and impose tremendously well Billy Bob Thornton's character and therefore never becomes a burden for the audience. "The Man Who Wasn't There" does not belong to any genre in particular. The Movie is made of a myriads of genres and characters that the Coen brothers have managed to master throughout their career of story tellers. The movie is a "film Noir" but not only, it is a dark comedy but not only, it is a light thriller but not only, it is shot in black and white but still have colorful characters, it tells a simple story of a laconic barber but there is more to it, eventually Justice will prevail but not the way we think it will. In the end it is a unique movie and in times where everything seems to look the same this movie becomes a true jewel.