The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)：收集的一些影評

劇本

合集

Roger Ebert

The Coen Brothers The Man Who Wasnt There is shot in black-and-white so elegantly, it reminds us of a 1940s station wagon -- chrome, wood, leather and steel all burnished to a contented glow. Its star performance by Billy Bob Thornton is a study in sad-eyed, mournful chain-smoking, the portrait of a man so trapped by life he wants to scream.

The plot is one of those film noir twisters made of gin and adultery, where the right man is convicted of the wrong crime. The look, feel and ingenuity of this film are so lovingly modulated you wonder if anyone else could have done it better than the Coens.

Probably not. And yet, and yet--for a movie about crime, it proceeds at such a leisurely pace. The first time I saw it, at Cannes, I emerged into the sunlight to find Michel Ciment, the influential French critic, who observed sadly, A 90-minute film that plays for two hours. Now I have seen it again, and I admire its virtues so much I am about ready to forgive its flow. Yes, it has a deliberate step--but is that entirely a fault of the film, or is it forced by the personality of Ed Crane (Thornton), the small-town barber who narrates it? He is not a swift man, and we get the impression that the crucial decisions in his life--his job, his marriage--were made by default. He has the second chair in a two-barber shop, next to his talkative brother-in-law Frank (Michael Badalucco). He spends most of his waking hours cutting hair and smoking, the cigarette dangling from his lips as he leans over his clients. (This is exactly right; the movie remembers a time in America when everyone seemed to smoke all the time, and I cannot think of Darrel Martin, the barber on Main Street in Urbana, without remembering the smoke that coiled from his Camel into my eyes during every haircut.) Ed Crane has the expression of a man stunned speechless by something somebody else has just said. He is married to Doris (Frances McDormand), who is the bookkeeper down at Nirdlingers Department Store.

She works for Big Dave (James Gandolfini), and when Dave and his wife come over to dinner, Doris and Dave laugh at all the same things while Ed and Daves wife stare into thin air. Ed thinks his wife may be having an affair. He handles this situation, as he handles most social situations, by smoking.

The story then involves developments I will not reveal--double and triple reverses in which two people die in unanticipated ways, at unanticipated hands, and Doris ends up in jail. Ed mortgages the house to pay for the best lawyer in California, Freddy Riedenschneider (Tony Shalhoub), who is the defense attorney at two trials in the movie. Ed, who narrates the entire movie with deadpan objectivity, reports his summation for the jury: He told them to look not at the facts, but at the meaning of the facts. Then he said the facts had no meaning. The Coens have always had a way with dialogue. I like the way Eds narration tells us everything we need to know about Ed while Ed seems to be sticking strictly to the facts. I like the way Freddy Riedenschneider tells Ed, Im an attorney. Youre a barber. You dont know anything. And a conversation in Eds car between Ed and Birdy Abundas (Scarlett Johansson), a teenage pianist he has taken an interest in. You know what you are? she asks him, after he insists she has talent. Youre an enthusiast! Yes, and he is mostly enthusiastic not about Birdys music but about Birdy, but too fearful to make the slightest admission of his feelings. She lacks all such inhibition, and when she attempts to demonstrate her gratitude in an extremely direct way, all he can think of to say is, Heavens to Betsy! Classic film noir specialized in bad luck and ironic turns of fate. A crime would be committed flawlessly, and then the perp would be trapped by an inconsequential, unrelated detail. Thats what happens here, but with the details moved laterally one position, so that you are obviously guilty--not of the crime you committed, but of the crime you didnt commit.

Film noir is rarely about heroes, but about men of small stature, who are lured out of their timid routines by dreams of wealth or romance. Their sin is one of hubris: These little worms dare to dream of themselves as rich or happy. As the title hints, The Man Who Wasnt There pushes this one step further, into the realm of a man who scarcely exists apart from his transgressions. I kill, therefore I am. And he doesnt even kill who, or how, or when the world thinks he does (although there is a certain justice when he receives his last shave).

Joel and Ethan Coen are above all stylists. The look and feel of their films is more important to them than the plots--which, in a way, is as it should be. Here Michel Ciment is right, and they have devised an efficient, 90-minute story and stretched it out with style. Style didnt used to take extra time in Hollywood; it came with the territory.

But The Man Who Wasnt There is so assured and perceptive in its style, so loving, so intensely right, that if you can receive on that frequency, the film is like a voluptuous feast. Yes, it might easily have been shorter. But then it would not have been this film, or necessarily a better one. If the Coens have taken two hours to do what hardly anyone else could do at all, isnt it churlish to ask why they didnt take less time to do what everyone can do?

The Guardian

"Didja ever think about hair ?" asks The Barber, played by Billy Bob Thornton, snipping away at a chipmunk-favoured, comic-book-reading little boy, the crown of whose head he has turned into a hypnotic blond whorl. "How its a part of us? How it keeps on coming, and we just cut it off and throw it away?" His colleague tells him to cut it out: his weird intense talk is going to scare the kid. But the Barber persists. "Im gonna throw this hair away now and mingle it with common house dirt," he says wonderingly, quietly, apparently on the verge of some kind of breakdown. But then, with an infinitesimally dismissive wince, the Barber waves the thought away and replaces his ever-present cigarette: "Skip it."

All of the power, the understatement and the profound enigma of Billy Bob Thorntons magnificent performance is contained in that brilliantly controlled and modulated scene, difficult though it is to single that out or anything else. This movie is quite simply the Coen brothers masterpiece, and Thorntons brooding presence as the Barber, Ed Crane, is a stunning achievement. He is reticent, watchful, neither ingenuous nor jaded, but toughly stoic; hes quietly cynical and even desperate yet with a strong strain of decency, even quaintness: his strongest oath is "Heavens to Betsy!"

Ed Cranes Americanness runs through him like a stick of rock. He has hardly any dialogue, but dominates the movie through his rumbling, tenor voiceover: he is indeed there but not there. This is a classic performance from Thornton, displaying the kind of maturity and technical mastery that we hardly dared hope for from this actor. His Ed Crane forms a kind of triangle with Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man and Gary Cooper in High Noon: a paradigm of virile, yet faintly baffled American ordinariness.

The work is a thriller in the style of James M Cain, set in suburban California in 1949 and obviously influenced by the movies of the period, yet somehow transmitting the atmospheric crackle of a strange tale from The Twilight Zone. It is the story of how self-effacing Ed Crane, in yearning for a better station in life than that of the humble barber, with his smock and scissors, succeeds only in getting mixed up in the adulterous affair being conducted by his wife Doris, played by Frances McDormand, and her boss Big Dave (James Gandolfini), leading to blackmail, bloodshed, and the shadow of the electric chair.

The Man Who Wasnt There is shot in black-and-white by the Coens long-standing cinematographer Roger Deakins, with superbly observed loca tions and sets: exquisitely lit, designed and furnished. As in so many of the Coens films, an entire universe is summoned up, partly recognisable as our own, and yet different, a quirky variant on real life with its very own fixtures, fittings and brand names. Doris and Big Dave work in a department store with the jocose name of Nirdlingers, whose creepy manikins and hulking display cabinets are shown in the empty store at night. Ed Crane reads pulp magazines with names like Stalwart, Muscle Power and Salute. Yet in one shot hes also frowning over Life magazine, whose cover advertises an arresting article: "Evelyn Waugh: Catholics In The US". In a previous scene weve seen Ed and Doris attending church on a Tuesday night for the charity bingo session: a secular High Mass for the semi-believers.

Frances McDormand is the second compelling reason to see this film, the querulous wife who married our dourly taciturn Ed after a courtship of just two weeks, and on being asked if they should get to know each other more, simply replied: "Does it get better?"

Ed is to reveal, glumly, that he and Doris "have not performed the sex act for many years", yet somehow their relationship is saturated with a gamey erotic perfume, like the ones she gets from Nirdlingers with her staff discount. She lounges in the bath, asking languidly for a drag of his cigarette and getting him to shave her legs, which he does humbly, unhesitatingly: an uxorious moment of displaced sexuality which is recalled in the movies final, devastating scene.

With extraordinary clarity and economy, Joel and Ethan Coen present scenes from a marriage as fascinatingly fraught as anything in the cinema. All the time, Thorntons face looms over everything, a one-man Mount Rushmore of disquiet. Later on, Eds pushy lawyer is to describe him as a piece of modern art, and that indeed is what he is, a piece of art, one moreover that the camera loves: his face is a composite of planes and lines, crags and wrinkles, defined by the crows feet that fan out as he squints into the sun, or to filter out the cigarette smoke.

What a stunning, mesmeric movie this is. I can only hope that on Oscar night the Academy are not so cauterised with dumbness and cliche that they cannot recognise its originality and playful brilliance. Noir is the catch-all term given to movies like this - yet the Coens achieve their greatest, most disturbing moments in fierce sunlight, in the outdoors and in the dazzling white light of the final sequence. So I propose a new genre for this film - noir-blanc , a seriocomic masterpiece which transforms the quotidian ordinariness of waking lives. It is the best American film of the year.

Notes from TCM

The working titles of this film were Untitled Barber Movie, Untitled Barber Project and The Barber Movie. The film has a voice-over narration delivered by Billy Bob Thornton as his character, "Ed Crane." Although the narration fluctuates between past and present tense, the entirety of the film is a flashback until the end sequence, when Ed is in prison and writing his memoir for the magazine. "Roderick Jaynes," listed in the onscreen credits as a film editor, is a joint pseudonym used by brothers Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, who, along with Tricia Cooke, edited the film.

The films end credits include the following acknowledgment: "Fibber McGee & Molly Courtesy of NBC Studios and The Museum of Broadcasting Communications, Chicago." The opening and ending cast credits differ slightly in order. According to the presskit, the film was shot at the following Southern California locations: Lincoln Heights Jail in Los Angeles for the jail scene; Don Carlos Stages in East Los Angeles for the courtroom scenes; Musso and Franks Grill in Hollywood as Da Vincis restaurant; Thousand Oaks for the wedding reception; a Presbyterian Church on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles for the Bingo scene; an empty Bank of America branch in downtown Los Angeles as the Santa Rosa bank; a furniture store in Glendale as "Nirdlingers" department store; the exterior of a Craftsman-style house in the "Bungalow Heaven" neighborhood in Pasadena became the Crane home; an apartment in Castle Green, a hotel-turned-apartment building in Pasadena, served as the piano teachers studio; and portions of the city of Orange in Orange County doubled as Santa Rosa. Both Michael Badalucco and Thornton trained with barbers to learn how to cut hair; Thornton also briefly trained at Dirty Dans Clip Joint.

The presskit adds the following information about the production: The picture was shot on color negative film, which was then printed on black-and-white film stock for theatrical exhibition. According to a November 30, 2001 article in Entertainment Weekly, USA Films negotiated with the filmmakers to shoot the picture so that videos could be released in color for European markets. The Man Who Wasnt There emulates the visual style and content of film noir, a genre produced primarily in the 1940s and 1950s. The filmmakers depicted the setting as Santa Rosa, CA because it evoked the 1943 Alfred Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt, which was set and filmed in Santa Rosa (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1941-50). Other echoes of a classic film noir May include the character names "Diedrickson" and "Nirdlinger." "Dietrichson" was used for two main characters in the 1944 Paramount film Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder, while "Nirdlinger" was the surname used for the same characters in James M. Cains novel Double Indemnity, on which the Paramount film was based (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1941-50).

The Man Who Wasnt There tied with David Lynchs Mulholland Dr. for the Best Director Palme dOr award at the 2001 Cannes International Film Festival. Roger Deakins was selected by AFI as Cinematographer of the Year, and the film was nominated by AFI as Movie of the Year. Other AFI award nominations went to Thornton as AFI Actor of the Year-Male-Movies and to Tony Shalhoub as AFI Featured Actor of the Year-Male-Movies. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association nominated the film for 2001 Golden Globe awards in the following categories: Best Motion Picture Drama, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama (Thornton) and Best Screenplay (Ethan and Joel Coen). The film also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography.

豆瓣小小農

很多經典的故事之所以精彩，人物之所以深刻，恰如雨果筆端慧言，它們擁有「複雜得像海一樣的性格」，選用這樣的故事主人公，他們幽靜而多變，危險卻迷人，深沉里蓄積著咆哮的力量，湍瀑中隱露出微瀾的怡然，不想其惹人注目都很難。《彈簧刀》里的比利.鮑伯.松頓是這樣一個人，殺手雷昂是這樣一個人，劇院魅影傑拉德.巴特勒是這樣一個人，總之類似這樣的戲劇人物多得數不清。

而在科恩兄弟的鏡頭裡，從不受冷落的明星角色，恐怕也是這樣的人物了。《缺席的人》是毋庸置疑的代表，也是科恩兄弟作品中讓我異常喜歡的一部好電影。整部劇用精雕細琢的黑白色調，柔光中流瀉妖嬈的魅影，顯露出了復古的、追憶的電影魔法魅力。黑白畫面里一次曝光的明暗變化，在記錄、敘述故事的過程中雕刻著紀實與戲劇的反差，又在沉澱著記憶與回想的顏色。另外，電影類型而言，無論於形於核，對色、光、譜、影呈現的效果，或以一種悲情的方式袒露社會陰暗面的主題概念，是緬懷上世紀傳統黑色電影的追訪之作。

刻畫的旁白亦不拘泥於某種古板陳舊的啟幕效果，銜接上電影尾部，艾德獄中書寫傳記的「倒敘」方式，整部劇借口述，娓娓道來的各種精彩，很自然地被圈進了畫外音勾勒的框架內，使這場錯位盤繞的「環狀」兇殺事件益發交融無隙。

除此，科恩兄弟又特別擅長用鏡頭構建可縱深擴張的敘事畫面，往往通過一種不易察覺的角度，攝入恐怖或犯罪的氣息，製造猝不及防的戲劇衝突，從而營造出某種耐人尋味的意境。這似乎成了他們必選用的烹飪作料，對我而言，這一點也成為體驗科恩式電影的樂趣之一，但他們從不濫用，所以不致廉價做作，便更為人稱道了。

比如《血迷宮》里有段戲，講的是艾比拋棄老公馬迪，住到情夫雷伊家裡，次日清晨，艾比在客廳被馬迪伏擊的過程。當時科恩兄弟把鏡頭對準馬迪的忠犬時，整個畫面爆發了意想不到的能量，相當不俗。《冰血暴》也舉一例，謝利的岳父被矮個子古怪男槍殺，之後謝利趕到現場查看，當時斜線分割的鏡頭對準謝利的車身及不遠處躺在地上的人，後備箱打開的剎那，畫面顯得智慧極了。

《缺席的人》中也有類似的，就在開場不久，艾德夫婦宴請戴夫夫婦那段。鏡頭架在艾德身後，隨艾德的目光向前方燈火通明的房屋望去，艾德講述妻子與老戴夫一起洗碗玩曖昧。突然，戴夫出現在艾德身旁，出場的入口是畫面外，這種鏡頭語言很神奇，巧妙地營造了畫面的生動感，還有一種不安的感覺。另外，鏡頭向攝入目標慢慢推近，或使運動的物體在靜鏡頭中漸近，這些也都在科恩兄弟的畫面中作為貼標，在別樣的意境中顯露出不凡。

再說電影《缺席的人》的劇情，其實並不複雜，不過是危機婚姻與倦怠人生，引發的一場生活革命，革命的結果是，沒有了人生，沒有了未來，大家天堂見，或者是地獄再斗。顯然，這一次科恩兄弟又玩起了「非正常死亡」的遊戲，依舊延用他們一貫熱衷的題材，跑不出金錢、婚姻及懷才不遇的人生話題，像《血迷宮》《冰血暴》《巴頓芬克》等等，只不過多了一種哲學角度的因果輪迴的思考，還表露出了對人性「慾望」的探索。而且，這些電影在劃分地域與環境的過程中亦集中而現實，有意放大背景，擬出真實可信的「報道」之韻味。尤其突顯於組建人物與事件的過程中，劇情的推進，時刻遵循著人要打破環境桎梏，人被慾望驅使裹挾，人嚮往高處且要出人頭地的心路軌跡，這是物慾橫流之世，你我皆無法擺脫的現實。

故事從一個叫艾德的中年理髮師開啟，他興緻索然地自我介紹，聽起來他這日子真沒法過了。有些神經兮兮的小舅子弗蘭克自以為是，話嘮，整天折磨他的耳朵；在服飾店工作的老婆多麗絲勾搭上了店老闆戴夫，他卻看在眼裡口難開；他自己呢？沉默寡言，滿腔鬱悶，機械生活，情感麻木，作為入贅的女婿做了岳父大人的第二接班人，而在他心底里，對理髮師這種人生選擇卻毫無熱情與渴望。

說來在科恩兄弟的電影里，每部劇里不論主角還是配角，必有話嘮之輩，滔滔不絕像一把無休無止的機關槍，除此，科恩兄弟的電影又在有心抑或無意中放大了嘴巴的功能，且不談大段大段具有哲思韻味的旁白畫外音，就近景中一張張被聚焦的唇齒而言，那些用語言透露出扭曲、誇張、伶俐、獰笑的面肌，無不在電影中形成一種特別的敘事語言。當然，與之對應的便是沉默，正像艾德所說的那樣，他不大說話，只理髮。如此，以景、及人，一靜一動，科恩憑心理透視的錘，場景調度的斧，無限開拓邊緣地帶。

再回來說艾德這個角色，反正，他就是一條在死水裡掙扎的魚，需要滋養生命的新鮮氧氣，於是，決定鋌而走險背水一戰。結果，這世界如此小的調侃，果真在艾德的生活里再現了。一位找到商機卻沒錢投資做乾洗店生意的胖老闆走進了艾德的理髮店，一切冥冥中註定，兩個人從此被無形的索命鎖綁在了一起。

然而，悲劇回溯的源頭卻是早已發生了的「勒索」事件，艾德不知道而已。胖老闆曾經看到過服飾店老闆戴夫與多麗絲偷情，他又了解戴夫的發跡史，全部仰仗他老婆家族的財勢與提攜，這些順理成章地引出了敲一筆錢的原始犯罪事實。不過，發給戴夫的幾次匿名信，未收到回復，胖老闆大概是要放棄這條來錢路的，他一句上帝為你關上一扇門，便會為你打開另一扇窗，亦暗示了其另謀他路的決定。

巧遇艾德，有了決定性的轉折。劇中雖未表露，此時的艾德也已處於精神崩潰的邊緣，為了滿足重重回擊戴夫的復仇心理，為擺脫被戴綠帽子的懦夫身份，為改變死氣沉沉的理髮師角色，「勒索」的計劃便像接力棒一樣傳到了艾德手裡。隨之，令人回味無窮的詭異布局也將全盤托出。從這裡也能看出，科恩兄弟的編劇能力讓人仰視。全劇所有的犯罪支線都可獨立成章，而且都以每個角色自身的動機為出發點，向內延伸，聚焦最終的中心點，這種龐雜的敘事布局，在提升全劇的看點上功不可沒。

甚至在易於忽視的某些細節上，都經過了縝密的部署，不能不令人感嘆。當艾德進入旅館，拿起勒索來的現金走入胖老闆的房間時，我當時的感悟是，艾德太過粗心大意了。事實上，科恩兄弟要的就是這樣的效果。分析艾德這個人物，便知道他不是個有著各種犯罪經驗的老手，不過是個被痛苦折磨著的普通男人，但也不能認為他是個白痴，選擇胖老闆所住的旅館為交易地點，就是他略施心機，自以為是「兩全其美」的算盤。這齣戲，後來在戴夫的辦公室里被曝光，成為了特別自然生動的劇情鋪墊。這一鋪墊，直達劇尾，乾脆揭開了「The man who wasn』t there」的謎底，胖老闆是戴夫幹掉的，但為此丟了性命的卻是艾德。

除此還有很多，比如多麗絲上吊的那場戲，她的死，揪出了一大堆服務於情節的驚艷信息。多麗絲不是戴夫單純的情婦，至少她是深愛戴夫的，肚子里的孩子說明了一切。但諷刺的是，戴夫不會為了多麗絲放棄事業放棄家產，他為「被勒索」的事焦頭爛額，已動了與多麗絲斷絕關係的念頭，這在戴夫與艾德密談時，有所透露。另外，在艾德對律師坦白自己是殺人兇手時，律師雖誤解了他的話，但艾德漫不經心講出的事實，多麗絲應該是心如明鏡的，這或許也是她選擇放棄生命的原因之一。總之，這部戲裡沒有一處情節不是為整個劇情服務的，無一處可割捨。

道具或配角的輔助作用，同樣用得精妙絕倫。理髮店裡剪下的一縷縷髮絲，長的、短的、卷的、直的，它們是被拋棄的，用掃帚收納進垃圾桶里，因還有新生的秀髮裝飾在頭頂。而修剪過的髮型，也不過是那樣的幾種，生命似乎就是在一種一層不變的重複中被吞噬被拋棄。當然，胖老闆的假髮更是點睛之筆了。再加上艾德隨身攜帶的手帕，在遞給戴夫擦眼淚用時，簡單的鏡頭，已比較出了兩個人的性格特徵與精神世界。後來在艾德閱讀報紙時，特寫的兩版新聞，新型乾洗技術的無限前景，與新墨西哥驚現的UFO，一個為胖老闆失蹤的後續做著鋪墊，一個展現的是那個時代的特徵及人心的渴望與慾望。

愛彈鋼琴的少女貝蒂簡直成了黑白畫面里嬌艷欲滴的紫羅蘭，不否認斯嘉麗搖曳生姿的青春倩影為影片注入了活力，但尤為精彩的還是貝蒂這個充滿戲劇張力的角色。亦靜亦動，半純真變妖嬈，乖順背後隱藏著叛逆，激情前修飾著偽裝的沉靜與得體，成長中這樣的孩子並不少見，如劇中的貝蒂，被看做問題少女也好，天才少女也罷，這種不可或缺的角色陪襯，正是深入刻畫本劇人性的某種借力手段。

貝蒂彈奏貝多芬失聰後創作的作品，缺少激情的演奏，在艾德心裡卻是完美得無以復加的天賦與印象。以至於，他模糊了「愛」的概念，想要與貝蒂一生為伴，便想像他自己可以做貝蒂的經紀人，一手把她打造成世界巨星，以此贏得他個人存在的價值與尊嚴。顯然，這不是在討論誰對誰錯，在艾德的心中是一種認可與不認可的問題。但最後，連這點精神寄託也被剝奪了，貝蒂的輕佻是元兇，不過也有另一層的寓意，在父親面前扮乖乖女的貝蒂用成人的方式取悅或感激艾德，這是否也是在尋找「自我」呢？

而說到人物性格，這又是本片特別值得玩味的。簡單說來，幾乎主要人物都符合一種不滿現狀，力求改變的心理特徵。重點是無一雷同，深刻細膩至骨髓。艾德需要改變他整個的人生，為了尊嚴，為了生命意義。戴夫需要改變他目前危險的境地，之前儘管如意，他也因某種空虛選擇了背叛妻子。多麗絲藉助情婦身份想要擁有可以被自己完全支配的服飾分店。艾德的律師想要保住無往不勝的美名，直到多麗絲自殺，給他留下遺憾，他想要證明自己的理由也就更充分了。少女貝蒂需要什麼？也許需要的正是青春期少男少女渴望的關注、認可與理解。而那個卷錢跑掉的胖老闆，他需要的自然是金錢，是可以把握住商機的機會。總之，就是這些普通的人，為了各自無法掌控的慾望，一同卷進了生死抉擇的漩渦。

如果說全劇在首尾埋伏著兩個地雷，那麼一個是胖老闆，第二個便是沒有野心甘於平淡的弗蘭克了，法庭上他給艾德的最後一拳，既毀了律師完美的演講，又把艾德徹底送上了電椅。台詞「what kind of man are you？」弗蘭克質問艾德，這句話也曾出現在艾德與戴夫決戰的那一晚，戴夫也是這樣質問艾德的。這種不做作的有意編排，點綴在故事的各個角落裡，也給看客留下了可解讀的不同空間。最後加一句，鮑伯松頓的演技再次令人折服。

「不要再玩弄你的憂傷，它像禿鷹吞噬你的生命。——歌德《浮士德》

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