Barber Aims to Be a Dry Cleaner, Blackmail, Murder and Suicide Result

Frances McDormand, Billy Bob Thornton, "The Man Who Wasn't There" (2001).

 Why Did an Acclaimed

Coen Brothers Noir

Tank at the Box Office?

Contains Spoilers

By Paul Parcellin

‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’ (2001)

Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) is the kind of guy who can enter or leave a roomful of people without a single soul taking notice. He’s got a knack for blending into the background, barely leaving an impression with anyone who cares to chat or even glance in his direction. Potted plants make a bigger splash at a party than Ed.

On-screen, he utters few words, but in the film’s voice-over narration, which Ed delivers with a laconic edge of existential dread, he’s a blabbermouth, relatively speaking. His patter fills in the story’s blank spots as he offers wisps of gossip and terse assessments of the people in his life. In Billy Bob Thornton’s wonderfully restrained performance, Ed smokes and listens while others do the talking. 

It’s an intriguing if odd setup for a noir, for sure. Still, “The Man Who Wasn’t There” had a lot going for it, yet, audiences didn’t warm up to the film and the reasons for that are buried in the details. (More about that later).  

Ed cuts hair in his brother-in-law, Frank Raffo’s (Michael Badalucco) barbershop and barely pays attention as Frank yammers on incessantly about Canadian fur trappers, Russian A-bombs and the like. That Ed is chained to a motormouth of Frank’s intensity is a textbook example of what hell on earth might be like. It’s the core of the film’s darkly humorous undercurrent, where the line between comedy and tragedy is as thin as a straight razor’s honed edge.

Ed’s wife, Doris (Frances McDormand), has a drinking problem and is having an affair with her blowhard boss, Big Dave Brewster (James Gandolfini), who runs a local department store where Doris keeps the books. 

Ed and Doris live in a modest suburban bungalow in Santa Rosa, Calif., and in the voice-over he sums up his domestic life without a trace of enthusiasm: “The place was OK, I guess; it had an electric ice box, gas hearth and a garbage grinder built into the sink. You might say I had it made.”

Ed Crane plies his trade.

Ed is in many ways a puzzle: he doesn’t seem to mind Doris’s cavorting about town with a married man, in fact the Cranes host Big Dave and his missus, Ann (Katherine Borowitz), for a dinner party where it’s painfully obvious that Ed and Dave’s wife are cramping the adulterous pair’s style. For her part, Ann is as disconnected from her spouse as are Ed and Doris.

Despite his lethargy, a spark of ambition still smolders within Ed. He wants to do something with his life, but thus far the dark cloud hovering over his head keeps him from making a move. 

Jon Polito
as Creighton Tolliver

Things change one day when Creighton Tolliver (Jon Polito), an out of town entrepreneur who’s sniffing around for startup money wanders in for a trim and pitches his scheme to open a dry cleaning shop. Ed takes an interest in Tolliver’s proposition, which at first seems like a ray of hope in Ed’s gloomy world. But the actions he takes will soon get him into hot water. 

He successfully blackmails Big Dave with anonymous threats to expose Dave’s affair with Doris, then hands the loot over to Tolliver, buying his way into the dry cleaning business. This is the stuff of a James M. Cain or Raymond Chandler novel, dripping with dramatic possibilities, including marital infidelity, icy indifference to murder and larger than life characters with a yen for quick cash. 

Overall, the critical reception was positive. Joel Coen won the Best Director award at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. The BBC, the Guardian, the Austin Chronicle and the National Board of Review all named it one of the best films of the year. Roger Deakins was nominated for Best Cinematography at the Oscars. Yet upon its initial theatrical release, “The Man Who Wasn’t There” failed to catch on with the public. 

James Gandolfini, as Big Dave Brewster.

Despite its finely detailed channeling of 1940s noir, the film also includes some oddball elements. Joel and Ethan Coen, who wrote produced and directed the film, were inspired by a grab bag of pop culture material: 1940s-‘50s films noirs, ’50s science fiction films with flying saucers and body snatchers and oddities such as personal hygiene and driver’s education films — perhaps noir traditionalists were put off by the mixing of genres.

Tony Shalhoub
as Freddie Riedenschneider

The idea for the barbershop setting evolved, in the Coens’ typically idiosyncratic manner, from a piece of set dressing used in their film “The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994), a 1950s poster of men’s hairstyles, which is reflected in a witty montage of haircuts seen in the opening minutes.

But the film’s highest trump card is its authentically 1940s atmosphere, due in large part to Deakins’ classic noir lighting techniques, bathing the frame in inky black shadows while paying homage to iconic noir images, including: 

• “Phantom Lady” (1944): Ella Raines and Alan Curtis appear in near silhouette, a flood of sunlight to their backs visually isolates them in an otherworldly domain. Similarly, in “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” Atty. Freddie Riedenschneider (Tony Shalhoub) is bathed in a beam of light filtering down through a skylight as he confers with Doris and Ed.
• “Scarlet Street” (1945): Milquetoast Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) gives Kitty March (Joan Bennett) a pedicure, much the way that Ed shaves Doris’s legs as she luxuriates in the bathtub. Both shots emphasize that the men are subservient to conniving women. 
•  “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946): Femme fatale Cora Smith (Lana Turner) and Frank Chambers (John Garfield), have a car wreck on a quiet country road, much like the crash that occurs near the end of “The Man Who Wasn’t There.”

Scarlett Johansson as Birdy, and Billy Bob Thornton as Ed Crane.

As is the case with  Frank Chambers in “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” Ed Crane’s life takes a significant turn when a female enters the picture. By chance, he meets Birdy Abundas (Scarlett Johansson), a high school student who plays Beethoven piano sonatas. On a whim, he decides to take her under his wing and help her establish a career as a concert pianist — whether she wants it or not. After much failure, he’s determined to have a success, but it’s a mentorship he’s uniquely unqualified to manage. Like a typically pushy stage dad pressuring a kid to step into the spotlight he means to do good. But down deep he wants the validation of public acclaim as well as the vicarious thrill of celebrity status. His delusional expectations, no doubt, include piles of money that his protege will rake in. 

They travel together to San Francisco where Birdy is to audition for a big shot piano instructor, which turns out to be a bust. As they return home, a confused Birdie, guilty over her failed audition, tries to give Ed some unwanted sexual gratification as he’s negotiating the turns of a country road, causing the car to wreck. The accident, almost a carbon copy of the one in “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” injures them both and dooms Ed.

Roger Deakins' classic noir lighting.

It isn’t until the film’s end, after two murders and a suicide, we begin to get the picture: Ed’s gloomy voice-over narration is a first-person article he’s writing for a men’s magazine as he marks time in a death row prison cell. He’s supposed to tell the readers how it feels to be awaiting execution. But it turns out they picked the wrong writer for the assignment. Ed delivers the bare facts only. He’d probably prefer to let someone else fuss over the tough stuff, like feelings. That’s not his strong suit. 

Audiences may have been put off by Ed's opaque motivations, many of which are open to speculation. We are left to wonder what dramatic turn in Ed’s life caused him to recede into the background and become a spectator, viewing the events of his life from a distance like a shy apparition, taking it all in and sending out little. The answer is likely buried so deeply that Ed himself doesn’t know, and that’s the way it will stay for eternity. 

Is "The Man Who Wasn't There" a film noir homage or is it satire? It's both, because you couldn't create such a smartly detailed satire without having an abiding love and admiration for the original material on which it is based. But you can take it either way. As Ed might say, it doesn't matter much to me.

Crime in the New Wild West

A lot of people say that "No Country for Old Men" is Joel and Ethan Coen's best film so far. I'd find that a difficult choice to make. But I'll say that "No Country" is one of my favorites.

Javier Bardem has gotten all the kudos for his portrayal of devil incarnate Anton Chigurh -- he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. But people talk less about Josh Brolin's turn as Llewelyn Moss, the brush hunter who one strange day on the range find's he's no longer the hunter, but the hunted.

My favorite is Tommy Lee Jones (above, right), whose Sheriff Ed Tom Bell couldn't be more natural and less affected. He's an old-timer who admires the old guy sheriffs. Particularly the ones like him who never carry a gun.

Jones is a native of West Texas, where the story is set, and his performance ranks above all others in that film, and that's no minor compliment. He doesn't seem to act, he merely IS Sheriff Ed Tom Bell.

Brolin is wonderful as Moss, the backwoodsman who stumbles upon the remnants of a drug deal gone bad. The story takes place in 1980, just when the U.S.-Mexico drug war is starting to become exceedingly violent. The movie is also appropriately bloody. In the end the body count is as big as the West Texas sky.

Scenes of graphic carnage are offset with black humor. You can chuckle at a setup that leads to mayhem, then gasp at the blood-letting that follows. As is usual with the Coens, you laugh and then wonder why you just laughed.

The director brothers get high marks on their visual storytelling skills in most of their films, and this one hits a high water mark. They let those big, barren Texas landscapes tell the story. There's just enough information in each scene to move the story along. You have to watch closely to keep up.

Yet this tale couldn't be simpler -- it's a cat and mouse chase that rises way above typical brainless "action" movies. There's real character development setting NCFOM apart from 99 percent of the crap out there.

Overall, it's sort of a modern day cowboy, crime, action, comedy -- or something like that. Stark as a lone cactus in the desert. And just as dry as the landscape there.

Coens Crime-Comedy Coming To Small Screens

I'm looking forward to Joel and Ethan Coen's hour-long detective comedy, "HarveKarbo," which will be appearing on Fox TV ... soon, I hope.

The show follows surly private detective Harve Karbo as he delves into the seedy side of Hollywood high society and hangs out with his ne'er-do-well pals in El Segundo, Calif.

"HarveKarbo" just may be some must-see TV for fans of the Coen's twisted take on crime. And that means it will include their twisted take on crime films, because they're such dedicated movie geeks, and they enjoy commenting on the vintage stuff. Think of "Miller's Crossing," "Fargo" and "The Big Lebowski" -- there are some really promising possibilities.

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It's a single-camera project the Coens are executive producing and creating with "Cedar Rapids" writer Phil Johnston, who's handling writing duties for the project.

Son of a Satire: 'Chain Gang' Rattles On

I n 1932's "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang," Paul Muni stars in the real-life story of a poor schlump who gets roped into years of hard prison labor for no reason at all.

"Chain Gang" is one of the "socially conscious" movies of that time. It was meant to publicize the brutal slave-labor incarceration system in the South.

In 1941, director Preston Sturges did "Sullivan's Travels," which was, in part, a satire of "Chain Gang." In "Sullivan's Travels," Joel McCrea plays a Hollywood movie director who wants to make a socially conscious film, titled "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

He goes on the road to get in touch with "real" people, and gets dragged onto a Southern chain gang. Sturges seems to ask, why make movies that just tell people how bad life is? We all need a laugh instead.

And then in 2000 Joel and Ethan Coen directed a little film called, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

"O Brother" was sort of a satire of "Sullivan's Travels," sort of a witty take on Homer's "The Odyssey."

The Coens' film ended up saying ... hmmmm, still not quite sure what it was saying. But it has a great musical soundtrack of early country, gospel and blues.

So, in essence, we have a parody of a satire of a socially responsible film. Quite an achievement.