Norwegian writer and director Bent Hamer, brings his Nordic sensibilities to this dark “comedy”. I put comedy in quotations because while there is humour to this film, it’s just not the kind you laugh out loud from, and oftentimes you feel terrible for even thinking it is funny. The film is about a dying town who has a commission run by the sheriff, a pastor and a doctor and they hire someone to be the bearer of bad news to next of kin when someone dies. But the town of Karmack, isn’t an average town, people seem to have freak accidents in ways that are both horrifying and deeply ironic.
Norwegian actor Pål Sverre Hagen, who starred in the 2012 Oscar nominated film Kon-Tiki, plays Frank, a man who is hired to bring the worst news possible to families. He gets the job because he’s used to giving out bad news as a former attendant at a train station, letting customers know that trains were no longer stopping in Karmack, himself being blamed for something beyond his control. He experienced tragedy in losing his father in one of the town’s many freak accidents. Paul Gross plays the town sheriff, knowing that Karmack is about to run out of money but still finding it useful to have a person like Frank on the payroll.
Frank is told his beat up car needs to be refurbished and given a new paint job, one in grey. He also gets fitted for a new suit, a black blazer and pants and black tie to go with it. Hagen’s tall stature on his slim body makes him look imposing like an angel of death. He sits around on his stoop waiting for bad news to arrive to deliver it, or hovers at the end of a hospital bed. The film feels like a modern adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal where Death follows a medieval knight around waiting for the right time to claim what is his. Frank gets accused of being bad luck and the reason why there are so many freak accidents are because of him, making you question if he had something to do with the train station shutting down too.
The film was shot in Sault Ste. Marie, a former steel town that has been rapidly declining, and it was used for Karmack, an American city that we aren’t told what state it is in, but could easily be any town that has experienced similar hard times like Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland or Buffalo. You can tell that it isn’t set dressing to see an abandoned main strip, with boarded up shops and graffiti so faded there aren’t any taggers around to vandalize these properties anymore. Not since Midnight Cowboy in 1969, have I seen a city so drab and depressing on film.
The main thesis of the film is how people deal with grief, Frank apparently experienced none over his father’s death, but when his job hits close to home with someone close to him being a victim of head scratching tragedy he begins to unravel. Every time Frank has to deliver bad news we get to see the full spectrum of how people handle such an intense report. Couples will have wildly different responses, like Sheila McCarthy as Mrs. Stout, who upon learning of her son’s passing, jumps out of the shop her and her husband share to rush to the hospital because it couldn’t possibly be true, while Bill Lake who plays Mr. Stout slumps in his chair and breaks down crying trying to process the information.
As the film goes on, things get darker and darker, making your chest tighten up at how difficult it is becoming to be a person forced to deliver only bad news. Frank is like a Michael Scott type of character, that is if you remove any sense of humour he might have and are just left with the bleak awkwardness of a man who you know is making wrong decisions. Hagen’s often blank face is a well of confusion and bitterness that is utterly striking to watch, you can’t take your eyes off of him even if you know you should look his way.
The Middle Man was seen during the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. Thank you to Route 504 for the advanced screener. The film does not have a North American release date at the time.
