Burn After Reading

Title: Burn After Reading
Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Cast: George Clooney, John Malkovich, Brad Pitt
Year: 2008
MPAA: Rated R for pervasive language, some sexual content and violence.
Date of Review: October 9, 2008

As I’ve grown older and become more knowledgeable about both myself and the world around me, I’ve come to be more appreciative of the Coen Brothers’ filmography, which deals almost exclusively with characters of below-average intelligence. It’s nice to see a couple of American storytellers who are simultaneously patriotic and cynical regarding their government and the so-called “average joe” of the American South. They have a great sense of humor when it comes to their country’s shortcomings, which is refreshing when considered among all the overly melodramatic, “my country, ‘tis of thee” fare that’s been churned out since 9/11 (though it’s always been prevalent in western [aka American] cinema). Burn After Reading is like a culmination of all their previous works, from the quirky romantic comedy of Raising Arizona to the ambiguous nihilism of No Country For Old Men. But while it feels like their whole career has led up to this film, the mixture of so many different themes, tones and textures is schizophrenic. The film is uneven at best, with its biggest problem being that it just isn’t that funny.

Brad Pitt provides the greatest laughs in the film, with an immature energy and total disregard for self-seriousness. That is not to say that the other characters populating the film are “serious” (with George Clooney playing a neurotic, sex-addicted paranoiac, and Frances McDormand a plastic surgery obsessed gym worker scouring the online dating scene), but Pitt’s character is the most consistent because he is also the most one-note - he’s an idiot. Yes, all the other characters occupy different levels of stupidity, but it is Pitt who is the same person at the beginning and end of the story. When we are introduced to Clooney’s character at a dinner party, his eccentricities make him a near social cripple, unable to talk of anything other than his odd medical conditions. Later, we find he is paranoid beyond reason, secretive and incapable of relating to anyone (and, of course, a sex-addict). He is also having an affair with Tilda Swinton’s character - a powerful, successful and judgmental ice queen who loathes her own husband (John Malkovich) for his socially awkward, loser persona. Interesting characters, but their traits and motives don’t all add up. If Swinton hates her husband for his being an unlikable worm, why would she have an affair with an even more detestable snake like Clooney?

Ignoring the narrative inconsistencies, Burn After Reading is more depressing and disturbing than it is funny or clever. Brad Pitt, while stupid beyond comprehension, is the only character whose motivations are not entirely self-centered, and this leaves him arguably worse-off than anyone else in the story. That his loyalty to a friend leaves him where it does is pretty saddening to say the least. The whole film is quite saddening, though. John Malkovich plays the central character, a man so bitter after being downgraded from his job in the US government, that he has decided to write a memoir exposing many secrets and lies he has come into contact with. But by the end of the film, we come to see that his character wrongly assumed that his information made him “important”, and that he actually posed no threat at all. Now, if a man like that - who did have access to some pretty sensitive material - is looked at so lightly, that must mean that someone like, say, me, a lowly writer, must mean absolutely nothing in the world.

A stretch for sure, but this is what I left the theatre thinking. Any laughs I had with Brad Pitt’s hilarious attempts to intimidate John Malkovich, or George Clooney’s ability to “fit a run in” were lost by the depressing end, where the problems created by these stupid people are solved in a stupid way by even more stupid people occupying high positions in the government. Yes, the majority of American citizens are rather unintelligent, and yes, I realize that the government is corrupt and sneaky. This is not new ground to be covered, nor is it new ground to be spoofed. So what’s the point? To make a zany comedy? Just to have us laugh at how ridiculous this all is? That’s fine, but why then leave it all on such a dreary note? Why remind us of how insignificant our lives are, and how easily we could just be wiped from existence without anyone batting an eye? This ultimatum to the film is depressing, and negates any laughs to have come before.

I must digress and mention that John Malkovich and the Coen Brothers are a match made in heaven. Why they haven’t worked together before now is beyond me, but I hope they work together again, because Malkovich’s dry humor and sometimes self-serious delivery bordering on parody work perfectly with the Coens’ witty dialogue.

Burn After Reading isn’t a bad movie by any means, it’s just too down-trodden for its own good. The gut-busting laughs die off about halfway through, and the depressing end leaves a bad taste in the mouth which cancels out any goodness to have come before it. The performances are strong, the Coens prove once again to be some of the most reliable writers of dialogue in Hollywood, and it’s all shot simply yet effectively. But for a comedy, it’s just not that funny, and if laughs don’t count in the critiquing of a comedy, then I guess I’m misunderstanding this whole “film critic” thing.

6.5 / 10