Burn After Reading

(2008)

Directed by

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

Review by Zach Saltz

The Coen Brothers have played goofy before, and Burn After Reading is just about as goofy a motion picture as they have ever made.  There are some filmmakers who seem to be entirely unable to grasp the concept of light, fun cinema and are content only to make dreary, grim escapades into the perverted subconscious of the soul – think the haunted visions of David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, and even Terrence Malick.  Maybe they need antidepressants or a hug or a good Marx Brothers film to lighten the mood.  But the Coens, like David Lynch (for better or for worse), are able to encapsulate their stories’ sheer absurdity within a wholly self-aware mise-en-scene that is simultaneously able to invoke and satirize the well-established genre their film unabashedly adopts.  From the opening credits (a somewhat campy Google-Earth-like zoom-in of Earth) to its rapid-fire sequences of double-crossings and suspicious men in top hats and walkie-talkies, Burn After Reading is a spy-caper thriller in both the traditions of The Thomas Crown Affair and Naked Gun 33 1/3.

The plot is . . . well, the plot is merely an excuse for a cacophony of wild and typically overexaggerated Coen characters with eyebrow-raising names to converge on one another in scenes that appear to, on the surface, deal very little with the main story at hand: Linda Litzke and Chad Feldheimer (played by Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt) are two Washington D.C. gym employees who stumble across the top-secret CIA memoirs of disgruntled former agent Osborne Cox (John Malkovich).  Because they are naïve and inexperienced about the world, but only in the helplessly lovable way the characters in Fargo were, they assume that Cox will pay vast sums of money for the retrieval of the memoirs.  But when Pitt shows up on his bike in a rented suit and tie (perhaps the only time in history Brad Pitt has worn a suit and has not necessarily appear to have arrived straight from a photo shoot for GQ), he is shocked to find a bitter and unresponsive Cox, who punches him in the face.  After a few reps and energy drinks, Linda and Chad approach the Russian embassy with the files because . . . well, because they’ve probably seen too many movies where the Russians were the ones most desperately scrambling to get a hold of national secrets. 

Then there is George Clooney, a womanizing insider in the Treasury department whose character probably doesn’t really need to exist in the story, except that he provides the film’s funniest gag (involving an ingenious concoction constructed in the reins of his own basement) and that he kills off a major character – I will not say who it is or the circumstances around it, but I will say that after this certain character is unnecessarily eliminated, the film definitely loses a considerable portion of its charm.  His name is Harry Pfarrer, and Roger Ebert notes that while most Coen characters have ingenious names, relatively few of them are actually mentioned over the course of the story (one has to look carefully for the one mention of “Pfarrer” in a very early scene; but after all, Steve Buscemi’s character in Fargo usually wasn’t referred to as Carl Showalter, but the “funny-looking guy.”)  His only ties to the movie come with the fact that he is having an affair with Cox’s wife, played by Tilda Swinton in a thankless role (though she has never looked better), and later the McDormand character herself.

I love the way the Coens deal with recurring themes with their expertly-constructed characters.  Every person here, for example, spends at least one moment over the course of the film involved with some labor of physical activity; these are some of the most virile and active people you will ever see, and it borders on the preposterous when Clooney notes the inaccuracy of a car speedometer gauging his total jogging distance.  There are also multiple instances of divorce papers being delivered to a few select characters in very unexpected ways.  And perhaps most noteworthy is the curious inclusion of a film-within-a-film that Linda takes both of her dates to see; the later punchline to this fictional film is priceless.

Even when the Coens have fun, the delivery is first-rate.  The screenplay includes some excellent exchanges, and the performances are proficient.  McDormand’s character is the best, and here the actress has teamed up with her mawkish husband and brother-in-law duo once again, fashioning a similar character to Marge Gunderson (Linda Litzke has the same sort of persistent chirpiness and humble eagerness to please as her cinematic derivative) but unique in her conquest to become physically perfect (“I’ve gone just about as far as this body will take me,” she laments to the gym manager.)  In theory, the film is really only about her pursuit of gathering enough money to pay for various beautifying and toning surgeries.

Burn After Reading is not a great motion picture, and will not eat up at the Academy Awards the same way No Country for Old Men did last year (although Javier Bardem can hardly complain when he sees Brad Pitt’s haircut here.)  As a whole, the film is a failure because it never strives to go beneath the surface of its comic situations involving ridiculous espionage.  But despite its shortcomings and frivolities, I simply cannot hide my admiration for the film; I found the individual scenes very effective when taken by themselves, and even though every action, sentiment, and deed was utterly preposterous, somehow I found myself identifying with nearly all of the characters.  They don’t really do much here except for get paranoid, exercise, sleep with one another, and occasionally die, but their lives fascinated me.  Indeed, I also like the fact that the Coen Brothers can make Burn After Reading with the intention of it being no more than a cheerful, upbeat yarn – one that could not be any more different than their somber, contemplative pictures, like Country, Miller’s Crossing, and Blood Simple.  They’ll be back with another mind-blowing, morally nebulous epic, but for now it is best to merely sit back and enjoy the show.

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