Review of The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) by Julie — 23 Jul 2008

There isn't much noise to the film, there's not a lot of hip chatter, and not much in the way of cool cunning. Its a deliberate abscence from the Coen brothers paradigm. The characters are all simple creatures, manipulated like puppets into tragedy by the cool hands of the coen brothers.

Billy Bob Thornton plays a haunted simpleton, a man constantly pushed and pulled in different directions, a man deprived of will and motivation, a man so apathetic to life that his motivations are invisible even to himself.

He speaks in stunted, laymen sentences in a manner so deliberately slow and tortoise-like that they border on philosophical. He is limited in every capacity. He tries, but can't say anything of emotional resonancy, and the moment he tries to take control of his life is the moment his life starts unraveling in tragedy.

Deliberately depriving the film of juicy quips and engaging villains, the filmmakers rely on cunning cinematography, and clever placement of light and shadow to conjure a stylish film, the casualty being that the movie is miles away from empathy or understanding of actual characters.

The entertainment, rather moving from inside (the film) to outside (the viewer) (by way of loving character development and pathos) comes from the outside to the inside. The viewer is encouraged to laugh from his seat of superiority at the messes the simpletons make.

The movie is for elites, so the entertainment value is for those who breathe the rarified art film air. But I did enjoy it, which probably says more about my ego as a movie enthusiast than it does about how good the movie actually is.

There is still a lot of subtly to it. Its as if the directors deliberately deprived themselves of their standard tools in order to see just how good they are with the rest of their moviemaking arsenal.

The answer is quite good.