May
24, 2002 | Perhaps the most impressive thing about Bartleby,
Jonathan Parker's cheeky update of Herman Melville's classic 1853 novella,
is how faithful the movie remains to the spirit, if not the letter,
of its source material.
To
be sure, the overall tone of this intriguingly peculiar comedy is more
reminiscent of Dilbert or Office Space. But that's altogether
apt: Melville is the literary forefather of those and most other satirical
accounts of workplace absurdities. Indeed, Parker's adaptation works
best when it remains truest to the author's original vision of not-so-quietly
desperate white-collar wage slaves.
With
invaluable assistance from costume designer Morganne Newson and production
designer Rosario Provenza, Parker creates a vaguely retro environment
where clothing and color schemes suggest the 1970s, but various props
and topical allusions indicate a 21st-century setting.
Under
different circumstances, such wink-wink stylization can be annoying,
if not self-defeating. Here, however, the deliberate fuzziness of period
cannily underscores the timelessness of the movie's (and, of course,
the novella's) observations about the drudgery of dead-end jobs, the
politics of interoffice relationships - and, more important, the degrees
of panic, rage and stunned incredulity that result when long-standing
routines are upset.
Working
from a script he co-wrote with Catherine Di Napoli, Parker sticks fairly
close to the basics of Melville's narrative. Early on, he introduces
David Paymer as manager of a firm that handles municipal public records
for an unidentified metropolis. (Parker shot Bartleby in and
around his home base of San Rafael, Calif.) To handle a newly increased
workload, The Boss - the character is known only by this title - decides
to increase his three-person staff by one. He eagerly considers placing
an ad for a dynamic "risk-taker." But Vivian (Glenne Headly),
his sexy but commonsensical secretary, takes a more realistic approach
to writing the "Help Wanted" copy.
The
brutally honest advertisement for a deadly dull and low-paying menial
position attracts only one candidate: Bartleby (Crispin Glover), a soft-spoken,
conservatively dressed and almost translucently pale young man with
a Brian Jones coiffure and a borderline-somnambulistic manner. His resume
lists only one job, as a postal clerk in the dead-letter department,
but that's all he needs to get hired.
At
first, Bartleby is an efficient, albeit standoffish, employee. Gradually,
however, his eccentricity escalates into a spooky weirdness. For openers,
he starts to refuse simple directives by The Boss - not with a surly
snarl of defiance, mind you, but with a deferential "I would prefer
not to."
His
passive resistance puzzles The Boss, who's more perplexed than enraged
by Bartleby's strange behavior. But Bartleby's two fellow clerks - Rocky
(Joe Piscopo), a sharp-dressed ladies' man with a truculent streak,
and Ernie (Maury Chaykin), a whiny neurotic whose chronic skittishness
appears to be a result of Vietnam War service - are seriously peeved
that their co-worker isn't carrying his fair share of the load.
And
it doesn't help much when The Boss inadvertently discovers that Bartleby
is literally making his home in the office after hours.
Eventually,
Bartleby stops producing altogether, calmly announcing: "I've given
up working." "I see," The Boss replies. "You realize
this will have an adverse effect on your salary?" So he fires Bartleby.
Trouble is, he can't get off that easily. Bartleby simply refuses to
vacate the premises, once again remaining polite but resolute: "I
would prefer not to go."
The
Boss persists. Maybe, he suggests, the young man should consider a different
occupation, like telemarketing or pest control? No dice. To each new
bit of vocational counseling, Bartleby replies: "I would prefer
not to."
Here
and elsewhere, Paymer treads a fine line between amusing buffoonery
and dead-serious befuddlement, between slow-simmering comic rage and
profoundly fearful consternation. It's a tricky piece of work, and it's
much to Paymer's credit that he carries off the juggling act with such
seemingly effortless ease. As Bartleby, Glover underplays effectively,
with a minimum of ostentatious quirkiness. The clerk remains more of
a literary conceit than a flesh-and-blood character. But Glover is everything
the movie needs, and likely very close to what Melville originally had
in mind.
The
supporting cast is a mixed bag. Chaykin and Piscopo are well cast -
the latter, surprisingly so. Credit the filmmakers for slyly enabling
Piscopo's Rocky to channel the misanthropic pugnacity of Turkey, the
equivalent character in Melville's original.
But
Headly is too obvious by half in her cartoonish vamping as Vivian, while
Dick Martin (as the city mayor) and Carrie Snodgress (as a book publisher)
are standouts for all the wrong reasons. It's worth noting that none
of these three characters is based on a figure in Melville's novella,
and that Snodgress' cameo actually is part of an unnecessary coda that
unwisely tries to take the movie one step beyond Melville's climactic
tragedy.
All
in all, however, this Bartleby is a much more successful translation
than its most famous previous film adaptation, writer-director Anthony
Friedman's similarly updated 1970 British production starring John McEnery
as Bartleby and Paul Scofield as his employer. Friedman's movie failed
to find the humor in Melville's story, and inexplicably ended before
Scofield uttered the novella's famous final lines ("Ah, Bartleby!
Ah, humanity!"). Parker's version has its own flaws - the eclectic
musical score, ranging from the theremin sounds of a '50s sci-fi B-movie
to the tinkling piano of silent-movie accompaniment, is much too intrusive
- but manages to incorporate most of the novella's themes, and even
a respectable amount of Melville's dialogue.
Better
still, like Melville, Parker refuses to "explain" the title
character. Perhaps he preferred not to?