Bartleby

I have no idea how to discuss this movie. Bartleby is unmistakably a product of the indie filmmaker boom of the 90's. There's touches of the "sequence of events, but no story" framework that can be found in Clerks, Ghost World, or Living In Oblivion. The dry observational humor so prevalent in that era of filmmaking. A general sense of contrarianism for the sake of it. Bartleby is very much a time capsule from the history of cinema, a movie that could never have been made this way at any other point in time. I can't decide if that helps or hinders it. For what story can be said to exist in Bartleby, the movie's two main characters are The Boss (played by David Paymer, and yes, he's never named) and the titular Bartleby, played by Crispin Glover. The Boss runs a public records processing firm that has a contract with a city. New to the position, he decides the office needs another employee to help with the filing, and hires Bartleby. At first, Bartleby is efficient, albeit eccentric (which says something, given the rest of the office staff), but over time, his eccentricates mutate, He responds to requests he doesn't want to perform with the phrase "I would prefer not to", he spends long amounts of time staring at a rattling HVAC duct, speaks to nobody, participates in nothing, and never seems to leave the office. Over time, this starts to wear on the staff, especially The Boss, who cannot figure out how to crack Bartleby when he won't leave, won't take money to leave, and responds to everything with some variation of "I would prefer not to". The majority of Bartleby is shot and sequences almost like a sitcom, with humorous but pointless scenarios in and about the office. 2/3's of the movie, in fact, takes place entirely within the office, with only the last act finally venturing out into the world for any appreciable amount of time. This change of scenery is contrasted with a change of color and set design; the world of the office is bright, and I mean BRIGHT, like a crayon factory exploded. Green walls are lime Jello green. Orange is vividly, aggressively orange. It's like the saturation has been turned up to 100 inside the office, which contrasts with the outside world, where the color palate is muted to the point where every color could be given the adjective "clinically depressed". Visually speaking, Bartleby is an eye-catching movie. The acting, too, is also attention-grabbing, and I mean that in the most neutral way possible. In looking at other opinions of this movie, I saw the word "stylized" used for the acting, and that's as apt as any other descriptor. Nobody is trying to portray a real person here; these are all Characters, capital C very much intentional, hyper-actualized and in no way intended to resemble real people. Glenne Headly, for instance, plays the office secretary Vivian. If you're familiar with Glenne Headly, she was very much a character actor that was called on for a certain kind of role, and she did it well. Here, she does not play that role. Instead, she plays an aggressively flirtatious woman with an amusingly large vocabulary, which she uses at all times to substitute even common words with multi-syllabic alternatives. She can't say "I know who to sue"; she says "I've discovered whom we should litigate". She calls a leaky ceiling "precipitation". There's another office staff member, Ernest, who is nervous and riddled with anxiety, to the point that he can't help but empty all his life's woes on the table when asked "how ya doin'?" by a co-worker. What's so weird about the performances is that they're comedic and OTT if you take them out of context or judge them against most any other performance in any movie every made ... but within the context of this movie, they're natural. The world of Bartleby is exaggerated and weird and juts out from the natural sense of order of our world, not so much that it's unrecognizable, but recognizable enough as not quite right, and the acting here reflects that. That is no better illustrated in than the main character. The only shred of backstory the movie gives us is that Bartleby "worked" at the USPS dead letter office for 8 years, and only stopped because they moved the office. Beyond that, all we can glean is that Bartleby has reached a mental breaking point in life. He just can't handle the world as is, and he definitely can't handle change. What makes Bartleby hard to discuss, though, is that because it is so singular in design and execution, it is hard to know what the bar is for success or failure here. The movie only really has one joke once Bartleby shows up -- how much awkwardness can someone take? Whether it's Bartleby refusing work assignments, Vivian throwing herself at a city employee with the desperation of a cartoon character throwing themselves at imaginary oasis in the desert, or one of Ernest's awkward conversations with his coworkers, they're all built on presenting a comedic dynamic of bounding a weird person off a person not prepared for or able to handle the weirdness of that other person. The movie tries to shuffle around the kinds of weirdness, but it's like Taco Bell's menu being remixes of the same six ingredients in a different vessel. And it's delivered with a deadpan dryness that makes vermouth as sweet as a Snickers bar. I could point out how this would result in a diminishing returns situation, and that I was getting as aggravated as The Boss was over the course of the movie ... but maybe that was the design? Because by the end of the movie, The Boss begins to understand Bartleby's broken state. Are we supposed to relate to The Boss now? Was the movie trying to wear down the viewer for that purpose. Is it supposed to be a straight satire? A wry observation? I don't know, and the movie has no intention of letting you know. It is as open to interpretation as it is original and weird. I can only speak to my experience with it, I guess, and say that I respect its bold commitment to ... whatever it was trying to do. And I appreciate the visual style and acting choices. As a comedy, though, it came off gratingly one-note, and as a drama, its commitment to weirdness and a sitcom-style presentation undercuts the ability to be dramatic. It's fascinating, and it is a movie that wears YMMV as a badge of honor, and for that reason, I do recommend it, but only to the most adventurous cinephiles. The average movie fan will find this monotonous and impenetrable.