A pretty potboiler

>> The Coens go black & white with The Man Who Wasn't There

by JOANNE LATIMER

Do the Coen brothers enjoy devising bad film titles? One year after O Brother, Where Art Thou?, they arrived in Cannes with The Man Who Wasn't There. Their new film, a razor-sharp film noir, was called The Barber Project during production and maybe the film's working title should've stuck.

"We've gotten flack over the title, yeah, and the film distributor isn't letting us flog it as a film noir," says Joel, basking in the Cannes sun during the May festival. "So we're saying it's about existential dread. Maybe that'll sell more tickets--at least in France."

"Our films inspire dread, I just don't know about the existential part," adds Ethan. Joel and Ethan had already worked out their shtick for talking about the new film just hours after its premiere screening. It unreeled on the first Sunday, following Shrek, so the audience was more than willing to be entertained by a film for grown-ups.

The Man Who Wasn't There is a vintage potboiler that tips its hat to James M. Cain and his classic dramas from the '40s. Here's the zinger: it's a black and white film. The Coens filmed it in colour and had it printed on high-contrast black and white stock. The effect is sensational, with light glinting off polished chrome in every take.

Plentiful plot twists

Billy Bob Thornton (called "BBT" by Joel and Ethan) plays a stoic barber in small-town California, circa 1940. He's saddled with a malcontented wife (Frances McDormand) who works as a bookkeeper at a department store. The barber doesn't talk much, except in the film's voice-over, but his wife makes up for his silence with incessant complaints and scheming. When her affair with her boss (James Gandolfini) is discovered, our barber busts loose and invests in a shady business venture with a gay con artist (Jon Polito) who wants to start a dry-cleaning franchise. Money is lost, a dead body is found and someone does jail time. And that's just the beginning. Men are tested and floozies are exposed. There's blackmail, murder, extortion and even a May-December romance between BBT and Scarlet Johansson. But most surprising is the UFO incident.

"I have never seen a UFO myself, but I know people who have," deadpans Joel.

"Ditto," adds Ethan.

Filming in black and white was a big auteur gesture, but the Coens have always squirmed around the auteur handle. "You know, auteur and indie filmmaking is so hard to define today," says Joel, sitting with his legs crossed, waving an Evian, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. "There have been subtle changes over the years. When we started out, we made 'non-studio' films. They were almost genre films. Then there was an explosion of independent filmmaking and it's hard to tell who's with who, who owns what."

Sundance and the mainstream

"It's like Sundance--being absorbed into the mainstream cinema [festival] circuit," continues Ethan. "We've made both and all kinds of films now, financed in a number of ways, distributed by Hollywood."

"We still apply risk to everything we do, although we're middle-aged filmmakers at this point," says Joel, stroking his chin. "The black and white stock was a bit of a risk but it simply had to be a black and white film."

Then what about rumours that the distributor kept the colour version in its back pocket--just in case? Joel and Ethan were ready for this question and launched into their party line: "They have the option of being able to release it in ancillary markets in its de-saturated colour version, yeah," confirms Joel, suddenly sounding like a lawyer. "But, frankly, that's a bastardized version of the movie that we're not concerned with."

"We can't imagine anyone would want to see it [de-saturated] anyway. It's a black and white movie," adds Ethan, gravely.

He's right. The Man Who Wasn't There will be remembered, above all else, for its killer looks. It's hard to rip your eyes off the screen. Even the whites of BBT's eyes are mesmerizing. Every blink registers.

"This has been one of our most aesthetically successful films," said Joel. "But we don't know if we'd call it our favourite Coen brothers movie--not yet."

The Man Who Wasn't There opens Friday, Nov. 2