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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 10/18/2008 : 21:10:45
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Burn After Reading
You're going to hear people talk a lot of rubbish about this film, and some of them are well-established critics. Not that I think this is the very best of the Coen Brothers. But it's certainly miles more interesting, funny, incisive, and layered than it's being given credit for.
Hard to single out performances - they're all amazing - from the flamboyant to the understated, and I totally disagree with those who think Clooney is OTT. Well, the only one I have a problem with is Tilda Swinton, whom I never really believe.
I've heard the film described as plotless - which it isn't. Granted you may have to pay attention to the trail of breadcrumbs the Brothers keep dropping before you pick up the film's structure. And you have to widen your gaze to see how the main themes feed into the seemingly disperate stories of what at first seems like an unlikely handful of main characters.
Interesting, then, that the film is topped and tailed with a giant pull-in of the earth from space that finally ends with its reversal pull-out. I'm convinced that dramatic homing in/out is a potent visual way to brand this as a universal tale of the arbitrary, idiotic random series of fuck-ups that define the human condition.
O'Henry, that master of the short story form once observed about a city street that behind every window was a potential tale. I'm pretty sure that had the Coens picked a different contemporary town and landed among another handful of people representing various states of power, they'd have been able to construct just as effective a portrait of the way that life lives us.
Not that their choice is arbitrary, since it conveys perfectly some trenchant analysis that's completely relevant to the chaotic state of the world.
Almost one of the first mantras of invective we hear, is from John Malkovich as Osbourne Cox, a fuck-up of a CIA analyst whose superiors lay it on the line that he just ain't cutting it anymore, and his incessant drinking and unrepressed personal rage are more than enough to demote him. "What the fuck!" he says. Over and over and over. As each morsel of his life falls off like leprous skin - he submits to sheer bafflement. Finally, he storms out with the observation, "Don't tell me this isn't political. This is political."
Because, in case we needed reminding, the personal is the political.
So we have an unexpected portrait of politics, and not just any old politics, but the very real global situation that appears to represent control. We have the architectural facades of power, whether on the grand scale of pristine floors and office hierarchies, or within the democratized microcosm of a well-equipped gymnasium that's all about health and appearance even as we can almost smell the sweat generated to reach some measure of perfection.
Appearances are crucial to the theme. It's all about identity. How do we as people, as a nation, as a world - how do we define ourselves. Given the unwieldy nature of society, how can we attempt to keep it together. How can we function when we're surrounded by deception. When we deceive ourselves.
It's not so much that people are idiots - although we are all idiots of some kind or another. It's more that, with all our powers of analysis, we get it so wrong so much of the time. And, sometimes, these errors and mis-readings end in tragedy. And then what? We either find a way to go on, or we crash and burn.
OK - so we've got a thread connected to the CIA. This is the same CIA that's supposedly monitoring all the data swirling around cyberspace and real space. The same CIA that got it so very wrong when a justification for war was needed.
Here, the agency is presented as just another bureaucracy staffed by people from the pretentious to the incompetent, from the rule-bound retentive to the jobs-worth, from the company right-or-wrong guy to his bigger-picture boss who sees the value of damage control.
In a town so protected by the CIA, it's no wonder that a blanket of paranoia covers not only those in the know, but those who think they know - probably because they've watched some tv shows.
So when Cox becomes aware that people seem to be following him, he's wary indeed. And his alcohol consumption only fuels the suspicion. The fact that his marriage to Tilda Swinton as Katie, a very together pediatrician, is in deep trouble is another briquette on his BBQ of despair. These are ridiculously wealthy people, so the fact they have a serious sailing boat comes as no surprise. We see the boat used in two ways - one as a trysting place for Tilda and her lover Harry, and the other for a soul-searching monolog by Cox to his dad.
That lover is George Clooney, who's also married to a very successful children's author, who conveniently travels a lot on pr tours. Tilda's convinced if each of them can get rid of their respective spouses they can hook up together for real. Yet another misreading of motives.
Tilda's lawyer convinces her to get all the financial data she can on Cox - so she downloads it all onto a CD - including the ramblings of his memoir-in-progress.
But George, who works in PP [personal protection] proves more sex obsessed than love deprived. So, even as Katie prepares for her divorce from Cox, Harry samples internet dating sites for extra-nookie-nookie.
Which is how he meets Frances McDormand as Linda, a fitness instructor at Hardbodies Gym. She's a positive gal, determined to find some kind of companionship, horizontal or vertical. But she's convinced her outer casing needs the touch of the surgeon's knife. And she totally misreads her boss's concern for her welfare as business motivated when the poor shnook is crazy about her. He's not quite what he seems, either, as he reveals in a photograph - which I won't spoil for you.
In any case, when she discovers the health-care benefits that come with her employment contract definitely do not cover cosmetic surgery, her life becomes devoted to scoring the bread for the proceedures - no less than four are required according to the doctor.
Far more surface-readable is Frances's work mate Brad Pitt - umbilically connected to his iPlayer, bottle of water his constant rehydrating mechanism, and with the excitement of a kid at Christmas when he discovers a CD which the cleaner found in the women's locker room. This is Cox's CD, which dropped out of the gym-bag of Tilda's lawyer's assistant.
How Brad and Frances track down Cox to demand a "reward" for turning in the disc, how they involve the Russian embassy in the process, how the trail of mis-readings of reality, mistaken idenities, and series of escalating paranoias and fuck-ups dig them both deeper and deeper into a world of quasi-espionage all coalesce to make up the plot.
The film is very funny in an occasional laugh-out-loud way, and it's very frightening in an existential way. Imagine Bourne with angst instead of roof-top chases and you've started the strange journey.
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ci�nas 
"hands down"
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Posted - 10/19/2008 : 11:20:10
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Thank you. Looking forward to seeing this. Always interesting to see where the Coen Bros go next. The critical reception in the UK seems to have been pretty positive so far. What I've seen of it anyway -- I tend to be wary of reading reviews before seeing a film.
(O'Henry? Begorrah.) |
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Demisemicenturian 
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 10/19/2008 : 16:45:30
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It is a bit flimsy but has that satisfying Coen hipness. Clooney, Pitt and especially McDormand are great and the others are all good. Clooney's role is not too taxing but it's fun to see him playing a bit of a bastard. It's a shame that Pitt's role is a bit smaller than I expected, but he's excellent as the perfectly named and ambiguous-in-a-couple-of-ways Chad. It seems a bit predictable to praise McDormand, but she owns the part of the most central character. It's nice to see that now she can be treated as relatively sexier than when she was younger.
It's really a shame that the film doesn't feature a tap (a.k.a. a faucet). |
Edited by - Demisemicenturian on 10/19/2008 17:53:04 |
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benj clews
"...."
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Posted - 10/19/2008 : 20:06:47
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I thought this was the closest the Coens have come to making another Fargo- the whole 'plan' similarly spiralling out of control and ridiculous sudden violence. If there's any justice, this'll catch on with audiences in the same way.
I have to add that the ending was simply one of the funniest exchanges I've heard for quite some time- I was just crying with laughter. Loved this film- one of my few 5's this year. |
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demonic
"Cinemaniac"
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Posted - 10/19/2008 : 22:41:16
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I wasn't so sold on it personally. My better half was much more impressed - but I struggled to like it, and I really wanted to, I love the Coen's output on the whole. For me it lacked some of that Coen finesse; it felt like a movie they wrote on a weekend and shot in a fortnight given how dispensible the script was and how it lacked a unified tone. Compared to Fargo, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona... it's not in the same league.
I liked pretty much all of the performances; Pitt was terrific as was McDormand, but no one was doing career-best work as I'd previously heard. I really appreciated the spoof elements of the spy genre - the over the top Bourne-esque music and the absurd opening and closing shots over what is essentially a lot of morons cheating/divorcing/blackmailing/killing each other. Finally I was disappointed - it felt a bit like the movie was just getting started just when it was ending, and nothing much had happened. I guess I didn't care enough about anybody, which is the opposite to the protagonists of all the films I mentioned above. Not a disaster by any means, the Coens are really too good for that, but not as good as I wanted it to be. |
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damalc 
"last watched: Sausage Party"
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Posted - 12/04/2008 : 20:42:58
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i agree with benj, a lot like "Fargo," which would usually be good, but it didn't feel terribly fresh to me. kinda like "Goodfellas" and "Casino."
and this is an odd complaint, but being loaded with such well known and well liked (by me anyway) performers, i had a hard time seeing the characters instead of the actors, and i just knew it was a Coen film the whole time. i guess that's my problem, not the bros'.
bottom line, i liked it a lot, but felt like i had seen much of it before.
and i'm grateful, but surprised, that the most shocking moment of the film hadn't been spoiled for me.
my favorite part -- when Clooney stomps up the stairs and comes down with his Liberator.
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Burn After Reading
