20 years of The Man Who Wasn't There
On May 13, 2001, at the Cannes International Film Festival, on the eve of the official opening of the film festival, the premiere of Joel Coen's film "The Man Who Wasn't There" took place. Joel and Ethan Coen were named as scriptwriters in the credits of the film. Although many critics see the plot of the film as similar to that of Albert Camus's debut novel "L'Étranger (The Outsider, or The Stranger)", the name of the French writer was not mentioned in the credits of the film.
The film "The Man Who Wasn't There" was nominated for the main prize of the Cannes Film Festival - the Palme d'Or. However, the jury of the film festival, chaired by the great scandinavian Actress Liv Ullman, considered the most worthy of the main prize of the festival the Italian melodrama "La stanza del figlio (The Son's Room)" directed by Nanni Moretti. The company of relative "losers" to Joel Coen's film was, among others, such pictures as "Moulin Rouge!" by Baz Luhrmann, "Mulholland Drive" by David Lynch. But the film "The Man Who Wasn't There" was not left without an award: Joel Coen, as well as David Lynch, was awarded the prize for Best Director.
At the beginning of the following year, 2002, Joel Coen's film "The Man Who Wasn't There" received three nominations for the American Golden Globe Award, but did not win any. In the most important of the received nominations - Best Motion Picture - Drama - the victory went to the picture of Ron Howard "A Beautiful Mind". David Lynch's film "Mulholland Drive" once again accompanied the Joel Coen's picture, but Peter Jackson's film "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" was added to them. The American Film Academy awarded Joel Coen's film only one nomination - Best Cinematography, but the Coens' film did not win that either.
A little later, Joel Coen's film "The Man Who Wasn't There" was nominated for the French César Award, but here the preference was given to the above-mentioned film by David Lynch. But the Italian David di Donatello Award in the category of Best Foreign Film went to the film "The Man Who Wasn't There", although the competition for Joel Coen's film was the extremely popular and very successful French romantic comedy "Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain" by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. While the box office of the Joel Coen film turned out to be less than the cost of its production.
Reviews of professional film critics were extremely diverse and contradictory. Jim Hoberman, for example, quipped: "There's a fine distinction between the cool and the comatose and, punishingly slow, The Man Who Wasn't There repeatedly drifts over the line.". And Kenneth Turan from "The Los Angeles Times" noted with delight the inherent character of the film: "A lovingly done recreation of the classic, brooding film noir visual style, reeking with atmosphere and gloriously black and white."
A kind of generalizing assessment of the film was given by Roger Ebert, who awarded Joel Coen's film "The Man Who Wasn't There" three stars out of four possible and noted in his review: "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."
The following figures speak about the rating of Joel Coen's film "The Man Who Wasn't There" by ordinary moviegoers: 58% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave this film ratings from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the film's rating according to FilmGourmand was 8.825, which allowed it to take the 208th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
