BURN AFTER READING
2008
Written by Joel & Ethan Coen
Directed by Ethan & Joel Coen
In Burn After Reading, the latest offering from those wily Coen brothers, so much is lost for so little. The entire cast of sorry characters has so insanely little to lose and yet manage to squander all they've got. This could be a devastating tragedy, but in the hands of Joel & Ethan Coen, it becomes a ribald farce, a document of such utter buffoonery that it has to be seen to be believed.
Following last year's staggering No Country for Old Men, one of the best films of the decade, is a tough proposition, and I guess it's reassuring that the Coens don't even try. This isn't to say that what they've done here is lazy or tossed off, but from the first frame it doesn't have any more ambition than it should; this is a movie that knows exactly what it is and exactly what to do, leaving not an ounce of fat. This is a lean, mean laughing machine that comes in, does its business, and promptly gets out just as we're scratching our heads as to what crazy contrivance could possibly come next. Unlike The Ladykillers, it doesn't stick around one or two punchlines too long.
Going from the superserious to the wacky is something that the Coens are apt to do, so after the unrelenting tension of No Country, a movie almost entirely devoid of humor, they've whipped up one of their silliest outings yet. Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) is a CIA analyst who wears a sad little bowtie, and who's married to Katie (ice queen Tilda Swinton), a doctor with the worst bedside manner I've ever seen. Which is saying something. Ozzy's got something of a drinking problem, and his punishing marriage to Katie doesn't help much, least of all when he's fired from his position and can't bring himself to tell her before their dinner party that night.
Attending said dinner party is one Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), who is just as sad as Ozzy, albeit in a different way: He's trapped in a marriage with renowned children's book author Sandy (Elizabeth Marvel), whom he loves so much he's afraid to admit it to himself. Logically, Harry is having an affair with Katie. Katie is so ready to divorce Osbourne that, at the insistence of her lawyer, she's begun stowing away as many of his personal and financial records as possible. She ends up copying a disc of his CIA files, which somehow winds up on the floor of the Hardbodies gym, where a janitor brings it to employee Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt). Chad thinks that Osbourne would be willing to give him a reward for bringing back his "secret CIA shit," so he recruits fellow gym worker Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) to help him politely blackmail Ozzy. Linda, woefully insecure in her middle age, eventually winds up with Harry through an online dating service, which opens up an entirely different can of espionage worms.
The plot is convoluted enough, and it goes on to contort itself into unbelievable twist after unbelievable twist, each executed with manic glee by the Coens. But let us back up a moment and discuss Brad Pitt's character of Chad Feldheimer. For some reason, no one is willing to admit that Brad Pitt is one of the best actors alive, just because he may look pretty. The same thing still inexplicably follows around co-star George Clooney, as if his ER and Batman & Robin days negate the fact that he's been in almost nothing but excellent films this decade, including two by the Coens themselves, the hilarious O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the underrated Intolerable Cruelty. But again, I am getting ahead of myself.
Brad Pitt. Chad Feldheimer. I think Pitt deserves an Oscar nomination for playing a character this ridiculous and good-naturedly boneheaded, a fitness instructor with a crazy coif (bringing to mind Tom Hanks' bizarre 'do in The Ladykillers) who is so in over his head that he doesn't even realize it. Watching him try to deal with Osbourne results in some of the funniest scenes I've seen all year, and Pitt and Malkovich are a pleasure to watch together. Malkovich, who so often comes across as a pretentious jackass, gets to happily skewer that persona here. The entire cast gets to loosen up, from Clooney going stark raving mad to McDormand playing Marge Gunderson as if she had been a superficial idiot whose greatest ambition in life was to get a tummy tuck.
Of course, McDormand is betrothed to Joel Coen, which, in true roundabout Burn After Reading style, brings us back to the film's creative forces: Those wily Coen brothers. This movie is peppered with so many small, ludicrous moments that I'm sure it'll take another viewing just to process them all, and the Coens have perhaps created their most pathetic band of miscreants since Fargo. They're so good at making movies where people give up all they've got for things they only think they want, that this quirky turn of the screw seems like a light breeze. To put it another way, it's the only "spy thriller" I've ever seen where, upon learning that they're being followed by helicopters, a character remarks, "Oh, for Pete's sake."
- Arlo J. Wiley
September 19, 2008
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