Bartleby

My first reaction to "Bartleby" is that this movie is much like a previous Crispin Glover effort, "Rubin and Ed" about a strange, directionless man with little background, who plods his way through life carelessly. Some of the awkward moments and surreal dialogue and movements within Bartleby seem to be forced, trying to hard, to capture a campy feel. The film doesn't quite reach a campy status though because of this. Although Glover captures his quirky behavior perfectly, from staring at the air vent for hours, to endlessly saying "I prefer not to.." to every work request, and the dynamics of the working relationship with his boss are interesting at times. Joe Piscopo and Maury Chaykin have some strange roles as co-workers who are up to no good... how these guys stay employed are a mystery.

Bartleby has two major problems. One is, it just gets boring. A good slow movie can do and say a lot, but Bartleby just seems to be obsessed more with how weird it can be, how far it can push the surrealism of its cast and the corporate buildings on the hills. Another thing is, why does Bartleby's boss take such an interest in him? What is the motivation? Perhaps this is best explained in Herman Melville's book, from which this movie is based. For a Crispin Glover fan, this is even barely worth watching.

I found this movie disturbing. Advertised as a comedy, it is no such thing. There is a lot of comedy in there, all right, but overall the themes are heavy, disturbing, even horrific. Crispin Glover's performance is flawless, and his role in the story is to pose a lot of questions that never get answered. The story revolves around the other characters' failure to figure him out. The new employee at the Public Records Office in an unnamed city starts out doing a great job, but he does less and less work as time goes on until he is spending most of his time refusing requests to perform any job tasks, or simply gazing up into the air-conditioning vent. They fire him, but he doesn't leave. It gets worse from there, believe me.

I loved this film and I cannot believe how so few critics liked it. What were they thinking? Apparently one critic thought since it was based on a short story that the film should be shorter. Of course, once one critic says its too long, every other critic has to agree. I guess David Mamet is an exception to the rule. Bartleby is not too long. It deserves it's running time so that we can absorb the story more closely. When we hear Bartleby repeat the same words: "I'd prefer not to" we are not given any explanation for the comment but yet it becomes extremely poignant. Eventually everyone in the office begins to use the word "prefer" and we see how Bartleby has affected the workplace like a disease. The film is very bizarre particularly because of the way the boss reacts to Bartleby. Instead of just firing the guy for not doing his job, he tries to reason with him. Eventually Barlteby gets in an even more bizarre predicament that has even more to do with just "prefering not to" work. The boss is obsessed with Bartleby and the film turns very Kafkaesque. We see a capitalist scenario where people topple on another for greed, power and respect. The film is based on the short story "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville. It was appropriate to mention the source because the story seems very relevant not only to our modern culture but also to what Melville went after writing Moby Dick. The film also has a wonderful score with a Theramin instrument and a brilliant cinematography.

The head of a public records office advertises for a new employee. Only one person responds--Bartleby, a former postal worker who at first files like a demon then lapses into apathy. Bartleby stands all day looking at an air vent in the ceiling, responding to every request from his boss and coworkers with, "I would prefer not to." Eventually the boss retaliates with passive-aggressive acts aimed at getting rid of the man. Till the very end, however, Bartleby remains an enigma, a human cipher who refuses to give up his secrets.

Hardly an engaging story premise? That's what I thought when I trudged through Herman Melville's mid-nineteenth century story "Bartleby the Scrivener" in college lit class. Sure, the story has an important theme and some interesting symbolism, but it's also dull, dull, dull. However, director Jonathan Parker has taken the best sort of revenge on this canonical work of American literature; he's turned it into a zany, low-budget, laugh fest--getting across many of the essential ideas while also entertaining his audience. Parker has approached the sort of exaggerated, stale, depressing office atmosphere seen at the beginning of "Joe Versus the Volcano" and turned it inside out, covering it with a colorful, kitschy facade to inflate the absurdity of modern information mills.

Essential to the success of the film is the fine ensemble cast. Crispin Glover deserves more lead roles, and though with Bartleby he does spend most of his time immobile and silent, perhaps no other actor can accomplish more with simple posture, well-manipulated expressions, and quirky movement. Glenne Headly is a scream in her exaggerated seduction attempts aimed at Seymour Cassel. Joe Piscopo is also in fine form as the office macho man, though he has aged dramatically since we saw him last in, what--"Wise Guys"? Maury Chaykin gives the overweight and nerve-racked Ernie a comic flair, playing with his desktop windup toys only to flinch every time they jump, and pulling off an impressive physical comedy scene involving a sandwich, a photocopier, and a watercooler. Finally, David Paymer as "The Boss" provides a solid focus for the film with his adaptive performance of a complex character.

Ordinarily when the industry tries to turn a short story like Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" (which I haven't read since high school) into a "major motion picture," you can forget about it. The kiss of death. You want to see an example, watch Hollywood's version of "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" sometime, especially the scene in which Gregory Peck receives a message -- that famous floating pregnant italicized first paragraph of Hemingway's -- and reads it aloud between guffaws in a smokey saloon midway through the film.

I wasn't expecting much from this movie either. It has less action than Hemingway so I was prepared to switch channels on impulse. But I was surprised because it turned out to be very well done. Melville is often cited as a forbear of Kafka but I don't know how well deserved that description is. The fact is that after Melville and before Kafka there was an enormous interest in bureaucratization, the "rationality" of labor as Max Weber referred to it. It was the period in which small craftsmen were being replaced by the kind of gigantic corporations that "alienated" the worker. Henry Ford adopted Jackson's "assembly line" methods and -- well, you get the picture. Bureaucracy, as a social problem and as a literary subject, was in the air. Anyway there's a little touch of Ionesco in here too, in addition to Kafka.

Wardrobe is great. Everyone's dress reflects his or her personality but not in any obvious way. Art direction is equally well done. The acting could hardly be improved upon and the script is surprisingly well joined. The latter two points are important because this is hardly more than a staged play and is very dependent on those aspects of production. And, oh, I have to mention the score too. Most of the music is a tinkling solo piano straight out of a silent movie. The rest is most queerly orchestrated: percussion, piano, bowed bass, theramin, trombone and vibes. (It's as if someone had thrown the name of every possible instrument into a hat including the glockenspiel and drawn out half a dozen at random.)

There isn't space enough to get into the rewards this film offers but let me mention two anyway. The performances are fine, but Glenn Headly is outstanding with her hooded eyelids and her gaze which seems to drop unzippingly down a man's body when she speaks to him. Her voice is sultry, mellifluous, insinuating. And her posture! Well, it's easy to get laughs out of a funny walk. Monty Python built a sketch around the idea. But Headly's BELONGS to her character. Her pelvis and belly are thrust forward, her shoulders drawn back, a Venus of Willendorf minus two hundred and fifty pounds.

The script -- except for an overblown plea for something called "humanity" at the end -- is not only engrossing but at times extremely funny if it's listened to. (The director doesn't shove the comedy down your throat.) After Bartleby refuses to work anymore by simply saying, "I prefer not to," half a dozen times, the other three office workers pick up on the word and begin using it unthinkingly. "Would you prefer coffee or tea?" "Your wife is on line three, or line two if you'd prefer." It begins to drive the boss mad. Another line: "Business Park! What kind of address is that? Those two words should never be used together. There's a word for people who do that. Oxymorons." And a delapidated old drunken bum stops the boss on a street and asks him, "Pardon me. Do you happen to have an extra dollar and thirteen cents? I was just xeroxing my dissertation --"

Melville's symbolism could get a bit thin -- the lightening rod salesman -- but Bartleby is more like the white whale. And I hate to say this because I'm sure Meville wouldn't have said it but there's a certain concordance between "Moby Dick" and "Bartleby. Both contrast the instrumental aspect of capitalism (the records room boss and the crew of the Pequod) with a stubborn and apparently spiritless self dermination (Bartleby and Ahab). As for the whale, I frankly don't know what he stands for unless it's the unknowable itself.

This film is really pretty good.