Burn After Reading

As I write this review, I will attempt to gather my thoughts. This is the kind of film that remains lean at 90-something minutes, but still may take dozens of viewings to catch all that the Coen brothers put into it. "Burn After Reading" got lukewarm praise from many critics, and was considered somewhat of an exercise after No Country For Old Men, a grungy and solemn film that was embarrassingly nearly impossible for me to connect with.

The two share some traits- flawed characters, moments of jarring violence, and an ending that had me throwing my arms up in disappointed anger. This time, however, they apply the tone of a very dark comedy, and I'll say it- I think I like this better. It resembles, slightly, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction in style- this is a film of sad characters, a sad story, and sad implications. But if it is a story of pathetic lives that intersect in violence, why is it so damned funny?

Not that I got it at first. I'm still not sure I do. Around the beginning I began seriously questioning the relation between content and style. The movie broadly uses claustrophobic, sharp camera angles and an overblown, anti-climactic soundtrack, all the while often leading to ice scraped out of it's tray and liquor poured into a glass.

I was trying to figure out the Coen's intentions- were they expecting to stir people up, only to see the outcome permeating banality? Then I realized. Although this film has a blunt edge, it is a satire. The only thing left to wonder is... a satire of what? I have a few ideas, but no concrete answers. Of course, that gives me much more idea then any of the characters in this film.

"Burn After Reading" connects several different stories, with the deliberately confused style and pacing as an unusually morbid farce. Osbourne Cox, a member of CIA (John Malkovich) is shown first. He has just been fired- 'for your drinking,' they say. After a humorously absurd flinging of obscenities, he storms out toward home, where his shrill wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is much more concerned then anything about the cheeses he was meant to pick up for a house party.

Everyone in this film seems to relate to each other is some way- chances are, sexually. Katie has another CIA member, Harry (George Clooney,) over when her husband's elsewhere. Harry, not an expert in the department of committing, meets Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand,) a self-centered, socially incompetent woman who is suffering a midlife crisis, which involves as many internet flings as possible and a whole lot of liposuction.

Brad Pitt is Chad, a dim-witted and possibly homosexual co-worker of Linda's, who helps her look through personals for a guy who is not a 'major loser.' Their boss, Ted, is a meek man who, despite having feelings for Linda, is terrified he may fall into the 'loser' category. He is she and Chad's boss, though I'm not sure he would be forthright enough to actually fire anybody.

Anyway, Chad is 'lucky' (unlucky?) enough to find a CD-rom containing information of Osbourne Cox's, which involves enough code and 'number shit' to make he and Linda assume it must be worth something. Ted knows an impending disaster when he sees one, and quickly makes it clear he wants it out of their gym. It just so happens that the files are a memoir that Osbourne has decided to write, a concept which makes Katie scoff.

Then Chad and Linda attempt in a vague, hare-brained manner to blackmail Osbourne for what they have find. On the up side, it does not contain any ultra-secret files, that Osbourne would kill for. On the down side, he really wants to write the memoir, and they have caught him in exactly the wrong time, at a time of dispute with Katie, loss of his job, and the effects of the liquors that litter his cabinets, which he is *not* addicted to.

One thing is sure- there's a certain morbid fascination in watching a couple of nimrods attempting to perpetrate crime, with only the vaguest notion that they may be considered accountable. Chad, in particular, tries to threaten Osbourne with the persona that must result from too many late night TV noir movies.

Brad Pitt, who I am not sure I've seen in a film all the way through and not the tabloids, is a surprise. Here he is unabashedly satirical as a simpleton to has no clue how to deal with the situations he gets in ("Osbourne Cox," he says gruffly, then assumes the expression of a 12-year-old making his first prank call. )

John Malkovich, who plays a man who starts out a few slices short of a pizza and works his way to a mound of crumbs, is disturbing/funny in his projection of negative energy. I also liked Frances McDormand, who turns around sharply from the sensible role she played in the period drama I watched a couple weeks , Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day. Richard Jenkins puts some gravity and an earnest presence. as a likable side character who, in the tradition of likable side characters, is killed the most brutally.

But there are problems. Certain scenes seem like segments that the Coens wrote background details on, then forgot how to edit coherently. I guess there is something reassuring about know the directors put much more into the film, then is initially thought, but come on.

One scene, so out of flow with the rest of the story that I half thought it was a dream or a hallucination, has Osbourne tell of his dismissal to a nearly comatose old man (presumably his father,) on a boat that shows up later in the script. The father, who is doing the easiest bit of acting consisting of nodding and staring with unfocussed eyes into the distance, seems like he shouldn't be here.

He obviously can't live on his own- does Osbourne care for him? Where does he stay when the plot doesn't need him? Is he in a rest home? Who leave a daft old man to sway and sit hunched on a boat all day? Osbourne, maybe? I was also annoyed by a scene where Ted implicates at a unusual past profession. "Why did you leave?" Linda asks. "It's a long story." And? Why introduce it?

The absolute best thing about "Burn After Reading" is the dialogue and details, which link into each other in an intricate way. There are gaps, but it isn't the norm- nearly everything that happens has something to do with something else. I would however, have preferred that they change the ending, which brazenly leaves loose ends. After No Country For Old Men it may be a Cohen trademark, but honestly, it's not a tradition I want built upon (Rated R.)