Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
One of my new friends from FantAsia has gotten in touch with a peek at he new Coen Bros. film, the same one I'll be reviewing later today. Good to see you're okay, Fozzie, and I'm happy to hear that you and yours were spared any more tragedy than needed last Tuesday. I'm also glad you saw THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE and took the time to write. Check this out...
I love the Coen Brothers. Love, love, love them. I’ve loved every single film they’ve ever made. Not a single film in the bunch I didn’t enjoy and that includes THE HUDSUCKER PROXY. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve had the best track record of pretty much any filmmakers working now outside of maybe David Cronenberg. No losers in their filmography, no sir. But now comes their first disappointment. The first Coen Brothers film I was not enthusiastic about.
This is not to say that THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE is a bad film, because it isn’t at all. Coen fans will still find something to like in the film. There are shots and sequences that are right up there with their other work, great dialogue (as usual), top-flight performances and stunning Roger Deakins cinematography that seems a sure bet to win the Oscar this year. But something is missing, as well. People have often accused the Coens of making films that were done at the expense of their characters and I’ve never bought that. I’ve always felt that even in the most cynical of their pictures (MILLER’S CROSSING, BLOOD SIMPLE, BARTON FINK) they were able to supply characters worth having some degree of empathy about.
This is not to say that in the case of THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE that the Coens don’t want us to care for their lead character. Billy Bob Thorton’s Ed Crane is a man the Coens obviously want us to feel something for. He’s stuck in a loveless marriage, trapped in a job that few would want and has an existence no one would envy. During the course of the film, when opportunity presents itself, he takes his one chance and, let’s just say it backfires on him and things go from bad to worse. Thorton plays Crane perfectly, to the extent that you can’t imagine another actor playing the role, so the problem’s not him. What’s wrong, what’s off-base here is that I never once really found myself becoming absorbed in what happens to him. Not unlike William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard character in FARGO, he’s not an evil or malicious man; he just wants his piece of the pie. But in his very ordinary nature he doesn’t quite see things through and they lead to his downfall. The difference here is that Lundegaard was all too human, whereas Crane really is THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE. He’s a cipher, the kind of person you sort of know but don’t really know and have no real desire to know and that’s what damages the picture. Crane just is, nothing more. That’s supposed to be the point, but there’s very little about Crane himself that makes his story that involving. So with that dramatic distance, it just becomes a film about itself, a film about films like this.
Now, having said all that, I still say that for those who love the Coens that there is still much to be admired, due mainly to the technical and stylistic brilliance that the Coens bring to all their films is still very much on display here. The look of this picture will be burned onto your movie going memory for a long time to come. The Coens use Black and White cinematography better than any filmmaker since David Lynch did THE ELEPHANT MAN. Roger Deakins will be taking many a bow for this film and rightly so. It’s his best work so far. But when you’re talking about a Coen Brothers film and you spend all your time just thinking about the cinematography, you know something’s off. One could say they took a risk with THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE and the risk didn’t pay off like they’d hoped. A risk is always appreciated, but without results you can’t really admire it like you should. Hopefully, they’ll learn something from it here.
Fozzie Bear
