Hey folks, Harry here... Saw this movie the same night I saw MEMENTO and GINGER SNAPS and due to gf time at the time, I unfortunately never got around to writing about this wonderful movie. Crispin Glover wa simply wonderful in this film, and when you back him up with talents like David Paymer, Glenne Headly, Seymour Cassel and yes... a perfectly cas Joe Piscopo (and I know how insane that sounds, but he is. PerfecT) Any film that features as a central character Crispin Glover as a neurotic... well if you know your Melville, you know about Bartleby, and this updating of the story is just wonderful. And the production design is just beautifully surreal. Wonderful. Anyway, you clicked to read Capone's comments about this film, and I'm just glad he wrote about it to trigger my memory, because this is a film that NEEDS to be seen. REALLY WONDERFUL. Here's that mobster...
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here with a question for you: where is it written that the life we must inspire to achieve has anything to do with finding a steady job that you may or may not like? And once the working day is done, who says we have to go home to a bed that seems to exist only as a place to spend between one work day and the next? These were questions posed many years ago by Herman Melville (you know, that “Moby Dick” guy) in his short story “Bartleby the Scrivener.” Now, after more than a year on the festival circuit, first-time director Jonathon Parker’s update, simply called BARTLEBY is making its way into theatres...slowly.
Sporting an eclectic but mostly impressive cast, BARTLEBY must have been fairly effortless to update. It’s the story of a man (David Paymer) who runs a record keeping office. All his employees do is verify forms and file them. It’s a thankless, meaningless job in a drab setting, but the worker bees (who include Glenne Headly, Joe Piscopo, and Maury Chaykin) get along with each other and don’t question what it is the importance of what they do too often. Thanks to a new contract with the city (represented here by mayor Dick Martin...DICK MARTIN??!! and his assistant played by Seymour Cassel), the workload becomes so great that Paymer is forced to hire a new employee. Headly places an “honest” ad in the local paper that advertisers for a low paying, unfulfilling job, and only one applicant show up for an interview. Freak of the this century and last Crispin Glover is Bartleby, a man of few words and even fewer actions. At first his efficiency is impressive but shortly after the boss has praised him for his great work, he decides he’d “prefer not” perform certain tasks. Whether you like or dislike this film, the words “I’d prefer not to do that” will haunt you for days after you see it.
From what little I know about Melville’s original story, Glover is perfect as the cadaverous-looking Bartleby. He’s not a slacker by any means. He comes to work in a nice suit, his mop top hair always looks rather well kept. It just so happens that after a certain point, he decides to drop out of society’s set pattern. He doesn’t want to leave his office (in fact, we find out he never leaves); he’d just like to stand and stare at a dusty old air vent. If this sounds a bit tedious, you may be right, but not for the reasons you might think. The allegory about dropping out is interesting and thought provoking most of the time. The film falls flat, however, at its unnecessary attempts at humor. Headly dumb blonde secretary is lame. Joe Piscopo...well, the name says it all. Paymer and Chaykin fare a bit better, since their performances embody bewilderment at Bartleby’s behavior. Glover is the prize here. His nearly wordless performance fills us with tension. We don’t know if ultimately he’ll turn violent or if he’ll remain in his perpetual standing catatonia. While Bartleby is doing almost nothing, Glover is doing quite a bit. The way he cocks his head and adopts a look that is part inquisitive, part loopy.
Those among you who relish your social solitude may really enjoy BARTLEBY. The rest may simply shrub and wonder why, and perhaps ultimately both reactions would satisfy the filmmakers. In a world where Robin Williams is lauded for playing odd balls in recent films, here’s the story of an odd ball of a different sort. There are probably thousands of Bartlebys all over the world whom we would never notice because they don’t want to be noticed. If nothing else, BARTLEBY will make you think. Good luck trying to sell that idea this summer.
Capone
