HAIR PIECE

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." - Henry David Thoreau

There's an existential void that sits at the dark heart of many Coen Brothers films, which, for me, is the cinematic equivalent of the hole in the center of a sugar ring doughnut. We may enjoy the circular crust while we're eating it, but we must still acknowledge that this sweet treat has nothing in the middle—a reminder that impermanence resides in everything. This analogy borrows from Zen Buddhism, where the empty space of a circle, the ensō (円相), symbolizes the ultimate nature of reality. It represents a way of seeing beyond the conventional realm of phenomena, illustrating that the true nature of reality cannot be perceived or held onto by mere form—or by the crust of a doughnut.

There's also an empty space within a hula hoop, which Coen Brothers devotees may recall was Norville Barnes’ (Tim Robbins) innovation for Hudsucker Industries in 1994’s The Hudsucker Proxy. Norville is fortunate to have an idea, unlike poor Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) in The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), who cannot conceive of anything so brilliant. It is from this empty vacuum—a quiet frustration born of the inability to innovate or create—that karma, or bad action, often emerges, particularly in film noir, which TMWWT most certainly is.

Typically, in noir, a man desperate to escape the constraints of a restrictive, ordinary life seeks a way out, often via the siren-like enticement of a femme fatale, who encourages him to break free from his groundhog-day existence. This often involves some kind of criminal plan that usually comes at a high cost.

The difference for Ed Crane is that his plan is not inspired by a woman, but by hair. After all, he is a barber, and cutting hair is his business. As he reflects on the idea that hair, like life, continues to grow until it decays, he finds himself struggling with the cyclical futility of existence. Ed wants to transcend this morose realisation but is hindered by his inability to fully imagine something beyond it. He senses that there is something bigger than the way things appear, yet he can't quite articulate it.

I thought about what an undertaker had told me once - that your hair keeps growing, for a while anyway, after you die, and then it stops. I thought, "What keeps it growing? Is it like a plant in soil? What goes out of the soil? The soul? And when does the hair realize that it's gone?"

On the precipice of barely existing at all, Ed Crane finds himself easily persuaded by the sales pitch for dry cleaning delivered by a customer, Creighton Tolliver (Jon Polito), who comes in late one afternoon for a haircut. The entrepreneur extols dry cleaning as the "wave of the future," inspiring Crane to find some money to invest in the visionary idea.

Something about the concept of making things clean appeals to Ed, which could symbolise various things—such as the desire to avoid accumulating dirt or karma and to lead a perfect, spotless existence. It’s ironic that he should harbor such ambitions in a film noir, a genre that invariably involves muddying one’s destiny with ill-conceived plans.

While shaving his wife Doris’s legs in the bath after contemplating Tolliver’s dry cleaning proposal, it’s almost impossible to tell if the inscrutable Ed is repulsed by her loose body hair floating in the soapy water—a reflection of his own existential fixation on 'cleanliness.' Later, when he refers to the young girl Birdy (Scarlett Johansson) as a "good, clean kid," we don’t see Ed as a Humbert Humbert figure lusting after her in a sexual way. Instead, he regards her in a genuinely pure sense, finding solace in her innocence, untouched by the burdens of experience and reality. Her seemingly unsullied nature brings Ed some peace in his quietly agitated state of mind.

This illusion of purity in Birdy appeals greatly to Ed and explains why he is so eager to help her achieve something beyond the humdrum existence he himself is trapped in. He doesn’t want her to end up like his wife, Doris (Frances McDormand). However, after encouraging Birdy to audition forJacques Carcanogues (Adam Alexi-Malle), the music teacher matter-of-factly informs Ed that Birdy doesn't have what it takes to be a great pianist.

"The girl? She seems like a very nice girl. She plays, monsieur, like a very nice girl. Her playing very polite. I cannot teach her to have the 'soul'. Look monsieur, playing the piano, is not about the fingers. Done with the fingers, yes. But the music, she is inside. Inside, monsieur." - Jacque Carcanogues

This critique by Carcanogues dismays Ed tremendously, as it touches upon something elusive that he can't quite grasp: the idea of a soul—the part of existence that lies beyond reason and logic. Ed can hear music and feel it to an extent, but he fails to differentiate between hearing the notes played literally as written and experiencing them as expressed by the player of the piece itself. He is living his own life as if he is merely playing the notes of existence without applying any wille zum Leben (will to live) from deep within.

It has been said that The Man Who Wasn’t There explores similar themes of despair and existentialism to those found in the work of philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. The dread that the Coen Brothers explore in the character of Ed Crane is expressed in a way that has never before been distilled to such an artistic level in the film noir genre. For this reason alone, I believe the film to be one of their very best.

And finally, there's something poetically apt about Ed having his leg shaved—recalling Doris’s legs being shaved in the bath—by the prison guards before he is electrocuted in the chair for a crime he didn't commit, much like he didn't really exist; hence the title The Man Who Wasn't There. Being made clean through final annihilation in the electric chair (echoing the barber's chair) seems to bring Ed's journey to its logical conclusion as he observes the witnesses in the observation gallery with their different haircuts, just as we see at the beginning of the movie with the young kids whose hair Ed is styling. Everything comes full circle, and the damn hair just keeps growing.

Like life.