Somewhere near the middle of The Man in the Hat, we realize what the intentions of directors John Paul Davidson and Stephen Warbeck are for this strange and strangely beguiling modern-day fable. Not for six minutes does any character speak, and our hero, the hat-wearing man in question, never speaks for the entirety of the picture. When someone does finally speak, it is to weave a tale of suspenseful banality, about reaching some important philosophical and moral crossroads by way of an everyday occurrence. It seems utterly insignificant in the moment, but we slowly realize that there is no way the film could continue to operate without this brief pause to tell this story. It comes to mean much to the hero, who finds himself at something of a crossroads in his journey to, well, somewhere.
There is something delightfully off-kilter about this moment, though, and it isn’t until later, when the man in the hat sits and listens to an amateur, but spirited, rendition of Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness,” that we understand those intentions: These are the operations, and this is the stop-and-start pacing, of a musical. That shouldn’t make sense, though, especially because even later than that performance, we hear Mathilda Homer’s “Memory” on the soundtrack.
Speech and song are vocal interludes in a story, written by the directors, that otherwise would be perfectly at home in the silent era. Indeed, the film is only a dozen or so speech inserts away from operating fully as a silent film, with only these interludes to provide spoken or sung words. The result is a bizarre confluence of ambitious intentions and warring tones that is entirely impossible to deny as a unique experience and only slightly distancing in emotional terms. It especially comes together as the pieces of the man’s journey unite into one big, puzzling venture. If any given viewer is unable to connect with the film from the opening scene, they are unlikely to connect with anything that follows.
As the film opens, the man in the hat (Ciáran Hinds) is driving into a nameless French villa, in a tiny Fiat 500. On his passenger seat sits a framed photo of a woman, who has clearly haunted him for some time. He simply drives into this villa, and we follow him as he enjoys a series of seemingly unconnected adventures with the inhabitants of this villa. His two sources of conflict, if one can call them that, are a group of intimidating men (Sylvain Thirolle plays the group’s leader) whom he witnesses tossing a corpse wrapped in garbage bags into the reservoir and a woman (Sasha Hails) riding a bike whom he may or may not know. The men pursue our protagonist, who in turn keeps running into the woman.
That’s about it in terms of substance, plot, or clear melodramatic incident, and it barely seems to count. Warbeck (who also provides the film’s jazzy, string score) and Davidson are mostly concerned with the man’s misadventures, which bring him into the vicinity of a number of interesting characters: Stephen Dillane as a bridge-dweller whose clothes and belongings always seem to be damp, Maïwenn as an introspective and regretful biker, Amit Shah and Zoé Bruneau as a pair of professional measurers (only in this heightened world would such an occupation make sense) who seem to be constantly on the verge of making a move on each other, Joseph Marcell and Sheila Reid as an aging couple on the outs, and many more than just these.
Hinds’s resolutely silent, observant, and still performance is in perfect harmony with the beguiling, deadpan strangeness of this set-up, which could easily be written off as twee, if not for the sadness peeking out from underneath. It isn’t easy to qualify or categorize The Man in the Hat, but it is certainly easy to grasp the unique hold it has on the viewer. It’s just an odd, lovely little movie.
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