Burn After Reading: ‘An uproariously enjoyable film’

After their Academy Award-winning adaptation of American novelist Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen, collectively known as the Coen brothers, follow up with Burn After Reading, a dark madcap endeavor that blurs the lines between film noir and slapstick comedy. One could say the film is about, as Osborne Cox-a foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, former CIA analyst-so eloquently puts it, a “league of morons.”Burn After Reading is distributed by Focus Features and was released in the United States on Sept. 12. However, the film had its world premiere on Aug. 27 at the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy. The film stars Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, George Clooney, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, and Richard Jenkins. Burn After Reading is rated R, and is currently playing at Hollywood Theaters and Cinemark Mall del Norte. Set in Washington D.C., the film is in the guise of a typical spy thriller. It has all the clichés-stolen, top-secret documents, blackmail, murder, car chases, foreign operatives, and of course, sex. However, it is the sheer idiocy of its characters and their tomfoolery that propel the film forward.The main story in this complex menagerie of characters revolves around a pair of bumbling Hardbodies gym employees-Chad (Pitt, who plays the part of the loveable goof perfectly) and Linda (McDormand), who is seeking a “can-do” man by perusing through the intricate world of BewithmeDC.com, an online dating service. Linda is in desperate need of funds for a complex array of cosmetic surgeries, and when her hopes seem to be at an end, luck falls into her lap in the shape of a disk of top secret CIA documents. Or so she thinks; unfortunately, for Linda, as well as Chad, the disk only contains the memoir of Cox (Malkovich). Still, the dimwitted gym employees decide the best course of action is to blackmail him. The complex nature of the plot becomes more so when Linda begins to sleep with one of her online dates-Harry (Clooney)-a philanderer who is having an affair with Katie (Swinton), Cox’s wife. While the film has satiric qualities-the parodying of spy films and government agencies-the sickly and often bloody humor works because it appeals to the natural human instinct to relish another’s suffering. This is partially achieved because of the lack of a true sympathetic character. Chad and Cox are the only two who seem to be able to come close to eliciting viewer sympathy, yet each is either too idiotic or too elitist, respectively. So, if a viewer is looking for that one character who is able to disinter him/herself from the muck and persevere despite the odds, he or she should look elsewhere. However, characters without remorse and down-and-out saps are typical in Coen brothers’ films, and for those wanting to see the brothers return to their traditional roots, Burn After Reading suffices. Still, if one wants to glean any symbolic or didactic message from the film, he or she can turn to a conversation J.K. Simmons’ character, a CIA supervisor, has with one of his agents. “What have we learned, Palmer? […] I guess we learned to not do it again. Fuck if I know what we did.”And that sums up the essence of the film. One isn’t quite sure what he or she watched, yet the performances of a stellar cast and the traditional Coen brothers’ depiction of violence, shocking images, and dark humor make for an uproariously enjoyable film.