What do sex addiction, neighborhood gyms, and the CIA have in common? Absolutely nothing. And that’s probably why the Coen Brothers made Burn After Reading the way they did. Filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen have always been a strange duo. I’m most familiar with them as the writer/director team behind The Big Lebowski, one of the most respected cult films of the past 10 or 20 years. That film took a few years to become one of my favorites, partly because – like all their movies – it’s weird as hell. It’s also one of their funniest. I say funny in the sense that it is not totally dark, dismal, or depressing. There are sad moments, but in general it’s an absurd detective mystery, even if the one solving the “crime” is largely unaware of his role and generally uninterested in fulfilling it.
However, Lebowski isn’t the reason I’m writing this post. I want to discuss Burn After Reading, the Coens’ seemingly overlooked 2008 film. I’ve seen most of the Coen Brothers’ movies (like Fargo, Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men, etc), but I didn’t start to develop a theory about their craft or style until after Burn. There are certain themes or kinds of events that appear throughout their work. For one, people usually steal things. In Raising Arizona, it’s a baby; in Country, it’s a bag of drug money; in Lebowski, it’s a rug. In fact, the act of theft or crime is often what spurs the overall plot.
In Burn After Reading, two gym employees happen to find a copy of a recently fired CIA analyst’s memoir-in-progress, which they mistake for top-secret government documents. The gym workers try to hold the disc for ransom, but – naturally – everything goes wrong. Meanwhile, the otherwise unrelated characters cross paths via adultery and Internet dating, until each is in over his or her head, and the whole pile of shit explodes.
The storyline makes the viewer wonder, “Don’t any of these characters realize how idiotic their decisions and actions are, and how empty and pointless their lives have become?” Well, I’m pretty confident that the Coen Brothers realized this. Actually I think that was the main reason they made the film. The only concrete evidence I have came in the form of a few CIA agents – the ones who did the firing near the start. They catch wind of the misplaced memoir and the drama it inspired, and they try to keep the mess from spilling out into public view.
Since the story isn’t really told from a single point-of-view, we can depend on the neutral perspective of these two bystanders, who react to the events from within the CIA. Around the middle of the film, when the agents hear about the ransom situation, they start asking big-picture questions:
OFFICER: “So we don’t really know what anyone is after?”
AGENT: “Not really, sir.”
OFFICER: “Keep an eye on everyone, see what they do. Report back to me when, uh…I don’t know, when it makes sense.”
Then at the end of the film, a similar scene provides a sort of wrap-up – and some much needed comic relief:
OFFICER: “What did we learn, Palmer?”
AGENT: “I don’t know, sir.”
OFFICER: “I don’t fuckin’ know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.”
AGENT: “Yes, sir.”
OFFICER:”But I’m fucked if I know what we did.”
So what did we do? Well, we had a good laugh, for one thing. And maybe, when things get this confusing, that’s the best we can manage.
These scenes are so funny because they arrive around the time that the audience is asking themselves the same questions. But in another way, it’s almost as if these two characters represent Joel and Ethan themselves, and they’re asking one another, “What the hell is this trash we just created? We should have burned the script!” I’m glad they didn’t though. If my opinion hasn’t shown through, let it be known that I think the movie is hilarious, and I recommend it – especially to Coen fans (and even more so to Lebowski fans).
There’s another increasingly obvious factor I’ve noticed in their films. Coen movies have always showcased some very despicable human behavior, while somehow (usually) managing to find humor in the madness. But with Burn and No Country, it’s almost as if the Coens have totally stopped considering the reactions and opinions of their audience. Now characters die randomly, sometimes off camera – and viewers are left to pick up some rather jagged fragments. This total disregard for the audience might reflect their overall pessimism about the human race, like saying, “Usually we can find something to laugh about, but we can’t escape the nagging suspicion that our species is a mistake from start to finish.” I don’t know if they actually feel that way, but their stories certainly reflect that sort of notion.
It’s that same disregard for the audience that made me hate The Departed. But in that case, I felt that Scorsese was both lazy and uncreative. He had developed a rather interesting scenario of criss-crossed good and bad guys, but then didn’t know how to find climax or resolution. His solution: randomly kill characters that the audience has likely become very invested in, thereby ruining any chance that the film could hold significance beyond a dull mob shooter film. (Sorry I couldn’t contain my opinion of Scorsese, but apparently I’m one of the few people who thinks he’s a no-talent hack.)
Burn, on the other hand, has its redeeming qualities, but it’s probably a love-it-or-hate-it affair.
