Come on guys, there were spaceships. SPACESHIPS. In a movie based on a book that had some really serious themes. They're slapping you in the face with ridiculous things, not just throwing them in there because they can. I think we saw a lot of humor in the movie, but seriously, this. is. a. comedy. I mean Big Dave's wife? Totally there for comedic purposes. I mean spaceships. SPACESHIPS. Yes, that was an excellent way to show that Ed (Meursault) had accepted his lot in life and wasn't going to try to change it just because some aliens opened his cell door and a door out of the prison.
What really made the movie, in my opinion, was Billy Bob Thornton's totally straight face. The humor was all absurdity, so you can't have any of the characters laughing. They just have to go with it. What really made it good, though, was the fact that there were so many scenes that just had inner monologue where Ed had his totally straight face staring right into the camera. He was in the center of the screen with a relatively symmetric set. Anyone who knows anything about photography knows the rule of thirds. You never put your subject in the dead center of a photo, or at least you don't make the picture symmetric. The dissonance, then, makes the image more interesting. It invites your eye to wander around. Not so in "The Man Who Wasn't There". Ed looked the camera head on. It made you look at his face and nothing else. Your eyes did not wander in those scenes. The book has the liberty to show you everything through Meursault's eyes. The movie had to come up with some way to do that as well. I think the voice-over of those symmetric shots was perfect. You are looking right into Ed's face as he tells you what he's thinking. He almost seemed like a straight man.
One thing that was a pretty serious theme, but was comedic at times, was how everyone trusted Ed immediately. In the movie, we could see why that was in a way that was less obvious in the book. Ed was quiet, just sort of went along with things, and his reactions just made him look like an honest guy. We talked about how honest Meursault can be, but Ed looks honest, which can hit home more than just reading about him can. Ed was then surrounded by characters who were pretty much all dishonest in some way or another, and to varying degrees. The fact that Ed doesn't react to any of that very much, and that so much of the movie just seems random, just makes the absurdity actually funny. Even some of the actors are traditionally associated with comedic roles. So yeah, I was laughing pretty much the whole time.
I think that a lot of recent films are really good because they're able to mix comedy with deeper philosophical themes, and although I thought so much of the movie was hilarious as well, I wouldn't categorize it as either a comedy or a philosophical movie. Maybe both. Pulp Fiction is a lot like this as well. There's so much comedy in that movie, but it also makes you think.
ReplyDeleteI sort of touched on this in my brief comments about the film on my blog, but the absurdist humor (familiar to anyone who's enjoyed the Coens' other words) does sort of suit Camus' oddly defamiliarized representations of human conduct. If all human endeavor is absurd, a pie-eating contest where the winner declares that he never wants to eat another blueberry pie in his life, even as he cradles his trophy, is as good an illustration of the absurd as Camus could provide.
ReplyDeleteBut at the same time, the Coens always make us hesitate to take them too seriously. They would probably deny the philosophical underpinnings of this film up and down, just as they claim to have never read the Odyssey, on which _O Brother Where Art Thou?_ is based. But the "serious" stuff is there, even if they deny it--and I'd say, in this case, the "serious" *depends upon* the comedic/absurdist stuff.