The first time we see Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire in Backrooms, the furniture store owner squints his eyes at the front window as a bright red, spray-painted “RIP OFF” glares back at him. As he enters, generic signs reading “ENTIRE STORE ON SALE!” and “EVERYTHING MUST GO!” decorate the ceiling. It’s abundantly clear that this is not a thriving business. Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) spends his days at the store – and his nights, since his wife “kicked” him out – drowning his sorrows in the showroom. When his therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve), and author of ‘The Window Within,’ suggests Clark is lonely, he rejects it on the basis that he has employees and customers, and during a roleplay session in which Mary acts as his wife, Clark erupts in anger: “I am a fucking architect, I’m just stuck selling shit furniture…”
The store was never meant to be more than a temporary way to pay the bills, but there is no gateway within its boring, cream walls. Until there is. Shrouded in cheap wood and fluorescent light, liminality grows out of the store’s uncanny performance of intimacy and warmth. And Clark, disappointed and unfulfilled, is an extension of this coldness, slowly becoming as hardened as the peg leg he dons for an embarrassing and sad commercial that leaves him flat on his ass. Clark isn’t an artist; he isn’t even a salesman; he is a mascot for failure. And he is not the only one. In cinema, this specific brand of businessman is often just as artificial as their storefront displays, and in many cases, they are haunted by images of glass through cubes, windows, and mirrors that refract the duality of their lives and the traps they so often build for themselves.
When we consider films about salesmen, we often think of epic tales about misguided but badass men who make risk look cool: Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street or Alec Baldwin’s Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross spring to mind as fast-talking, profane businessmen who teach you the depravity good sales demand. Peel the archetype back further, and we arrive at the car salesman, more likely to be a sleazy dirtbag than a smooth-talker. Matilda’s patriarch Harry (Danny DeVito) sells illegal parts while demanding respect from his daughter, and Fargo’s Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) sacrifices his own wife’s safety as collateral damage.
But what about the men who can’t depend on automobiles to feign charm, who can’t achieve this level of deluded conviction? Their mediocrity is encapsulated by brick-and-mortar stores selling home goods including furniture, tubs, or beds. This sub-archetype of the salesman is more lost than sleazy, operating without the confidence and intellect to be con-men.
