The Man Who Wasn't There

Some things are easier said then done, like "bring back the golden ae cinema" think of the failed attempt of Clooney and Soderbergh to do their interperetation of "The Third Man" it was named "The Good German" and tanked like a torpedoed german submarine in WW2, but the Coens know the craft of film noir, and that's what made "The Man Who Wasn't there" a success.

Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) is a barber in Santa Rosa, California in the fifties, he has a quiet stable life with his wife Doris (Frances Mc Dormand) and works at his in laws barbershop, one day an "entrepreneur" named Creighton Tolliver (Jon Polito) asks him to become his business partner in dry cleaning, Ed is supposed to make it big, and lack of funds leads him to blackmail his wife's boss Big Dave (James Gandolfine).

Following that greedy move, everything around Ed falls into pieces while he is the quiet observer he is "just the barber", this basic blackmail will make him cross the paths of a ruthless lawyer (Tony Shalhoub) a young virtuousou pianist (Scarlett Johansson), in the whole mood of the USSR atomic bomb, the Rosewell UFO's, and all the Pulp culture in the Fifties America.

That's a movie the new generation of filmmakers can present to HitchCock, or Welles and be proud, it has all the elements of noir used in a masterful way, with Ed Crane as a fabulous anti-hero, he is in the midst of the Horatio Alger thing, he wants to make it big, that's what America is supposed to be about, but he is stuck in his air conditioned hell, and when he tries to leave his comfort zone, destiny hits him with it's huge shovel on the head.

Straightforward cinematography from back in the day by Roger Deakins plays a big part in the success of this movie, and a minimalist score by Carter Burwell, it's insane how the Coens can be brilliant, it left me spontaneously clapping while the end credits were rolling, and indeed a special mention to the acting of BBT who channels one of the quietest anti-heroes in the coen's universe since Byrne in Miller's Crossing.

Ed lives his life as an UFO fitting nowhere, and the conens are at their best when they film misfits, this is one of their best works, and it won a big award at Cannes that year, indeed they want to win a handful of oscars years later, but that's another story for another review.