American Paladin, a closer look

"He is a man who cannot be rejected."-- Charlie Rose

Not having a phone is a rather radical act of self-assurance for Dinklage's  Finbar, an ascendant insularity that really isn't punctuated by the insistent overtures of the Cuban food vendor, and it is in this sense that I'd argue that McCarthy reverses the polarity of the pro-forma progressive paradigm of The Station Agent into something more unwittingly tragic, not that McCarthy denies Dinklage a human range. Much like Garcia's deployment of the dwarf actor in Things, both these directors go against the theatrical absurdity of type, and Finbar is a person, whom, according to interpretation, is yanked out of his shell by the disruptions of the fallible beings around him, but what do we know at the end of the day, about the train aficionado, aside from the fixation repressed persons without other outlets develop for objects of technological condensation?

We know he had an implied intimacy with the deceased Henry, through affinity and shared interest. We know he's had sex, this through Joe's inquiry, and McCarthy's adept poke in the eye of tiresome ambulatory curiosity, we see a regressive boyhood within the adult whose interior rage dares a suicide but pulls back. We see him chastened into empathy for Clarkson as the inconsolable mother who uses her grief for the loss of her son to feed off Finbar's stoicism; no needy cripple here, only selfish ambulatory grifters, and though McCarthy happily resolves his film into the usual bromides of acceptance within loss while life still moves forward, even chilling with beers on the porch, that is about it. The jester lets down his shield, not performing on demand for the court, as was superimposed on viewers for most of the 20th century. Dwarfs were macabre signatures, from the wizard of oz through the Michael Dunn of Porter's Ship of Fools. Of course, the dwarf in Porter's character study fills the role of the chorus, and is allowed to be a mature persona too wise in the folly of life, but he is still a device, which is exactly what Dinklage remains in McCarthy's world of what's possible: the form of the shrunken human body is a mask, a mask to disguise, cover hideousness that may hide an ideally brutalized heart, in one of Peter Laurie's less typecast roles, straight through Mickey Rourke picking up the time honored conceit in Johnny Handsome.

Dinklage, much like Garcia's Albert, is actually more relevatory in Death at a Funeral as the hyped up prostitute for the secretly gay family man, conveying more in the stereotypical fetish than he does attempting to fully flesh out McCarthy's libertarian, somewhat self-hating freak.

Shoestring budget or not, Clarkson does a disservice to the taxing culture of mental illness, waltzing down the hospital corridor in scrubs, a my bad smile on her face after being the pill popping drama queen. Attempted suicides rolling back the emotional pain which reverberates on all those around them doesn't lend itself to that level of resolution.