Consider, if you will, a spy movie in which we’re told midway through the movie that all of the twists and turns and intrigue that we’ve been immersed in actually don’t matter at all. What we have instead is the lowest stakes spy movie ever.
Should we be so surprised that Burn After Reading comes to us from the Coens, the diabolical team of brothers who also brought us:
Exhibit A: A heist flick that culminates in a wild manhunt including the feds, two escaped cons, and possibly the meanest ever motorcyclist with “Mom” tattooed on him, all of them hellbent on obtaining… a baby.
Exhibit B: A labyrinthine whodunnit in which the gumshoe risks death, dismemberment, and sex all for… a rug.
Fargo, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Ladykillers… I could go on, and honestly it takes some effort to stop, because I’m such a fanboy of their oeuvre. So if we admit that the Coens are just up to their own tricks again, why are people so ambivalent about their latest film? In my mind, there’s a lot here to like.
It feels a bit like a classical Greek tragedy, except funny. Its silliness (for example, character names like Oz Cox, and Ethan’s famously mannered monologues) masks this to some extent but it has a deeply cynical view of life and love — people in Burn After Reading are all too dumb or screwed up to ever be truly happy. The Greek tragedy motif is reinforced by the film returning a few times to a running commentary about the drama from two top CIA men in Langley. They preside over the action like a Greek chorus or the gods themselves from a Sophocles play (or Statler and Waldorf). What all this adds up to is a sense that those in authority–whether god or country–may be all-seeing, but that doesn’t mean that they are any wiser because of it.
The Coens are riffing off of classic drama, but also the spy genre and film in general. Little things delight, like the classic spy computer font that is typed onto the screen to announce the setting, complete with accompanying digital bleeps. Or even smaller things, like the way that the room noise is intentionally changed in each shot as the feet march steadily down different labyrinthine Langley corridors and halls.
Then there are the phallic puns that abound in the film (from the Washington monument to George Clooney absentmindedly slicing carrots), and some outright sexual hilarity at the expense of a kluged-together contraption in Clooney’s basement.
Clooney himself is back in his “screwball Coen” acting mode, which largely consists of a cache of tics, but is beguiling regardless. All of the performances are made up of little details like these: Brad Pitt’s dye job, Richard Jenkins’ sad eyes, and Frances McDormand’s crazed ones. All of them, save Pitt, are Coen Brothers veterans and know exactly the right tones to hit; Pitt’s character is an entirely different creature, a beautiful creation, made all the more enjoyable by Pitt’s obvious delight to be playing so against type.
So sure, it may be meaningless, but why should that matter?
