Tuesday 8 November 2022

The Man Who Wasn't There

The Man Who Wasn't There [Joel & Ethan Coen, 2001]:

Melding a 1940s noir stylisation with a distant 1950s sense of atomic-age paranoia, this much underrated and underseen effort is not just the most imaginative of the Coen brothers' nihilistic investigations into the theme of accountability, but a subjective character study about a man seemingly content to drift through his own existence. Like the similarly underrated A Serious Man (2009), apathy is presented as a kind of hidden bliss here; the characters in both films only smited when they finally attempt to control their own destiny. A masterwork of dark irony, black comedy, and a peerless period aesthetic.

Eve's Bayou

Eve's Bayou [Kasi Lemmons, 1997]: A tremendous feature debut from actor turned writer and director Kasi Lemmons. The mood here is slow a...