Burn After Reading achieves the impossible: The Coen brothers make Brad Pitt entirely unsexy
By Dana Stewart
Published: September 18th, 2008 | 2:55pm
At the end of Burn After Reading, two characters, which I will take for surrogates of the film’s creators, Joel and Ethan Coen, essentially ask each other the following question:
“So… What was all this about, anyway?”
[Response] “I don’t know.”
“Neither do I. It was interesting, though, huh?”
Burn After Reading is a lark, a whirling, carefully convoluted little movie that exists in direct opposition to some of the Coens’ earlier work. Some earlier Coen bothers’ work is truly epic, distinctive by its transcendentally stark and beautiful wide-angle cinematography, depicting stories that are about life, death, anger, love — all the important Themes. A number of the duo’s films will go down (and already have) in all the important film anthologies and histories of dramatic American cinema (Fargo, No Country For Old Men).
But they also made The Big Lebowski, and while that film was also beautifully photographed, it was a comedy first and foremost. Like Lebowski, Burn After Reading is a deliciously black comedy, and while there’s no way this film will surpass its natural predecessor in quote-ability, Burn After Reading is a seriously funny movie. Where Lebowski skewered Los Angeles culture and ‘90s era American malaise, Reading bores a hole through the web of post-9/11 DC-area intelligence agencies, in a way that suggests the Coens have or at least have access to some pertinent and wide-ranging knowledge of that part of our government.
Burn After Reading is not about Life and Death. Briefly, here are some of the disparate objects that make an appearance in the film: The Liberator© foam wedge sex accessory, jaded post-Cold War intelligence officials, Jamba Juice©, dozens if not hundreds of F-bombs, Brad Pitt with highlights and an iPod armband, and short bursts of shocking violence. It’s all highly entertaining; at times hilarious, and quick moving while remaining a showcase for its stunning cast of actors. The whole film is done with a very light hand, never taking itself too seriously and doesn’t demand anything from its audience other than to go along for the ride.
Now that the Coens have half a dozen Academy Awards under their collective belt, they are able to gather talent from the crème de la crème of film actors. In Reading, focus equilaterally shifts to each member of the key five actors. In the beginning, we see John Malkovich (in a bowtie) playing an exaggeratedly angry version of himself, but as a member of the US intelligence community. His wife is an unfeeling and bristly pediatrician, played by a Tilda Swinton with far more hairspray and gold jewelry than fans of hers will be used to. Malkovich’s character is a work associate of George Clooney’s character, a womanizer who wears a gold chain, open-necked shirts, and a dark tan. His character is nervous, compulsive, and in general far less cool than Clooney’s been in a film in a long while. Clooney is way out-geeked, however, by Brad Pitt’s character, an enthusiastically clueless physical trainer often clad in horrible spandex workout tops. Last but the opposite of least is the master actress Frances McDormand, who plays a neurotic and comically flawed co-worker of Pitt’s character at the “Hardbodies” gym. These last two are connected to the intelligence-community characters by a plot point early in the movie, but the story moves along so quickly it would be moot to summarize it here.
By the end of all the twists and turns, the movie ricochets to an abrupt end with swift yet satisfying conclusions, and the viewer feels they’ve been on a path they would have never found their way along on their own. With Burn After Reading, the Coens have added another delectable comedy to their list of contributions to American cinema, putting us that much more in their debt.
Issue #35
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