The Middle Man
As things proceed from bad to worse in a small American town, a middle-man is hired to deliver the bad news in Bent Hamer’s haunting tragicomedy.
Regardless of the fact that the source of this film is a novel by Lars Saabye Christensen, The Middle Man is a film totally expressive of its creator, the writer/director Bent Hamer. Although Hamer is Norwegian, the fact that this new work is set in the American Midwest and is consequently an English-language movie in no way lessens the personal character of the piece. Nevertheless, what makes The Middle Man especially intriguing is one’s gradual realisation that this film is going in a direction which eventually makes it quite distinct from the tone of such earlier Hamer works as Kitchen Stories (2003) and O’Horten (2007).
Hamer was in his late thirties before he made his first feature film but it soon became apparent that as a writer/director he had a Scandinavian sensibility which led to tragicomedy being central in his work. This would lead to comparisons with Sweden’s Roy Andersson and with Finland’s Aki Kaurismäki while his eye for comic detail also reminded some critics of the comedies of Jacques Tati. In the case of The Middle Man, he is telling a story that might invite us to expect a black comedy. The central concept is that Frank Farrelli (Pål Sverre Hagen) lives in the decaying town of Karmack. Not surprisingly the local cinema has already closed and the rundown nature of the place is now such that the electricity supply is unreliable and proper lighting cannot be guaranteed. Nevertheless, the town has a claim to fame: it is the scene of the highest number of accidents that result in death. Consequently, the City Hall has created a special post, that of a middle man whose job it is to be the official breaker of the bad news to inhabitants who have just lost a relative in this way.
Frank applies for this role and is duly appointed by a committee of three: the sheriff (Paul Gross), the pastor (Nicolas Bro) and the doctor (Don McKellar). Things are also looking up in another way too since Frank, something of a loner and still living with his mother (Nina Andresen Borud), meets the City Hall receptionist, Blenda (Tuva Novotny), and begins a relationship with her. However, Bob Spencer (Trond Fausa) comes to regard Frank with hostility since he had previously been involved with Blenda himself and had been Frank’s unsuccessful rival for the post of middle man.
Making the work of this middle man central to a quirkily humorous tale does not, I think, yield black comedy because that's a mode which minimises human feeling and this film does not do that. The balance that Hamer seeks is more aptly described as dark comedy since The Middle Man comes across as a gentle film which is aware of the absurdity in Frank’s post but is also attuned to the absurdity of fate inherent in a sudden death. The manner in which Frank breaks the bad news and the contrasted responses to it are portrayed in ways that remain sensitive to the pain of the survivors yet still offer situations and revealing attitudes and details that invite us to laugh rather than to cry.
For much of its length, all of this is in keeping with Hamer’s earlier work which not infrequently featured a balance of this kind with an underlying sadness often proving to be the most effective element. It's a blend no less key to the films of Roy Andersson but, while both filmmakers favour a deadpan, observational approach to comedy, it is Andersson who, in picking on comic details in a manner that quietly points them up, is the more adept at actually making the viewer (or this viewer at any rate) laugh. Hamer is less gifted in this respect: he makes us recognise the comic element in the tragicomic circumstances, but doesn't get the most out of it. But he does create his own world and there is a precision in the images that render them a key part of the film’s character. Here he comes close to matching Andersson and he is absolutely fine too in the casting of his players and in his requirement that they should play everything straight. Pål Sverre Hagen is well suited to the leading role, but it is Tuva Novotny as Blenda who lingers most vividly in the memory.
I indicated that The Middle Man marks a breakaway for what we expect from Hamer and it is the late plot developments which emphasise that. Certain reviewers have seen in this film something of the tone that is found in works by the Coen brothers and the last section explains this. Just before that takes over, the tone has already allowed some telling scenes about prolonging the life of somebody in a coma, but this cutting down of the comic touches continues and leads next into something akin to a thriller and one complete with an ambiguous ending. The film seems to have changed character in a way that doesn't cohere sufficiently to satisfy. At this point a lower rating might seem to be called for, but, in spite of those comparisons with Roy Andersson, Hamer is his own man and there is something truly haunting about The Middle Man which makes it resonate regardless of its faults. To a striking degree, this is a film that could not be the work of any other filmmaker: Bent Hamer’s is a truly individual voice.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Pål Sverre Hagen, Tuva Novotny, Trond Fausa, Paul Gross, Don McKellar, Nicolas Bro, Nina Andresen Borud, Rossif Sutherland, Kenneth Welsh, Aksel Hennie, Jim Stark, Sheila McCarthy, Bill Lake, Christopher Buchholz, Jannike Schubert.
Dir Bent Hamer, Pro Bent Hamer, Jacob Jarek, Reinhard Brundig, Jamie Manning, Jennifer Weiss and Simone Urdl, Screenplay Bent Hamer from the novel by Lars Saabye Christensen, Ph John Christian Rosenlund, Pro Des Diana Magnus, Ed Anders Refn, Music Jonathan Goldsmith, Costumes Amanda Lee Street.
BulBul Films/Profile Pictures/Pandora Filmproduktion/Bord Cadre Films-Sovereign Film Distribution.
95 mins. Germany/Denmark/Canada/Norway. 2021. UK Rel: 10 March 2023. Cert. 15.
