If for whatever reason you are looking at this review and have not seen Burn After Reading, DO NOT continue reading.
I repeat: If you have not seen this film, do NOT continue reading.
SPOILERS AHEAD. STOP NOW if you have not seen Burn After Reading. Seriously.
No one is more inclined to defend the Coen Brothers than me. No one, in the face of a flawed or unimpressive work of theirs, is more insistent on finding the silver lining. But this is the hardest it’s ever been to excuse them.
Burn After Reading is pointlessly mean-spirited. When a director is malevolent towards his characters in order to bolster thematic material, that’s wholly understandable, but here, the two most sweet and innocent characters in the film are brutally, glibly murdered, and for what? A laugh. I was shocked when George Clooney’s Harry Pfarrer, in a hilarious (not to me) misunderstanding, blows Chad’s brains out the back of his head. After that I kind of glazed over for the remainder of the film, which was why I didn’t understand the reasons for Richard Jenkin’s character’s presence in the basement of the house belonging to Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton). His presence leads to another misunderstanding and the brutal murder of Jenkins at the hands of Katie’s soon to be ex-husband, Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), whose character was disgruntled at the start of the film, and by the end, a delirious psychotic. My brother, whose attention had not been blunted from shock, told me that Jenkins had been asked by Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) in a scene I had watched but not really absorbed, to find more information on Osborne Cox for reasons too complicated and pointless to explain. The film is simply an exercise for its own sake. It has no reason for being, other than, I guess, the Coens’ fear of their movie-making skills getting rusty if they sit on their laurels for too long? For shits and giggles? I did not giggle when Chad’s brains were blown out the back of his head. He (Brad Pitt) was the most likeable character in the film; dim, yes, but his dimness was endearing, more endearing than the repellent self-absorption of the other characters. McDormand’s character points out that he was a “can-do kind of guy” or something along those lines while everyone else she knew, in reference to Clooney’s character, is “defeated.” Perhaps that's the ironic point, but...
I've seen all 12 of the Coens' previous films, and can read them about as well as one can, and when they have a serious point they want to make, no matter how caustic, they find a subtle way to infuse a little gravity into the tone of the goofball antics (an example being the strangely moving description of H.I.'s dream at the very end of Raising Arizona, or the sober manner in which they consider Norville's preparations for suicide in The Hudsucker Proxy). The only gravity in Burn After Reading are bungled moments of earnestness, such as when McDormand's character sits in her lonely living room after a profoundly unsatisfying date. This shot is framed from a distance, and is lit beautifully, diagonal pale yellow diaphanous folds of light refracted from the moon off the softly flowing drapes in the window reaching across the carpet. The music becomes serious for a moment, as does the film, but it is totally out of place here. Chad's appalling murder, on the other hand, is portrayed as a joke. So is the hatcheting of Richard Jenkins. I know "the hatcheting of Richard Jenkins" sounds funny, but to witness it is not. Frankly, this is a callousness that is beneath them. The Coens transmit an invisible disgust with just such callousness in Fargo when their camera looks upon Carl Showalter's pitiless giggles at Jean Lundegaard's pathetic attempts to run away in the snow with a bag over her head. Now, Joel & Ethan are the ones pitilessly giggling at the poor sap, Chad, as he finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and with a fountain of gore totally out of character with the effervescent goofiness that has preceded it, point at his horrifying misfortune and snort, 'What a dope.' The last expression on his stupid face is a big 'Whoops, what a pickle! Let me just explain..' smile and then that stupid face gets fired into at point-blank range.
At the end of the movie, two CIA officers congregate to discuss all that has happened. One says to the other, “So what did we learn?” The second one shrugs, and the first officer answers his own question, “Uh, I guess that we shouldn’t let it happen again.” Yeah.
Grade: C+
3 comments:
Thank you. I've read reviews with catty catchphrases and measured scorn, but I was under the impression that I was the only person who found the lack of a character with whom to identify, and the presence of a startling and penetrating hatred (using the word hatred, here, not misanthropy.)
Interestingly, the film has some petty value as a little social experiment: the similar to a carnival's "man eating chicken" sideshow.
The moviegoer asks the box officer if the film is good. The ticket seller replies that it is 'funny.' 100 minutes later, almost no one says anything disparaging, some laugh- of those, a part are afraid they'll be spotted as the few that 'missed the joke' and the rest with a dead glaze over their eyes and an even hollower chuckle, afraid to entertain the idea that there may have been no joke at all.
I would therefore call this essay something like 'brave.'
"in a hilarious (not to me) misunderstanding, blows Chad’s brains out the back of his head"
Actually, I'm fairly certain that Chad blew his own brains out, fumbling with the gun hurriedly as Harry made his way to the closet and opened the door.
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