The Man Who Wasn't There
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| The Man Who Wasn't There | |
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| Directed by | Joel Coen |
| Produced by | Ethan Coen |
| Written by | Joel Coen Ethan Coen |
| Starring | Billy Bob Thornton Frances McDormand James Gandolfini Tony Shalhoub Scarlett Johansson Jon Polito Michael Badalucco |
| Distributed by | USA Films Working Title Films Good Machine (Sales) Entertainment Film Distributors (UK) |
| Release date(s) | 2001 |
| Running time | 118 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20,000,000 (estimated) |
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The Man Who Wasn't There is a 2001 neo-noir film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Billy Bob Thornton stars in the title role. Also featured are James Gandolfini, Tony Shalhoub, Scarlett Johansson, and Coen regulars Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, and Jon Polito.
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[edit] Analysis
The film was inspired by a poster that the Coen brothers saw while filming The Hudsucker Proxy; the poster showed various haircuts from the 1940s. The story takes place in 1949 and, Joel Coen admits, is "heavily influenced by" the work of James M. Cain, a writer best known for the novels Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Mildred Pierce.
There is also a resemblance in the basic plot, as well as certain details, to Albert Camus' existential novel L'Étranger (published in Britain as The Outsider, and in the United States as The Stranger).[citation needed]
The cinematography practised by Roger Deakins is straightforward and traditional. Most shots are made with the camera at eye level, with normal lensing and a long depth of field. The lighting is textbook, with the usual sort of quarter-light setup. The cinematography, combined with the consistent, accurate use of 1950s props and sets, could make even a careful viewer think the film was made 50 years ago. When Ed appears onscreen, he is almost always shown smoking an unfiltered cigarette, another detail true to the era in which the film is set. The Man Who Wasn't There was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 2001.
The film contains several mentions of UFOs throughout, in dreams and in conversation, as well as in various props, including an ashtray.
Though a Black and White film, The Man Who Wasn't There was shot in colour and transferred to black and white. Some prints were accidentally released with the first couple of reels in colour as reported in Roger Ebert's Movie Answer Man column.[1][2]
[edit] Plot
Set in and around Santa Rosa, California in 1949, Ed Crane is a suburban barber, married to Doris, a bookkeeper with a drinking problem. Ed carries little emotion and typically reacts with no more than a nod, even when witnessing outlandish events. His coworker and brother-in-law Frank owns the barbershop, and talks incessantly. Doris works at Nirdlinger's, a local department store. Ed meets Creighton Tolliver, a businessman looking for investors in a new technology called dry cleaning. After rebuffing a pass, Ed decides he wants to invest. Ed anonymously blackmails his wife's boss and lover "Big Dave" Brewster for the $10,000 needed to invest. Big Dave delivers the money without seeing Ed make the pick-up.
Ed delivers the money to Tolliver, who subsequently disappears, leaving Ed to believe that he has been scammed. Big Dave calls Ed, asking him to meet at Nirdlinger's. Tolliver had also approached Big Dave, asking him for $10,000. Thinking it too much of a coincidence that he was asked for the same sum of money he was blackmailed for, Brewster tracked the man down and beat a confession out of him. Enraged that he approached Ed for consolation about being blackmailed, and that Ed told him to pay the money, Brewster attacks Ed and begins to strangle him. Ed stabs him in the neck with a cigar cutter and Brewster dies. Ed goes home, where his wife is still unconscious from her alcoholic binge at the wedding they had attended that day. Once evidence of Doris' affair with Big Dave is uncovered, and since she can't account for her activities (she was passed out drunk) at the time of the murder, she becomes the prime suspect. With the local lawyers deemed insufficient for such an important case, Ed is persuaded to hire Freddy Riedenschneider, an expensive defense attorney from Sacramento who arrives and takes up residence in the most costly hotel in town.
Ed insists that he killed Brewster, but Riedenschneider thinks Ed is simply covering for his wife and that the story would never stand up in court since their only alibi is each other. He works out an elaborate plan for Doris's defense, involving the uncertainty principle and various other tangents, all bizarre if not ingenious. On the day the trial is to start, Doris is late, and so is the judge. When the judge arrives, he calls the counsel to the bench and dismisses the case. Doris has committed suicide. Riedenschneider leaves with all of Ed's life savings.
Ed visits Birdy Abundas, a friend's teenage daughter. The girl is a pianist; Ed wants to pay for her to have lessons. Driving her back from an unsuccessful attempt to impress a piano teacher, the girl makes a pass at Ed and is rather insistent about it, unzipping his pants. Ed tries to stop her; the car swerves across the road to avoid hitting an oncoming car. When Ed awakens in a hospital bed, he is being told he's under arrest, and guesses that Birdy must have died in the crash; the police and doctor tell him the girl has a broken clavicle but is otherwise well. A young boy swimming in a lake discovered a car with a man inside: the "pansy." Brewster didn't simply beat a confession out of him; he killed him. In his briefcase is the contract Ed signed; the police now believe that Ed coerced his wife into embezzling the money from Nirdlinger's to use in the investment, and that Ed is the person who killed the "pansy."
Ed is arraigned for the murder and mortgages his house to re-hire Riedenschneider. His opening statement to the jury is interrupted when Ed's brother-in-law Frank attacks Ed; a mistrial is declared. With no money and nothing left to mortgage, Ed is given the inadequate local lawyer (whom Riedenschneider had showed such scorn for, whom he had said was good at "holding his hand on [his clients'] shoulders as they were thrown on the mercy of the court"). This lawyer does in fact hold his hand on Ed's shoulder, and Ed is thrown on the mercy of the court—painted as a sociopath, remorseless, dangerous. He's sentenced to death. Ed writes his story out from his cell on death row, to sell to a tabloid magazine that pays him by the word. While waiting on death row, he wakes to find all the doors unlocked, and an alien ship outside. He merely nods at this, before returning inside. It is never made clear whether this scene was a dream or not. At the end of the film he is walked to the electric chair and strapped in, (another departure from history, since California used the gas chamber, not the electric chair) where he sits thinking about meeting his wife and possibly having the words to explain his thoughts to her, but mainly thinking about how he is unhappy about some of the consequences of his actions, but not unhappy that he took action and spiced up his life.
[edit] Cast
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[edit] Soundtrack
| The Man Who Wasn't There | |||||
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| Soundtrack by Carter Burwell and various artists | |||||
| Released | October 30, 2001 | ||||
| Recorded | 2001 | ||||
| Genre | Film score classical |
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| Length | 45:43 | ||||
| Label | Decca | ||||
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The score to The Man Who Wasn't There consists of classical music, mainly piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven, interspersed with cues composed by Carter Burwell. The film is the ninth on which Burwell has collaborated with the Coen Brothers.
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Compositions by Carter Burwell except where otherwise noted.
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[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Coenesque: The Films of the Coen Brothers
- You Know, For Kids! The Man Who Wasn't There page
- The Man Who Wasn't There at the Internet Movie Database
- The Man Who Wasn't There at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Man Who Wasn't There at Box Office Mojo
- The Man Who Wasn't There Draft Script
- The Man Who Wasn't There Film Review
- Gods of Filmmaking review of The Man Who Wasn't There
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