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DVD RERIEW
oooooo The Man Who Wasn't There oooooo
Shanghai Star. 2004-05-27
Director: Joel Coen
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, James Gandolfini, Jon
Polito, Scarlett Johansson, Richard Jenkins
If this offering from the Coen brothers has a spiritual father it's Billy Wilder's
perfect film noir, "Double Indemnity" from 1944. Wilder's movie had a script
by Raymond Chandler based on a book by James M. Cain and with a team
like that, the film could not miss. It remains a classic 60 years down the track.
Joel Coen directed, and with his brother Ethan, wrote "The Man Who Wasn't
There" and it too could still be around in 60 years time. It's set in 1949 and is
certainly "noir" in intent even if the colour on screen looks silver-grey. Like
"Double Indemnity" it's set in California in the town of Santa Rosa, the setting
also for Alfred Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943), the film that was
Hitchcock's favourite out of all his movies.
The counterpart in "The Man Who Wasn't There" to Walter Neff - the doomed
character played by Fred McMurray in "Double Indemnity"- is Ed Crane (Billy
Bob Thornton). Ed works the second chair in brother-in-law Frank's (Michael
Badalucco) barber shop. Frank is endlessly talkative but Ed is a case of:
"Me? I don't talk much." He truly is "The Man Who Wasn't There" and maybe
the man who never was anywhere. Or maybe the Coen brothers are
suggesting that he is the existential relative of Camus's "Outsider", a man
eternally disconnected from what he sees as the absurdities of life.
Ed is married to Doris (Frances McDormand, aka Mrs Joel Coen) and they
live in a shadowed bungalow outside town. Doris does the books for Big
Dave Brewster (James Gandolfini) who runs Santa Rosa's only department
store owned by his wife's family.
Ed suspects Doris and Big Dave are having an affair but he is so alienated
from life, so glum and self-effacing, that he has decided to accept her
adultery quietly. Indeed, he seems to take masochistic delight in his gloom as
he keeps silent watch over his life - or rather his existence - and his
exhausted, passionless marriage.
Another echo of 1940s movie-making is Ed's chain-smoking - he smashes
Humphrey Bogart's record for the most cigarettes smoked on screen.
In an early scene, as Big Dave brags about his war service, Doris reveals
that the fallen arches of Ed's feet kept him out of World War II and the state
of Ed's feet are instantly a metaphor for the general lack of action he is
seeing in his bed and in his life.
At this point he meets Creighton Tolliver (Jon Polito, another member of the
Coen brothers' stock company) who is looking for a partner willing to invest in
a brand-new 1940s business opportunity - dry cleaning. Ed should know
better than to trust him especially as Creighton turns out to wearing an
enormous "rug" when he comes in to have Ed trim his almost non-existent
hair.
Ed decides to blackmail Big Dave anonymously to get the US$10,000 he
needs to become a partner in Creighton's dry cleaning operation and it's all
downhill from there. However, as things, Coen-like, begin to spiral out of
control and disaster becomes inevitable, Ed starts to come to life. He
becomes obsessed with helping a teenage girl, Birdy (Scarlett Johansson),
the daughter of a friend Walter Abundas (the excellent Richard Jenkins from
"Six Feet Under") who plays a perpetually half-tanked small-town probate
lawyer.
Birdy, despite Ed's hopes for her, is not destined for a career as a concert
pianist and her competent but lifeless playing of Beethoven's "Pathetique"
Piano Sonata throughout the film is another metaphor for Ed's existence.
The final unravelling of the plot involves some weird twists and includes
people being executed for murders they did not commit or which they
committed in self defence while getting away with the ones they did commit.
Embedded in the plot are various references to that long-ago time of post-war
America when national paranoia was rising. However, in the hands of the
Coen brothers these references, such as the avalanche of reports of
sightings of flying saucers and other UFOs, evoke not nostalgia but
melancholy and disquiet.
The film-makers have said that they like the bizarre or "Kafka-esque"
moments that turn up in their movies (as in life) and "The Man Who Wasn't
There" sure has its fair share of them. The film also continues their endless
satire on the American system of justice, the police force and the courts.
The Coens seem to have included a warning to audiences (and critics?) not
to try to read too much into their film. At one point, Freddy Riedenschneider
(Tony Shalhoub), the lawyer appearing first for Doris and later Ed, tries to
explain to a jury Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: "The more you look, the
less you know."
Critics have made the usual complaints about "The Man Who Wasn't There"
that are made of Coen brothers' movies in general - they're too self-regarding
and a triumph of style over substance. Well, they probably would have said
the same thing for the same reasons about Billy Wilder, Raymond Chandler
and "Double Indemnity" - and been just as wrong.
Barry Porter
oooooo Ripley's Game oooooo
Director: Liliani Cavani
Starring: Chiara Caselli, Lena Headey, John Malkovich, Douglas Scott, Ray
Winstone
Anthony Minghela's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999), this is in fact an entirely
stand-alone movie, based like its predecessor on a novel by Patricia
Highsmith, concerned with the exploits of a stylish villain.
Everything one needs to know about Tom Ripley (Malkovich) - his sociallypolished erudition, aestheticism and casual ruthlessness - is communicated
in the opening scenes, indeed, the peculiar formlessness of the film makes
any detailed narrative information more or less redundant.
Despite the consistently competent performances of the supporting cast,
everything depends on Malkovich. In fact, it is only a mild exaggeration to say
that he either makes or destroys every movie he participates in. His
embarrassing Shakespearean Kurtz wrecked Nicholas Roeg's 1994 "Heart of
Darkness", while his eccentric but menacingly captivating "Teddy KGB" in
John Dahl's 1998 "Rounders" provided the single most unforgettable
ingredient of the movie.
In this case Malkovich's languidly overwrought acting pays off well, although
this is mostly because the directionless plot is sucked into his role like
random cosmic matter into a rotating black hole. Since the meaningless
string of episodes that constitute the storyline reduce even the most
extravagant acts of raw violence or sexual provocation to inconsequential
noise, all that remains is attitude, without development, connection, or
psychological depth.
Fortunately, Malkovich finds himself in his element, transforming what might
have been a disjointed concatenation of missed opportunities and
incongruous directorial ambitions into a celebration of decadent amorality,
nebulously sinister motivation and criminal chic.
Perhaps inevitable, there is more than a touch of Hannibal Lecter to
Malkovich's Tom Ripley, mixing an almost parodic sophistication with a
psychopathic aptitude for violence, pervaded throughout by a sense of
heroically world-weary "higher" purpose inherited from European
romanticism.
Balanced precariously on the brink of cinematic catastrophe, "Ripley's Game"
ultimately succeeds as entertainment by condensing its meaninglessness
into Malkovich's performance, where sheer thespian bravura alchemically
transubstantiates it into style.
Nick Land
Copyright by Shanghai Star.