Witty, smart, laugh-out-loud and disturbing too.
The Coen brothers are on fire. After re-inventing the modern western by slamming an action movie up its pipe in No Country for Old Men, they’ve now created a new film genus entirely – call it 'screwball nihilism' – in Burn After Reading. For this quirky A-list comedy ensemble that deals ostensibly with hapless hucksters and wannabe spymasters is really about the nagging emptiness of the human condition.
It stars Brad Pitt, in cheeky charismatic form, as a 'flamboyant' personal trainer called Chad (he’s never actually referred to as ‘gay’, but he’s very, well, touchy-feely), who discovers a CD-ROM of seemingly incriminating CIA-related data on the floor of Hard Body’s Gym. The CD (actually a banal professional memoir) leads Chad and cosmetic-surgery-obsessed co-worker Linda (Frances McDormand) to low-ranking ex-CIA analyst Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich).
Cox, an embittered burgeoning alcoholic, is on the cusp of divorce from frosty wife Katie (Tilda Swinton), who in turn is having an affair with ex-Federal Marshal Harry (George Clooney) – who himself is about to embark on a secret affair with Linda.
It’s typically labyrinthine stuff, but it unfolds, as you’d expect from the makers of Fargo, with effortless precision and then happily degenerates from comedy threats and misfired extortion into accidental manslaughter and, ultimately, multiple grisly murders (a shocking scene midway through the movie signals the downward spiral).
And yet, it’s not the murders here that make it dark. Instead, it’s the sheer desperation that defines every single character. Linda’s craving for surgery is near-psychotic. Harry’s addiction to online dating is crippling. While Cox’s vanity, evinced brilliantly in the way he refers to his memoirs as "my mem-wah" is heartbreaking. The result is a movie that’s funny, cruel and just the tiniest bit depressing. But in a good way.
It’s the Coen brothers, isn’t it?
Witty, smart, laugh-out-loud and disturbing too.
Still stunned by one of those fatal twists.
View 5 comments
Matt Poke
• 4 years agoI thought Pitt's character was positively amoebic in his intelligence and thus seemed pretty asexual throughout the film. Fargo is a good reference point. Like Fargo it is all beautifully put together, quirky characters intermingle with the potentially psychotic, two differing worlds are brought together with disastrous results etc. My only complaint, if you can call it that, is that the unexpected murders in Coen films have become expected. I suppose complaining about it is futile as it is engrained in the Coen Bros canon and still disarmingly enjoyable.
Oh and will Malkovich ever play a likeable character? I wonder...
Lucy Siebert
• 4 years agoPriscilla Eyles
• 4 years agoPriscilla Eyles
• 4 years agoBut this film could only offer the same narrative trajectory of Fargo (a snow-balling of events that gets way out if control) filled with unsympathetic (with the exception of the gym manager Brian) and cartoonish characters. So that fine actors such as Malkovich and Swinton are reduced to playing ridiculous versions of their on-screen personas (just how may times does a stereotypically angry Malkovich have to say 'what the fuck!). As a result the film lacks any emotional depth, the characters being there purely to annoy and you don't care when they die.Not a good sign.
The Coens are known for bucking trends and making completely different films to their last one. Hopefully that means their next film will be a brilliant return to form with characters you actually give a damn about.
p.s I realise this was quite a long rant but I really love the Coens so had to convey my disappointment.
hhrc
• 4 years ago