The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) – J. Coen & E. Coen

The Coen Brothers love film noir, from their first feature (Blood Simple, 1984) through Miller’s Crossing (1990) and possibly including Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998) and No Country for Old Men (2007).  These latter films are genre-bending masterpieces but the Coens playfully toy with form and content in even their straightest films. On the surface, The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) feels like a very sincere homage to the noirs of the 1940s (think James M. Cain) but, on second glance, it doesn’t shy away from some other literary references and comic asides (in true Coen style). Shot in faux-black-and-white (colour but converted in the lab) by Roger Deakins but still featuring the chiaroscuro lighting preferred by noir cinematographers, as well as perfect period sets and costumes – you get the sense that this was a labour of love for the team, reconstructing the past and its dark moves.  It may be no surprise that the film’s smalltown locale is Santa Rosa, CA, where Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943) also takes place. Billy Bob Thornton plays Ed Crane, a barber (narrating the film in a voiceover from the unknown future) who suspects that his wife Doris (Frances McDormand) is having an affair with her boss at the department store, Big Jim (James Gandolfini). When an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a new entrepreneurial venture (dry cleaning!) appears, he decides to (anonymously) blackmail Big Jim for the $10K he needs, threatening to expose the affair. As Big Jim’s wife is the actual department store heiress, this puts him into a desperate situation – and soon things spiral out of control. The plot takes many twists and turns, reeling in Scarlett Johansson’s Lolita-reference Birdy, Tony Shalhoub’s cocky lawyer Freddy Ridenschneider, not to mention Coen stalwarts Michael Badalucco and Jon Polito in quirky supporting roles. There are a fair few things you’d never encounter in the noirs of the Forties! This time through, having just re-read Camus’ The Stranger (1942), it struck me just how much Ed Crane’s character echoes Meursault from the book – a man of few words, who responds spontaneously in the moment, absorbed by perceptions and sensations, who ultimately comes to accept the absurdity of existence with no regrets.  Stir in Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and the poem Antigonish and there’s a bit more than meets the eye here.

 

Sentimental Value (2025)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Sentimental Value (2025) – J. Trier

Aito claims not to like movies, but when I was pondering what to watch, I asked him.  He said he prefers character-driven drama to plot-driven genre films (“anyone can write a superhero film”, he claims).  After that, there seemed no other choice than Sentimental Value, the Grand Prix winner from last year’s Cannes Film Festival (second place to Jafar Panahi’s It was Just an Accident) and Best Foreign Film at the 2025 Academy Awards.  Actress Renata Reinsve (who plays eldest daughter Nora Borg here) is having her time in the sun, after success with director Joachim Trier’s earlier film, The Worst Person in the World (2021), which I haven’t yet seen, and the 2026 Cannes Palme d’Or winner, Fjord, directed by Romanian Cristian Mungiu – plus cult hit Backrooms (2026; youngster Kane Parsons). She’s excellent here, playing an unstable actress experiencing success on stage and TV who is approached by her estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a world-famous director who has not made a film for 15 years but wants her to star in a personal project he hopes to get funded. They’ve made contact again at the funeral for her mother, his ex-wife, but she still feels hurt by his long absence from her life. Her younger sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), also starred in one of her father’s films when she was a child but is unwilling to have her own son join the cast of his latest venture, having felt her father’s attention dwindle as soon as that film wrapped.  Indeed, when his daughter refuses to participate, he turns his attention to Hollywood starlet Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) who attracts Netflix funding but requires the film to be in English, rather than Norwegian (or Swedish; Borg is a Norwegian who moved to Sweden as a child, but Skarsgård is Swedish and Reinsve is Norwegian -- as is director Trier).  As far as character-driven drama goes, there is more than enough psycho-dynamically-speaking for this cast to sink their teeth into (they do!) and Trier handles the unfolding tensions with flair (and a nice use of music, for punctuation or transition). Although it portends to be yet another film about making films, it is much less invested in the craft of making films and much more invested in the family relationships here (implying that we keep these relationships out of sentimental value only, perhaps); that said, the title might just be a wink at audience members looking for the kind of meta-commentary often found in films like these – it hints at the healthy dose of sentimentality front-loaded in the film which yields several cathartic moments and is tied up with a bow at the end.  Trier clearly knows what audiences want – and critics too.  Worth your time.