The Penny Black
An unbelievably rare collectible hidden in the middle of nowhere, an invisible conman who comes and goes leaving nothing but questions in his wake, an innocent man with a questionable past caught in the middle … it’s all the makings of the grandest (and sometimes most cliched) of noir stories. The make the hero (and we as his surrogate) question what makes a choice good or bad, what are the realities of being honest or dishonest and are there ever any actual consequences to any of these things.
The Penny Black asks the most complex question of all: ‘does any of this even matter?’
Poking a pin in the bubble surrounding the core of your conceit doesn’t usually end well; it just reveals the whole exercise was the caretaking of hot air. Unless it’s all (maybe) real in which case the dire moral questions of fiction are quickly dropped for the more practical question of ‘what do I, or can I, do about this?’
This is the question (questions) before young Will (no relation to the director), an assuming Arizona man who happens to be the custodian of several volumes of very rare, very expensive (maybe authentic) stamps, including the notorious Penny Black stamp, left behind by his vanished-off-the-face-of-the-Earth roommate Roman. Who may or may not have been part of the Russian Mafia. And who may or may not realize Will has the stamps. Also, did I mention Will’s father was a conman himself who both left Will with rampant trust issues of his own and a skewed perspective on the individual merits of honesty. Is it any wonder director Saunders felt the immediate urge to begin documenting every part of Will’s story (even if none of it turned out to be true)? It would be less surprising if Raymond Chandler rose from the grave, drawn by its internecine web to explore one last time the uncertainties of human connection and behavior.
Saunders knows all of this and is up front from the jump that this could be all a put on by the conman son of a conman for reasons no one (least of all himself) could understand or articulate. The fact that the aformentioned Penny Black, one of the world’s first stamps and itself notorious for being forged by cheap London hustlers, is so incredibly on the nose about the dilemma before both Will and his story is understood and noted by Saunders from the beginning and he (and his film) never let go of his skepticism even as more and more pieces appear including the mercurial Roman himself. And why would it?
At some point there’s no way of knowing if any of this is real, unless you are the one perpetrating all of it and maybe not even then. Which may be the point. But at the same time, how could anyone not tell this story when laid in front of them? Which also may be the point.
The reality of it unfolds (over months and months) with the absurdist gleam of a Cohen Bros. film as Will and Saunders search for the illusive Roman, uncovering more and more evidence of his strange (possibly criminal) background while simultaneously questioning Will himself when some of the stamps going missing. Will’s very real concern quickly becomes very real paranoia as Roman himself becomes more and more of a cult figure, always out of reach, more folklore than man. Until suddenly, like the Wizard or Welles’ Harry Lime, he just appears in front of an apartment complex one evening to the amazement of everyone.
Is he the devil Will has started to recreate in his imagination? Is he just a man? Will he exonerate Will of his families (and perhaps his own) past deeds or will he accuse him of stealing the stamps as well. Are the stamps real or just more detritus a bunch of people with too much time on their hands have strung together in search for meaning within the everyday drudge of life?
There are answers to all of this, up to a point. Which is itself the point. There’s also a tremendous amount of humanity and some real wonder that yes indeed, truth really is stranger than fiction. And we’re all better that way.
The Penny Black is a slice of wonderful strangeness inside a slice of wonder life. Check it out as soon as you can.