| Overall Grade: |
A+ |
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| Story: |
A+ |
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| Acting: |
A+ |
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| Direction: |
A+ |
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| Visuals: |
A+ |
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Quiet Perfection!
by "Llama" (movies profile)
Nov 19, 2004
5
of
6 people found this review helpful
A beautifully peaceful film noir with yet another amazing performance from Billy Bob Thornton. The Coen brothers create a stylish and quietly powerful film about a solemn and thoughtful man whose life gets much more complicated than he ever anticipated or hoped. PLOT - The Coen brothers slyly joked in a recent interview that this film, set in the late 1940's, is about a man named Ed Crane who is a barber that wants to get into dry cleaning. While that may be literally true on the surface, this film has many deeper layers. Ed Crane (Thornton) is a quiet man, a barber, who goes to work, cuts the hair, and returns home to a wife he is sure is cheating on him. He doesn't much care about her cheating, he doesn't seem to be bothered by anything... he is a very passive man. Ed watches and listens, but tunes most of it out and is consumed by his own rambling thoughts. One day, a man proposes a new revolutionary way to clean clothes... dry cleaning. Intrigued by the prospect, Ed decides to come up with the $10,000 in order to finance the project. With the knowledge of his wife's affair with her boss at the local department store, he decides to blackmail the boss for the ten grand. This sets in to motion a chain of events that results in three deaths and two court trials. I won't reveal the details, but Ed narrates us through the messy story, calmly observing but never really participating much. WHAT WORKS - There are two things I will vividly remember from this film, the cinematography and a mesmerizing performance from Billy Bob Thornton. Roger Deakins' black and white photography is some of the most beautiful in recent film history. Every detail on every face, billowing smoke and dust and particles of cut hair, shadows and shapes... all of these things are accentuated by beams of light that cascade like those in classic film noir. This is a spectacular looking movie. Billy Bob Thornton must now be established as one of the best of our day. Most of his work here seems to consist of looking broodish and sad while smoking silently on his filterless cigarette... but it is so much more nuanced than that. He conveys the knowing and the feeling of a man who is above it all, who can observe calmly over the most harrowing of situations. Nothing phases him, he just gently nods in acceptance of whatever just took place. The Coen brothers are famous for their dark humor and it is so viciously evident again in "The Man Who Wasn't There." They can make you laugh hysterically at the most serious of moments. Note the line when Birdy (Scarlet Johansen) says to him, "You're an enthusiast." Consider the scene when Ed wrecks the car. Both are very funny moments. The line "I'm an attorney, you're a barber, you don't know anything." made me laugh more that any line you care to choose from any of the recent 'teen comedies'. The Coens are masters of dark comic timing. The rest of the cast is stunning... not a wrong note struck by any of the other characters. The score is soft and delicate and thoughtful and touching. Oh, yeah, and the plot is unpredictable and intriguing in ways you haven't seen before. The final third of the film is some of the most inspired filmmaking of the past ten years. WHAT DOESN'T WORK - I will concede that the story drags a little during the middle third of the film and could probably have been trimmed here and there so we could arrive at the brilliant conclusion a tad faster. Some viewers, whose attention may already be waning from the lackadaisical but deliberate pace, will find it hard to avoid a critical and desperate look at their wristwatches. IF YOU LIKED... 1940's film noir, Fargo, Hard Eight, A Simple Plan... YOU MIGHT LOVE THIS FILM. |
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