Word: coensã
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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This same virus remains on the loose in their latest, The Man Who Wasn’t There, an austere black-and-white pulp homage set in the late forties. The Coens??€™ incomparable gift for dialogue, still with them in O Brother, has largely deserted them here. This talent, long used to capture the bizarre natterings of hicks, drifters and executives, is mostly dismissed in the low-key The Man Who Wasn’t There as a vestigial skill...
...defects within The Man Who Wasn’t There that it is the first Coen film without a single perfect scene. Blood Simple has at least four; Fargo, more than a dozen. But those films took their energy more from the ideals of their characters than the Coens??€™ love of subtext. It’s telling that The Man Who Wasn’t There’s best scene, in which Riedenschneider constructs an initial defense, is chiefly powered by Riedenschneider’s instincts, and not solely by the Coens??€™ desire to prove...
...Coens??€™ apparent thematic piece de resistance centers around Ed’s not entirely willing separation from humanity. The film’s title is a gateway, but everything from Ed’s companionship-without-communication marriage to his job—mirrors notwithstanding, a customer doesn’t see a barber at work—means to firm up the point. The Coens make some uncharacteristically naked stabs at developing this idea—a young pianist remarks to Ed that she doesn’t mind errors at a recital if they go unobserved...
...Badalucco as Doris’ portly dolt of a brother and Polito as the comical entrepreneur. Thornton, on the other hand, is so dry that he makes Clint Eastwood looks like Richard Simmons, and McDormand is positively wasted as a dull pawn of Ed’s and the Coens??€™ plottings. Gandolfini, never better than when flaunting a corker of a malicious smile, lingers securely in the middle of the scale. Tony Shalhoub makes the film’s best showing as an improbably shrewd big-city lawyer with the terrific name of Freddy Riedenschneider. Shalhoub?...