Burn after Reading

Burn after Reading was one of the big disappointments of the summer for me. I've been a fan of the Coen Brothers ever since I saw Blood Simple over twenty years ago. That film pretty much blew me away. Other favorites include Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? Unusual Cruelty is pretty good, too. No Country for Old Men was impressive but disturbed me so much that I have a hard time saying it's a favorite. I want to see it again, but I'm still shaking from my first viewing, so it will have to wait. The film I write about below puzzles me. It is certainly well-crafted, but it didn't do much for me at all. It just seemed like a misfire. But the Coen Brothers will be back, I know it. They're too good to settle for making mediocre movies.



BURN AFTER READING

A new Coen Brothers film is always an event, and their first film after the remarkable No Country for Old Men, winner of last year’s best picture Oscar, should have been the most anticipated of their careers. So it’s pretty surprising that Burn after Reading slipped into the theaters with relatively little fanfare, and even more surprising that it’s such a disappointing effort. I’m not entirely sure why this is. The Coens are certainly in their element here: the plot revolves around mistaken identities and mix-ups, murder, blackmail…and liposuction. Behind it all is the CIA, cheerfully sweeping all the messy details under the rug and covering up anything it can’t explain to its own satisfaction. Should be a romp for them, but instead it’s a labored and harsh comedy that never finds the mischievous joy which usually makes Joel and Ethan’s trademark cynicism so much fun to watch, even as it unsettles.

The story is typically convoluted. Treasury Department employee George Clooney is having an affair with the wife of a CIA operative (John Malkovich), who has just quit his job over a demotion and is writing a tell-all book about his years under cover. The wife (Tilda Swinton), preparing for a divorce, downloads their financial records from his computer and unwittingly copies classified government information onto the disk as well. This disk mysteriously turns up in the locker room of a local gym, Hardbodies, where employees Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt join forces to coax a reward for its return out of the ex-spook. McDormand, 50ish and still looking for Mr. Right, is convinced that only cosmetic surgery will keep her attractive enough to compete in the computer dating scene, but her insurance won’t pay for it so she needs money badly. Yet despite her misgivings, her dating service hooks her up with Clooney, who is not only two-timing his wife but his mistress as well. Hilarious hijinks ensue.

Or they would be hilarious if some of the characters were more appealing or the complications truly amusing. The Coens have nearly always been successful at mining humor from the nastier side of human nature, but the double-dealing in Burn lacks the seductive charm of earlier comedic thrillers such as Blood Simple or Fargo, or even parts of No Country. The new film also lacks the discipline that makes the Coens’ best movies among the most ingeniously constructed and tightly edited you’ll ever see. Bringing together disparate characters in colliding storylines is nothing new to them, but in contrast to their usual deftness, the plots in this one never quite mesh, leaving the viewer with the feeling that, although the connections are dutifully made, the point behind them all is missing. Burn never establishes a consistent tone or point-of-view around which to organize the chaos. It’s a collection of random events that offers no reason to see it otherwise.

Much of the blame for this must go to the brothers’ direction of their actors. Clooney and McDormand are both quite good individually, but there is little chemistry between them, and their scenes together are flat as a result. Pitt excels in his small role, proving once again that although he has the looks and the tabloid credentials for major stardom, he makes his greatest impact in supporting roles and character parts. His goofy exercise instructor, Chad, is the most completely comic performance in the film, and delightful as it is, it throws the film, which otherwise has a rather sinister vibe to it, a bit off balance. The same could be said of J.K. Simmons, who has some great moments as the befuddled CIA chief who needs things explained to him several times before he understands what’s gone down (in that, he’s an obvious stand-in for the audience). But he’s from a different CIA than is otherwise depicted.

Nowhere is the clash in acting styles more harmful than with Malkovich and Swinton, who belong to a different movie altogether, a downbeat domestic drama. Both play unpleasant people unpleasantly, without a single spark of humor to relieve the gloom of their characters. Malkovich is such a pain-in-the-backside that he elicits no sympathy for the raw treatment he gets from his employers or his wife. Since his fate is central to the scheme of things, this delivers a serious blow to the whole enterprise’s attempt to win over its audience. And what Clooney’s good-natured womanizer sees in the dour Swinton is a mystery the film never tries to solve, much to the detriment of its credibility.

Then there is the ominous musical score by Carter Burwell, which expertly creates a feeling of unease and suspense as the film jumps back and forth between simultaneously unfolding stories. It would be perfect in a serious thriller, but it darkens the mood of this film’s comic world too much, undercutting its sardonic take on the foibles of the characters and their blunderings toward an intertwined destiny. A lighter score would have brought out those colors; I can’t remember ever seeing a film in which I thought the music, good in itself, was so wrong for the action it accompanied that it effectively contradicted the meaning of it. Until now. It’s an error in judgment one simply does not expect from these two talented and highly experienced filmmakers.

Burn after Reading has plenty of witty moments, a few good performances, and some nifty visuals—enough to remind us of what the Coen Brothers’ vision is all about. But everything they do in this film they’ve done before, and better, elsewhere. Whether it’s inspiration, or just execution, or both, that Burn is lacking, the outcome is a decidedly minor entry in their body of work. I wouldn’t condemn it to the stake, but I hope they give their next project more serious attention. Maybe first they should watch some of their old movies more closely.