If I dim the
lights a little more I'm sure Angelina will fancy me
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|
Think you've
got troubles? They're nothing compared to Ed Crane and his aren't
going to get any better.
Nigel
Bell
Last year the
Coen brothers delivered one of the best movies of the year with
the brilliantly filmed, acted, comic O
Brother Where Art Thou?
This year they've
delivered on of the best films of 2001 with the brilliantly filmed,
acted but deeply dark The Man Who Wasn't There.
Not so much
a homage, but it does borrow greatly from those film noir movies
of the 40s.
It's stunningly
shot in black and white (it's set in 1949). The cinematography is
superb - stark scenes showing the emptiness and loneliness of man
in, of all places, a barbers shop.
This film starts
on a downer and never gets any higher. For all that, if you can
stand the fact that there's no light at the end of the tunnel, it's
a (very) slow burning masterpiece.
 |
| You played
it for her, you can play it for me |
Billy Bob Thornton
(Mr Angelina "Tomb Raider" Jolie) plays Ed Crane, a hairdresser
who's long lost the lust for life.
In the monochrome
footage Billy Bob looks more like Boris Karloff. He smokes like
a chimney, as do most of the other cast member, so if you've picked
now as the time to give up the weed you'd better steer clear of
this.
Crane discovers
his wife is having an affair with her boss. He decides to blackmail
him to earn the $10,000 needed to invest in the new fangled Dry
Cleaning business.
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| Do you
take this...oh, sorry, you're in court |
At this point,
Crane's life begins to go off the rails. His wife's lover is murdered
and Mrs Crane (McDormund) is charged even though she's innocent.
It's downhill
from here; you won't believe how far a man can fall from a boring
9 - 5 existence.
In between all
the gloom the Coen's make sure their trademark sequences remain
intact. There's a bizarre scene where a man rides a giant pig called
Garibaldi.
Towards the
end comes the classic Coen imagery - hubcaps representing flying
saucers.
There are more
red herrings than you'd find in a fish pie and the characters are
memorable. Crane says more in his pauses than he could with a dozen
words while Ann Nirdlinger (Katherine Borowitz) looks like the wicked
witch from the Wizard of Oz as she talks of UFO conspiracies.
This is a movie
treat as opposed to an uplifting Hollywood film like this week's
other new release Legally
Blonde. Both deserve to be seen by a wide audience.
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