The Man Who Wasn't There

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

The Coen brothers made this 2001 movie in the tradition of other film noir movies. It is set in 1949 to point to a time when Hollywood produced stories in this genre. It contains certain elements that fit these types of stories, including a seedy view of humanity with people caught in a web of deceit and criminal activity, filmed in atmospheric black and white. But this motion picture also contains elements of existential philosophy which allows it to reflect on the human predicament.

The main character is Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton). As he readily admits, he is “the barber,” (which would have been another good title for this film). The first shot in the movie is that of a barber pole, spinning its red and white stripes repeatedly, with no final purpose achieved.  In a way, that Sisyphus activity mirrors the lives of the characters. In existential philosophy, a person is in “bad faith” if he or she defines oneself as something external, because it denies the subjective, self-reflecting complexity of the human individual. In the film, for the most part, people don’t remember Ed’s name. If they remember him at all they only know him as “the barber.” That is why to others, as an individual, he is the man who wasn’t there.

The storytelling irony here is that Ed hardly ever speaks outwardly, but the whole tale is told by him, solely from his point of view, in a voice-over (we later find out that a magazine paid him to tell his story), which actually reveals through his observations that he is more than just his job. But his lack of engagement with others, his lack of surface emotion, makes him look like a sleepwalker, which emphasizes Ed’s alienation, his outsider status in society. Since we are restricted to identify with Ed through his narration, the audience, feels set apart from the rest of Ed’s world, too. His taciturn personality is highlighted by the fact that the other men he associates with, co-worker, Frank (Michael Badalucco), Big Dave Brewster (James Gandolfini), Creighton Tolliver (Jon Polito), and lawyer Freddy Riedenschneider (Tony Shalhoub) seem to never shut up. (Even the replacement barber Ed hires later in the movie talks all day long). Ed’s blank, glum appearance is indicative of the pessimistic, negative world in which he lives.

That doomed, helpless outlook shows up in various ways. Frank, reading the news, says the Russians exploded an atomic bomb, and “we can’t do a thing about it.” Ed, talking about where he lives, says his home is a bungalow, which has basic appliances, like a garbage disposal. After the description, he comments, “Guess you could say I had it made.” It is a sad assessment of what the working class is supposed to be satisfied with. The first shot of Ed’s wife, Doris (Frances McDormand), shows her checking out how she looks in her undergarments. Her make-up is important to her. In an interview, McDormand said that Doris, who is from a peasant Italian background, wanted to have glamour in her life, but with time, that hope faded. She finds solace in her appearance and her job as an accountant at the Nirdlinger department store, the place which sells glamorous things. She also relishes in the attention paid to her by Big Dave, her boss. He likes to tell stories about his heroic actions in the war, which contrasts with Doris’ boring life, and which makes Big Dave an appealing character to her. Ed says that he and Doris go to church each week, which sounds like maybe they at least have religion to provide an uplifting feeling. But he quickly follows up by saying that they attend the weekly bingo game. He says Doris didn’t believe in life-everlasting, and that bingo was the height of existence. Life here is cynical and uninspired.

Ed doesn’t even find bingo enjoyable. He doesn’t feel the need to “entertain” guests, though Doris still invites Big Dave and his wide-eyed wife, Ann (Katherine Borowitz) to dinner. (Despite Big Dave’s big talk, he runs the store because it is owned by his wife’s family, so he hasn’t really achieved his position on his own). The way that Doris pays attention to Big Dave, the way she laughs at his jokes, makes Ed suspect that the two are having an affair. But Ed is so detached from life that the infidelity doesn’t phase him, as he says, “It’s a free country.” Ed is a passive individual. He became a barber by “marrying” into the job. Frank is Doris’ brother and owns the barbershop. However, when Tolliver walks in as a customer, and talks about looking for an investor (after someone locally pulled out of the deal) in a new invention, “dry cleaning,” Ed’s first response is that the man is probably running a scam, but this time he questions that maybe his negative attitude toward life has relegated him to just being “the barber.” He contemplates changing from being passive to becoming proactive.

We then have a scene where Doris sits in a tub, self-absorbed in reading a magazine. She doesn’t even look at Ed, but asks him to shave her legs. He dutifully does so, and this grooming act is as close to intimacy that occurs between these two, with Ed having to do the barber job even in his own home. While still reading, Doris says without feeling, “love you,” as if uttering an obligatory afterthought of thanks. Perhaps Ed then goes to Tolliver after realizing how unrewarding life is for him after this episode. Tolliver doesn’t even recognize Ed without his smock, which again shows Ed’s sole identification is that of being a barber. Ed at first doesn’t trust Tolliver because in his world one is suspicious of anything being positive. Ed initially sees the wig-wearing, salesman personality of Tolliver as a possible swindler. But Tollier is legitimate, and offers a fifty/fifty split of the profits with Ed, who needs to get $10,000 dollars to invest. Tolliver in contrast to Ed and Doris, is an optimist, and says when one door closes (the man who declined the investment) another door opens, in the person of Ed. As we see later, this positive attitude is punished, not rewarded in this environment. It is appropriate that Ed will be a “silent partner,” given his quiet nature. Ed’s plan is to monetarily exploit his own wife’s affair by anonymously blackmailing Big Dave and getting him to pay the ten grand.

We then get a scene with Ed and Frank in the barbershop, and Ed seemingly talking nonsense about hair. Ed observes how the hair just keeps growing and they have to keep cutting it. His statement reminds us of the barber pole’s repetitive movement with no end purpose. He is voicing an existential view of the absurdity of life, which he finds unsavory. That is why he says he wants to mix the cut hair with dirt, showing his disgust with his perception of his life as being part of the pointless cyclical nature of existence.

Doris drags Ed to an after-hours party at the store where she works. Big Dave takes him aside and confesses his plight to Ed. Big Dave was the one who pulled out of Tolliver’s deal, and he believes that the dry cleaning entrepreneur is the blackmailer, since the blackmail note asks for the same amount that Tolliver wanted for the investment. Big Dave figures Tolliver saw him with the woman he was carrying on with at the hotel where Tolliver was staying. Of course, Big Dave doesn’t admit that it is Doris he was with. Supposed war hero Big Dave shows he is not really the courageous guy to look up to, and his pathetic crying in this scene adds to the negative outlook presented in the film. The scene also demonstrates that Ed’s deceitful action has negative domino-like repercussions, since Big Dave won’t be able to open up the new store with Doris in charge, and Big Dave’s wife, Ann, will be hurt if her husband’s cheating is exposed. He will lose everything, since it is his wife’s store that employs him.

The next scene is a fitting contrast to what has just happened. Ed comes across a teenage girl, whose nickname is Birdie (Scarlett Johansson), playing classical music on a store piano. Ed is drawn to her talent. She, unlike others, remembers his name, seeing him as an individual. For Ed, she represents the hope for the future that innocent youth might be capable of, and which contrasts with the adult sordid, depressing existence in which Ed finds himself inhabiting. Her name implies that she could soar above those hopeless individuals that populate Ed’s world, including Ed himself. It’s possible that her nickname could awaken Ed’s own ability to fly, represented by his last name, Crane, so that he could rise above everyday dreariness.

After Big Dave leaves the money at a drop, Ed seals the deal by signing Tolliver’s business papers. After Ed and Doris attend an Italian wedding on a farm, Doris is reminded of how little she has distanced herself from her unglamorous upbringing and gets drunk. Her negativity about life is expressed when she is sarcastic to the young married couple, saying, “Life is so goddamn wonderful you almost won’t believe it. It’s a bowl of goddamn cherries.” After returning home, Ed, watching his wife sleep it off, recounts how the two met on a blind double date. Even then she drank too much, probably trying to find escape from a unfulfilling life. She liked it that Ed didn’t talk much, and said after only two weeks that they get married. Ed suggested that maybe they might want to get to know more about each other first. Doris’ response was, “Why? Does it get better?” Her answer reinforces the unhappiness and lack of hope in her world.

In the middle of this story, Ed gets a call from Big Dave to meet him at his office in the store. It is late and they are the only two there. After Big Dave paid the blackmail money, he then decided to confront Tolliver when he started to suspect he was the person extorting him. He beat him until Tolliver told Big Dave that he got his money from Ed and wasn’t a blackmailer. Now Big Dave realizes that Ed knows about the affair with Doris and that Ed is ruining their lives for the dry cleaning opportunity. Big Dave attacks Ed, who is able to grab a letter opener in the struggle. He stabs Big Dave in the neck and Big Dave bleeds to death. Ed leaves and returns home, and unemotionally, finishes his story about how he and Doris met and were married. His lack of feelings even after causing the death of another person show how removed he is from life,.

Policemen come to the barbershop and Ed assumes they are there to arrest him, and he seems, again, to be passive and ready to meet his fate. However, the cops tell him that it is his wife who has been arrested for murder. She was cooking the books for Big Dave so he could embezzle funds and the authorities believe she killed him to cover up her complicity. Ed goes to Birdie’s father, the local lawyer, Walter Abundas (Richard Jenkins), for help. Walter admits to his incompetence and recommends another lawyer. Walter, like Doris, drinks too much, and spends hours doing genealogy research, his two forms of escape from the dreariness of his life. For Ed, his escape into a sense of peace occurs when he listens to Birdie’s music.

Ed visits Doris in jail. She has a black eye which shows the damage the incarceration is inflicting on her. He brings her makeup, which shows how Ed understands her need to hang onto her desire for “glamour,” which is almost impossible, given the circumstances. Because Ed does not admit his guilt in the death of Big Dave, he stops Doris from admitting her infidelity. In his mind maybe he thinks they’re even. After Frank mortgages the barbershop to pay for legal costs (another example of negative results resulting from wrong choices), Ed hires the accomplished lawyer that Walter recommends, Freddy Riedenschneider (a name that appears in The Asphalt Jungle, a Coen Brothers tip to the film noir genre). The movie presents a rather negative view of attorneys with this character. Freddy eats like a glutton at the best restaurant in town (symbolizing how he drains his clients), and stays in the most expensive room at the best hotel. He tells Ed he will be charging him tons of fees, including the cost of a private investigator. Freddy, as was said earlier, does all of the talking, and is condescending. He says to Ed, “I do the talking. You keep your trap shut. I’m an attorney. You’re a barber. You don’t know anything.” Ed once more is defined by his job, what the external world reduces him to.

Ed now finds himself even more alienated from life as he says, while watching people on the streets walking, that the recent events make him feel like he has “made it to the outside.” Big Dave’s wife, Ann, visits him, her eyes wider than ever, and tells Ed that she knows that Doris didn’t kill her husband. She relates this wild story about how, during a camping trip, Big Dave was abducted by aliens. She thinks his death is part of some type of government-extraterrestrial conspiracy. Life has become so absurd that people look for some type of explanation to bring meaning to existence, no matter how far-fetched, so as not to face the possibility that life may not have any absolute purpose.

Riedenschneider is not interested in truth. He just is concerned with strategy. He doesn’t care if Doris killed Big Dave, only that she didn’t confess to anything. In a meeting with the lawyer and Doris, Ed finally confesses to save Doris. But, the lawyer says that doesn’t work because there are no witnesses to back up his story of killing Big Dave, and it just looks like Ed is sacrificing himself for his wife. Ed tries to find Tolliver to back up his claims, but the man is missing. Riedenschneider, in another meeting, has a different plan, and it is an existential one. He references the scientific “Uncertainty Principle” (proposed by Werner Heisenberg) which says that just by observing something, you change it’s reality. He says, “the more you look, the less you really know. It’s a fact, a true fact. In a way, it’s the only fact there is.” The lawyer’s private detective found out that Big Dave was an office clerk during the war, so he was a phony when holding himself out to the community as a war hero. The argument here is, the more you look at something, more doubt presents itself. For Riedenschneider, that translates to “reasonable doubt.” He argues that someone who knew of Big Dave’s service record may have been blackmailing him. Who that person may be can’t be known, because nothing that is scrutinized can ever reveal the whole truth. He presents a world that is without understanding, which is as noir as film can get. The trial never takes place, because Doris takes her own life. Ed later finds out from a cop that Doris was pregnant with Big Dave’s child. Perhaps that fact and how far her life had turned for the worse brought her to suicide (like I said - not a happy world we have here.)

Ed says he was now “like a ghost,” the man who isn’t there. His reality as a person is vanishing, and that is why he says of himself that his only existence was tied to the fact that he “was the barber.” He, like Ann, looks for answers somewhere.  He reads about UFO’s, and goes to a medium, who he realizes is a phony, which just reinforces his pessimism about living. After a music competition, he sees Birdie with a young boy, and Ed is intimidating toward the youth. It’s as if he wants to keep Birdie pure, untainted by growing up, which would include sexual experiences, so that he could save her from another life “going down the drain.” He takes Birdie to a musical expert, but this man dashes Ed’s hopes, saying that Birdie is a nice girl, but ordinary, and might make a good “typist.” On the drive home, Ed can’t face more mediocrity, and says the music teacher is wrong. But, he has projected onto Birdie his own hope. The girl admits that she really has no ambition to become a pianist. She is very grateful to Ed, and proceeds to try to thank him by performing oral sex on him. Her fall from grace in Ed’s eyes surprises and literally damages him as he gets into a car accident.

Birdie sustains a broken collar bone. While unconscious in the hospital, Ed remembers an episode with Doris dismissing a salesman and looking at Ed with disappointment because Ed didn’t get rid of the man. They sit on their couch and say nothing. Even Ed’s memories are disappointing. Ed wakes up to discover he is being arrested for killing Tolliver. The submerged car with Tolliver inside was discovered by a young boy who was swimming. The business documents that Ed signed were with Tolliver. The police think that Tolliver found out that Doris stole money for the deal, and Ed killed him to silence the man. Ed knows from Big Dave’s confession that he beat Tolliver, and so he was the one who killed Tolliver and dumped the body.

Ed mortgages his house and hires Riedenschneider to defend him, at least until the money runs out, and then so does the lawyer. But while being Ed’s attorney, he offers more existential arguments about the unknowability of life. Ed says his attorney told the jurors, “to look not at the facts, but at the meaning of the facts. The he said the facts had no meaning.” He argues that Ed was no murderer, because he was too “ordinary” to commit such an act. He was just a barber. And being ordinary, he was “modern man,” like the jurists, and they would, in a sense, be finding themselves guilty. He paints a bleak picture of existence. But Frank interrupts the proceedings with an impassioned anger against Ed for bringing about the death of his sister. There is a mistrial, and with Riedenschneider now gone, a judge, who has no compassion for Ed’s situation, sentences him to death. The legal system obviously is a failure here: Doris kills herself and her unborn child after being imprisoned for a crime she did not commit; Ed is sentenced to death for killing the wrong man.

Just before his execution, Ed is now in the chair instead of a customer, and someone is shaving him instead, to inject lethal drugs. It appears that he can’t escape the barber scenario while in this world. Knowing that he is about to die, Ed now feels completely free in a way from the ties that bind people to everyday life. He lives up to his name as a “crane” flying above it all, gaining a larger perspective. He says, “It’s like pulling away from the maze. While you’re in the maze, you go through willy nilly, turning where you think you have to turn, banging into the dead ends.” But seeing it whole gives him some peace.” He also says that in death, “Maybe the things I don’t understand will be clearer there, like when a fog blows away.” For some of those who try to find ultimate meaning while alive in this world, life may only offer a limited view of the road ahead.

The next film is The Natural.