Geekscape Review: Burn After Reading
“That was a delight.”
– Brian Gilmore (as the credits begin to roll)
To Little Lord Gilmonroy’s credit (although I love nothing more than proving him wrong), in the case of The Coen Brother’s film “Burn After Reading”, he is absolutely right. Burn After Reading IS a “delight”, but for a movie with so many colorful pieces that description doesn’t paint enough of a full picture.
Coming off of last year’s indie, Oscar-winning bulldozer, the Coen Brothers have gone in a completely different direction. Where No Country For Old Men was a dark, straightforward chase after single object, Burn After Reading is a light and fun chase by several characters after a McGuffin that NO ONE knows the true nature of… and it goes to some dark and surprising places.
My biggest love for the Coen Brothers (and I imagine yours as well) stems from their ability to take a viewer by the hand and lead them through a clearly defined series of increasingly complicated actions, regardless of how farfetched the journey might be. The stories that they choose to tell, in whatever genre, start out in the comfortable territory of the simple and familiar but can end up anywhere.
Let’s get down to the nitty gritty. In the opening scenes of their take on the espionage genre, Joel and Ethan Coen introduce audiences to Osborne Cox, a veteran CIA analyst played by John Malkovich, who we immediately (and hilariously) see get demoted but quits instead. We follow Osborne home where we meet his demanding wife Katie (played by Tilda Swinton), who blows off his attempt at explaining his loss of a job in preparation for their dinner party. There we meet Harry (George Clooney), who is a married small time federal officer (“in 20 years, I’ve never discharged my gun in the line of duty”) having an affair with Katie.
Are you writing this down? You really should start. Things become quickly complicated when Katie decides to leave Osborne for Harry upon learning of the loss of his job. Osborne begins writing his memoirs (or “memwhaas”) to jumpstart a second career as a writer. When Katie is asked by her lawyer to gather Osborne’s financials for the divorce documents, the memwhaas accidentally end up in the hands of two gym employees: the dimwitted Chad (Brad Pitt) and the lonely, dissatisfied Linda (Frances McDormand), who is trying online dating, which leads her right to… Harry.
Okay. I’ve spelled enough out for you without even scratching the surface of what you have in store for you as a viewer (so if you yelled “Spoiler Warning” at any point, fear not). Now the various plates have been set spinning and we are off to the races at breakneck speed. And I do mean breakneck. Burn After Reading covers a lot of ground and throws viewers a lot of character and story details in quick, unrepeated and hilarious bursts. Unlike the exhausting speed of their film The Ladykillers (that caused me to turn it off after 15 minutes), the information and performances that we get in Burn After Reading aren’t unsympathetic cartoon sketches but clearly defined and relatable, consistent beings who inhabit and engage themselves with everything around them.
The movie is undeniably hilarious but also can be gut wrenching in subsequent strokes. You will follow beats in which you laugh out loud with ones in which you gasp in shock. The Coen Brothers have you so busy watching the plates spinning around each other that they go about leading you down whatever complicated road they choose. And with Burn After Reading, the plates never hit the ground. Although the briskness and levity of the story in Burn After Reading might be seen as a compromise coming off of a darker, more engrossing film like No Country For Old Men, I think a better frame of reference might come from Mr. Gilmore’s earlier description. If No Country For Old Men was a heavy three-course meal, Burn After Reading is a sweet, albeit quickly swallowed, delight.
Sidenote: Burn After Reading was produced by Focus Features and Working Title. No Country was produced by Paramount Vantage. The Coen Brothers next movie, A Serious Man, started shooting yesterday for Focus Features and Working Title.
From the press release:
“Production begins today on location in Minnesota on A Serious Man, for Focus Features and Working Title Films. Joel and Ethan Coen, Academy Award winners for No Country for Old Men and Fargo, are writing, producing, and directing the film. Working Title co-chairs Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner are executive-producing the film with Robert Graf, who has worked on the Coens’ last six features in various producing capacities.
The director of photography on A Serious Man is seven-time Academy Award nominee Roger Deakins, who is marking his tenth feature collaboration with the Coens. Mary Zophres is the film’s costume designer, marking her ninth feature collaboration with the Coens. Jess Gonchor is the production designer, marking his third feature collaboration with the Coens.
A Serious Man is the story of an ordinary man’s search for clarity in a universe where Jefferson Airplane is on the radio and F-Troop is on TV. It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous colleagues, Sy Ableman, who seems to her a more substantial person than the feckless Larry. Larry’s unemployable brother Arthur is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny is a discipline problem and a shirker at Hebrew school, and his daughter Sarah is filching money from his wallet in order to save up for a nose job. While his wife and Sy Ableman blithely make new domestic arrangements, and his brother becomes more and more of a burden, an anonymous hostile letter-writer is trying to sabotage Larry’s chances for tenure at the university. Also, a graduate student seems to be trying to bribe him for a passing grade while at the same time threatening to sue him for defamation. Plus, the beautiful woman next door torments him by sunbathing nude. Struggling for equilibrium, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis. Can anyone help him cope with his afflictions and become a righteous person – a mensch – a serious man?
Tony Award nominee Michael Stuhlbarg (whose films include The Grey Zone) stars as Larry; Fred Melamed (Suspect) plays Sy; Richard Kind (The Visitor) portrays Arthur; and Minnesota actors Aaron Wolf, Sari Wagner, and Jessica McManus are cast as Danny, Judith, and Sarah, respectively.”
The Coens are back in Minnesota! Anyone else excited?!?
