1949, Santa Rosa, California. A laconic, chain-smoking barber with fallen arches tells a story of a man trying to escape a humdrum life. It’s a tale of suspected adultery, blackmail, foul play, death, Sacramento city slickers, racial slurs, invented war heroics, shaved legs, a gamine piano player, aliens, and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Ed Crane cuts hair in his in-law’s shop; his wife drinks and may be having an affair with her boss, Big Dave, who has $10,000 to invest in a second department store. Ed gets wind of a chance to make money in dry cleaning. Blackmail and investment are his opportunity to be more than a man no one notices. Settle in the chair and listen.

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)
  • Rating: (52,200 votes)
  • Tagline:The last thing on his mind is murder. »
  • Runtime:116 minutes
  • Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
  • Countries:USA, UK
  • Actors:
    Ed Crane
    Billy Bob Thornton
    Doris Crane
    Frances McDormand
    Frank
    Michael Badalucco
    Big Dave Brewster
    James Gandolfini
    Ann Nirdlinger Brewster
    Katherine Borowitz
    Creighton Tolliver
    Jon Polito
    Birdy Abundas
    Scarlett Johansson
    Walter Abundas
    Richard Jenkins
    Freddy Riedenschneider
    Tony Shalhoub
    Officer Persky
    Christopher Kriesa
  • Genres:Crime, Drama
  • Producers:
    Tim Bevan
    executive producer  
    John Cameron
    co-producer  
    Ethan Coen
    producer  
    Eric Fellner
    executive producer  
    Robert Graf
    associate producer  
    Joel Coen
    producer (uncredited)  
  • Plot: 1949, Santa Rosa, California. A laconic, chain-smoking barber with fallen arches tells a story of a man trying to escape a humdrum life. It's a tale of suspected adultery, blackmail, foul play, death, Sacramento city slickers, racial slurs, invented war heroics, shaved legs, a gamine piano player, aliens, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Ed Crane cuts hair in his in-law's shop; his wife drinks and may be having an affair with her boss, Big Dave, who has $10,000 to invest in a second department store. Ed gets wind of a chance to make money in dry cleaning. Blackmail and investment are his opportunity to be more than a man no one notices. Settle in the chair and listen. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
The Man Who Wasn't There
  • User's comment:Why you should see this movie by jhochner

    It is beautifully and refreshingly unpretentious. It is acted and filmed with grace and delicacy. This is the kind if movie we hope to find while sitting through most of the glitz and superficiality that gets made. Without question worth eight bucks, and two hours of your evening. Score another one for the Coen brothers.


  • Quotes: Reidenschneider: They got this guy, in Germany. Fritz Something-or-other. Or is it? Maybe it's Werner. Anyway, he's got this theory, you wanna test something, you know, scientifically - how the planets go round the sun, what sunspots are made of, why the water comes out of the tap - well, you gotta look at it. But sometimes you look at it, your looking changes it. Ya can't know the reality of what happened, or what would've happened if you hadn't-a stuck in your own goddamn schnozz. So there is no "what happened"? Not in any sense that we can grasp, with our puny minds. Because our minds... our minds get in the way. Looking at something changes it. They call it the "Uncertainty Principle". Sure, it sounds screwy, but even Einstein says the guy's on to something. Ed Crane: He told them to look not at the facts, but at the meaning of the facts. Then he said the facts had no meaning. Ed Crane: And then it was Riedenschneider's turn. I gotta hand it to him, he tossed a lot of sand in their eyes. He talked about how I'd lost my place in the universe; how I was too ordinary to be the criminal mastermind the D.A. made me out to be; how there was some greater scheme at work that the state had yet to unravel. And he threw in some of the old "truth" stuff he hadn't had a chance to trot out for Doris. He told them to look at me, look at me close. That the closer they looked, the less sense it would all make; that I wasn't the kind of guy to kill a guy; that I was The Barber, for Christsake. I was just like them - an ordinary man. Guilty of living in a world that had no place for me, yeah. Guilty of wanting to be a dry cleaner, sure. But not a murderer. He said I *was* modern man, and if they voted to convict me, well, they'd be practically cinching the noose around their own necks. He told them to look, not at the facts, but at the meaning of the facts. Then he said the facts had no meaning. It was a pretty good speech. It even had me going...
  • Also known as: El hombre que nunca estuvo (Argentina), El hombre que nunca estuvo (Chile), El hombre que nunca estuvo (Mexico - imdb display title), El hombre que nunca estuvo (Peru), The Man Who Wasn't There (Austria), The Man Who Wasn't There (Germany), Az ember, aki ott se volt (Hungary), Bâbâ (Japan - imdb display title), Covek koji nije bio tamo (Serbia), Covjek koji nije bio tamo (Croatia - imdb display title), Czlowiek, którego nie bylo (Poland), Der unauffällige Mr. Crane (Germany - TV title), El hombre que nunca estuvo allí (Spain), L'homme qui n'était pas là (Canada - French title), L'uomo che non c'era (Italy), Mees, keda polnud (Estonia), Mies joka ei ollut siellä (Finland), O Barbeiro (Portugal - imdb display title), O Homem que Não Estava Lá (Brazil), O anthropos pou den itan ekei (Greece - transliterated ISO-LATIN-1 title), Orada olmayan adam (Turkey - Turkish title), The Barber Project (USA - working title), The barber: l'homme qui n'était pas là (France),

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