THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE

By: Michael Tunison
Date: Saturday, November 03, 2001

Love their films or loathe them, it's frightening to think how much more generic the American cinematic landscape of the last decade and a half would have been without Joel and Ethan Coen, the dark-witted jesters behind such sharp stabs in the eye of conventional movie storytelling as RAISING ARIZONA, BARTON FINK, FARGO and THE BIG LEBOWSKI.

So-called "independent" film goes in and out of fashion, sometimes bagging an Oscar or two, but the Coens (Joel writes and directs, Ethan writes and produces) have stayed on their own divergent road, as disconnected from the concerns of the commercial Hollywood machine as it's possible to be with movie stars on the order of Jeff Bridges and George Clooney occasionally dropping by to join in the fun. The loopy alternate universe the brothers' imaginations inhabit could not be any more distinct from standard cineplex fare if they issued magic slippers to their cast and crew and instructed them to click their heels together three times on the first day of production.

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE is about being disconnected from the mainstream, but it's about lots of other things as well cutting hair, lawyers, aliens, having sex and not having sex. Yet another idiosyncratic variation of the ball-of-string noir caper format the Coens have been obsessed with since their 1984 debut BLOOD SIMPLE, it follows a chillingly aloof barber (Billy Bob Thornton) as he plots revenge against his cheating wife (Frances McDormand) amidst the cheerful optimism of a 1950s small town.

A protagonist almost as

offbeat as his grunting head-case from SLING BLADE, Thornton's Ed seems to view the world and everyone in it from 1,000 miles away. He and McDormand's Doris have settled into a remote but not completely unaffectionate relationship that the Coens establish with a cutting sliver of backstory, conveyed through Thornton's monotone voiceover: The two married just a couple of weeks after meeting each other, we're told, and when Ed asked if they shouldn't get to know each other better first, Doris replied, "Why, does it get better?"

While Ed is essentially a ghost, floating through life making almost no connection to those around him, the equally hard and cynical Doris is still alive enough to want more. Some of what she wants can be provided by Big Dave (James Gandolfini from TV's THE SOPRANOS), the gregarious former G.I. who runs the department store where she works. Ed is perceptive enough to realize something is going on between the two, but he's inclined to let sleeping dogs lie until Opportunity presents itself in the form of a shady entrepreneur (Adam Alexi-Malle) looking for someone to invest in a newfangled laundry process called "dry cleaning." Figuring this may be what he needs to snap out of his funk, Ed decides to secretly blackmail Big Dave for the start-up cash he needs to get into the deal.

The Coens play out the ensuing complications with their usual expertise, making things worse and worse for their antihero as a little late in the game - he begins to care what happens to at least a couple of the people around him. The tragic results are viewed with the kind of detached, stick-poking glee that has led some critics to regard the brothers' films as hollow exercises in style, lacking any real human emotion, but in this particular case detachment is the whole point, isn't it? Besides, how could characters such as Ed, his chatterbox barber brother-in-law (Michael Badalucco from TV's THE PRACTICE) and the hilariously pompous big-city attorney (THIRTEEN GHOSTS' Tony Shalhoub) they hire when things really hit the fan be so funny if they didn't tap into something deeper than the brothers' trademark bottomless irony?

As a piece of filmmaking art THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE can be downright stunning. Thornton, McDormand (in her first picture for husband Joel Coen since her Oscar-winning turn in Fargo) and Gandolfini head a perfect cast, while Roger Deakins' glowing black-and-white cinematography captures the film's slightly off-kilter world with just the right hints of existential terror lurking in the shadows. Only what is for the Coens a disappointingly straightforward conclusion weakens this otherwise deeply amusing view of life's essential hopelessness.

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE

Grade: A-

Reviewed Format: Theatrical Release

Rated: R

Stars: Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, James Gandolfini, Scarlett Johansson, Tony Shalhoub

Writers: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Director: Joel Coen

Distributor: USA Films