Now Showing: The Man Who Wasn't There

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The Man Who Wasn’t There

by Cole Smithey

The Coen Brothers’ latest foray into the hand-and-glove significance of purpose and situation comes to light in a beautiful spectrum of grays. The Man Who Wasn’t There goes beyond its black and white film noir negotiations, inspired by movies like Double Indemnity, to present a meticulous story about a barber whose foremost quality is his diligently removed view of the people closest to him. Set in 1949 Santa Rosa, California, quiet guy barber Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton - Bandits) cuts hair with his talky brother-in-law until money, betrayal, and murder come between him and his accountant wife Doris (Francis McDormand - Almost Famous). Luscious, sanguine, and gritty, The Man Who Wasn’t There is another bold step in the Coen Brothers oeuvre of cinematic milestones.

Ed Crane’s tranquil voice-over narration invites the audience into the story’s remotely shadowy confines, as he waxes serene about his wife’s adultery shortly after the movie begins. “It’s a free country,” Ed says, after meeting businessman Creighton Tolliver (Jon Polito - Miller’s Crossing). Tolliver needs $10,000 to launch a new kind of laundry service - dry cleaning - and Ed is just the kind of mark to hit up. Ed, in turn, hatches a blackmail scheme to extract the seed money from his wife’s boss Dave Nirdlinger (James Gandolfini - True Romance), who happens to be playing hide-the-salami games with Doris.

The Coens have taken their plot cues from pulp writer James Cain (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice) and go on to create a lugubrious tone that cuts against the grain of the misjudged choices the characters make. Atmospheric elements like cigarette smoke and near-deco minimalist decor underscore hidden emotions of jealousy, anger, and remorse like a potent chorus of carnal exploiters. The movie is so texturally rich in its dynamic compositions of velvety blacks, endless gray tones, and bright white light that it makes a spry case for the use of black and white film in cinema again. The Coen Brothers’ perpetual Director of Photography Roger Deakins shoots his first black and white movie like it’s the only medium he’s ever known.

Billy Bob Thornton has said that he smoked so many cigarettes during filming that he gave up smoking for good. It’s an amusing footnote to the crisp portrayal that Thornton presents as an almost sleepwalking underdog trying to bridge his life to an elusive, better place. As the film’s title suggests, Ed is a man who wants to repress himself out of existence. It’s not so much that Ed doesn’t have an ego buried somewhere inside him, but that he refuses to take responsibility for it. Perhaps Ed’s fear of being caught wanting puts him into situations likely to impose accidents that will reveal, even to Ed, his own identity. In this way Ed is the ultimate voyeur. When Doris asks Ed to shave her legs as she bathes, you can feel Ed looking in on himself rather than at the effect he’s having on Doris. Ed is, alas, not a sexual person, but he knows that he should be. It’s in examples like these that the Coen Brothers use absence to reveal character. The thematic motif is uniquely juxtaposed with the negative relief of the movie’s insinuating black and white imagery.

As Ed’s life becomes increasingly troubled, he becomes attracted to Birdy Abundas (Scarlett Johansson - Ghost World), a teenage classical pianist. He takes her to see a virtuoso who will hopefully bestow his blessing on her as a prodigy. For the first time, Ed seems to be coming out of his shell and takes a risk on something and someone he righteously believes in. It’s a goofy dilettantish effort, but it’s Ed’s flawed, genuine instinct at work. Ed’s actions may not seem like much of a personality growth spurt, but they reveal his departure from an existential view of life Ed reflects on through the disposability of the hair that he cuts, and it gives Ed one of his few excursions outdoors. For such an internal character, that journey outside means more than all of the haircuts Ed’s ever given.