I went to see 'The Man Who Wasn't There' yesterday, another great movie by the Coen Brothers. I find it extraordinary that they can be so prolific and yet keep changing styles and settings with such success. This movie isn't a knockabout comedy like 'Raising Arizona' or 'O Brother Where Art Thou?', it's humour is very deadpan and overall it's deeply melancholic.
It reminded me of that Bob Dylan song that goes "People dont live or die/ People just float". I think all the complaints about boredom, slow pace, and lack of vitality are completely off the mark. The Coens obviously were making a point about spiritually drained people who let themselves float through life until they make fatal decisions. Comparisons with Albert Camus 'The Stranger' have been cropping up in a lot of the reviews. Ed Krane, The Barber (Billy Bob Thornton) is performing a perfectly stupid task that never ceases to repeat itself, without gathering the slightest meaning. He even, in his blank way, waxes philosophical, :"I want...I wanna put hair with...dirt, regular house dirt." "Ed, what the heck are ya talkin' about?" "I...Skip it." The movie gets you inside the head of a guy for whom the simplest, everyday stuff is ceasing to make sense.
Billy Bob's understated acting is so deceptively simple. He looks great and I have to say that this is the most gorgeous looking film I've seen in a long time. Cinematographer Roger Deakins, who filmed in color and processed into richly textured, silvery black and white, gives the film a lustrous tone and a often ghostly, dreamlike feel.
Overall, a really striking, memorable movie.