Bartleby

It's a testament to both the timelessness and the prescience of Herman Melville's 1853 story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" that it can be so easily updated with so few changes. Instead of 19th-century Wall Street, director Jonathan Parker finds an appropriate setting for this classic tale of alienation in a contemporary suburban office complex. There, in an antiseptic, synthetically cheerful environment perched high above a sea of twisting highways, the Office of City Records churns away with dull efficiency. The unnamed narrator (David Paymer) has been promoted recently to the illustrious post of City Records Manager, and he's eager to make a difference. He decides to b...