“The Middle Man” Movie Review

 

“The Middle Man”

 

Movie Review

 

The Middle Man, a 2021 black comedy film directed by Bent Hamer and starring Pal Sverre Hagen and Tuva Novotny, is based on the novel Sluk by Lars Saabye Christensen. It is set in a small town where the local government hires Frank Farrelli as a middleman to deliver bad news to residents on an increasing number of occasions.

 

A Middle Man, who handles casualty notification, is needed in the town of Karmack, which has experienced a string of deadly accidents. Frank Farrelli, who has been living with his mother and being unemployed for a while, is hired, and the first occasion for him to attend a notification in his official position presents itself. As several weeks pass without an incident, Frank and his closest friend Steve Miller visit a bar. Steve receives a blow from Bob Spencer after a minor altercation they had there, causing Steve to suffer a severe TBI and fall into a coma. Unresponsiveness following a coma is associated with a very poor result, according to doctors. Frank informs Martin, the father of Steve, the following day.

 

Frank gets Martin's possessions, including the power of attorney over Steve, after he passes away next to his son on the hospital bed. Frank decides to quit receiving life-sustaining care in light of Steve's dire prognosis. Frank eventually requests Arthur Clintstone to have an affair with Bob in return for favors because he believes Bob is ultimately to blame for Steve's passing. But by chance, Arthur ends up killing Bob.

 

Martin's former home is burned down when Frank and Arthur, who are covering up the murder, move the body there. The incident seems to be an accident to the police, but Frank's mother disagrees since she smelled the gas they used to start the fire. She tells Frank that she didn't think Frank's father's death was an accident and that she didn't think he did anything wrong. "Frank, I don't want to have anything more to do with you," she says as the two grow distant.

 

The idea that Scandinavians have an uncanny ability to speak English has persisted for a long time. The cast does a great job portraying ersatz Americans, although occasionally a vowel sound accidentally switches to a Scandinavian one or a phrase doesn't sound quite right. This tiny "off-ness" really fits in nicely with The Middle Man's ideas and aesthetic because everything in this movie feels a little bit clipped and out of place.

 

When he concentrates on setting and milieu, director Bent Hamer is at his finest in this film. The world of Kormack is one of damp rot-wood houses, creaking rusted street signs, and windowless workplaces, even though it was constructed using location shots from Canada and Germany. In an era of neoliberal, hollowed-out budgets when policy is intended to soothe the symptoms rather than the causes of such unhappiness, the notion that such a municipality must outsource heavily emotional labor is a plausible strike at small-town government procedures.

 

The Middle Man fits in with a certain Nordic strain of black humour because of this sense of a dismal, dead-eyed world, and you know you're in morbid territory when lines like "my daughter doesn't have a face" are delivered with belly-laugh-inducing deadpan.

 

Director Hamer unfortunately doesn't completely stick to the ending. If followed to its farthest disarray, the underlying misanthropy of his premise would have produced a suitably cathartic conclusion, but I have no idea how closely this adheres to the original novel by Lars Saabye Christensen. However, the last third backloads a large portion of the plot; after plodding along happily for the majority of the duration, the tempo abruptly picks up as if hastily realizing there is a story to wrap up. The weird pleasantness of its closing seconds, though, is the true problem. Sadly, it has a pleasantness that contrasts sharply with the somber and expertly created tone of everything that has come before.

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