Monday, Sep. 15, 2008

Coens, all-star cast make 'Burn After Reading' cold, yet funny

By Edward Robertson, atomictown.com

Let's assume, for a moment, that like most people on this spinning disaster of a planet, your life is a flaming pile of garbage.

What would make it better? Popsicles? Probably. But what about long-term? Training cats to ride cat-sized unicycles? Better, but even the most athletic cats die after 20 years or so, and then you're right back to heartbreak. The moment I'm done here, I'm planning on founding a kung fu motorcycle gang called the No Rules Cobras. I haven't hammered out the details of our organizational philosophy (poisoning people at 90 mph, probably, as well as something to do with the importance of saffron robes), but at least I'll have created something that will live on after I die under a hail of police gunfire.

Combining the strict discipline of the martial arts with the anarchic nomadery of the biker gang won't be easy, but if there's anything to be learned from the Coen Brothers' barking dog of a new film, Burn After Reading, it's that shortcuts and the pursuit of unexamined values usually ends in bigger tears than the day-to-day tragedy of a dissatisfied life.

After angrily resigning from the CIA, John Malkovich begins writing his memoirs, oblivious to the fact wife Tilda Swinton despises him, is cheating on him with butter-smooth George Clooney, and is preparing for divorce.

On the advice of her lawyer, Swinton copies Malkovich's personal files, which promptly fall into the hands of gym employees Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt. McDormand, driven by her need for self-reinventing plastic surgery, and Pitt, driven by upbeat pop songs, hatch a plan: blackmail Malkovich for the state secrets they believe are on that disk.

Thing is, they suck at it. They have no clue what they're doing. And the more desperate they get, the more dangerous and chaotic their situation becomes.

One of the attacks on the Coen Brothers is they don't actually like people. I don't know where people get this idea -- Steve Buscemi was lovingly shoved into that woodchipper in Fargo -- but Burn After Reading isn't going to do much to refute that criticism.

Pitt's a meathead. McDormand thinks sucking four ounces of fat from her saggy triceps will light a candle in her soul. Clooney is a serial philanderer (though with that perfectly grayed hair and eyes that shine like a Caribbean bay, who can blame him for taking what life has to offer). The movie gets a Route 66's worth out of mileage from their hilarious idiocy and full-steam-ahead incompetence that tangles the plot into a glorious mess from which escape is impossible.

But I don't think it's the characters that draw the Coens' unique brand of cold, violent, absurdist scorn. I think it's their priorities.

Maybe it's the fact that the cast is essentially perfect, an ensemble dream team of such utter power that, between takes, they assembled into a 50-foot acting-bot who blew on the sun until it dimmed enough to permanently reverse global warming. Lesser actors might have made these characters unbearably pathetic. These guys lend them enough humanity to create the impression that, if only they cared about the people in their lives rather than the shapeliness of their own asses or scoring with everyone within a five-mile radius, there might be some salvation.

Nope. Instead, pettiness and desperation usher them into territory that, under the direction of just about any other filmmakers on earth, would be unsettlingly dark. For the Coens, whose affinity for pitch blackness runs so deep their grandmother must have been a bat, it's -- well, it's kinda dark even for them, especially when the brutishly real violence shows up.

Showing the same masterful editing they perfected with No Country for Old Men (if not its overall impact), the Coens bear some serious satirical fangs behind their screwball comedy/thriller. The guys are so talented it's easy to feel let down when they're merely pretty damn good. Don't be tricked. Burn After Reading may be one of their coldest movies, but it's got a clarity of vision that only comes from a long, deep look at what's troubling us and what, if anything, we can do about it.

Grade: B+