The Coen Canon - “Burn After Reading” (Who are you?! Who do you work for?!)

The first time I saw “Burn After Reading”, I was genuinely confused, by Carter Burwell’s score as much as, if not more than, anything unfolding plot wise. Why did they go with such intrusive and portentous music? How are these characters so fucking stupid? (There’s no other adjective I can use that would do justice to these dopes.) Why am I watching this? 

And then, somewhere, it clicked. Somewhere, Brad Pitt’s Benicio Del Toro without a brain expression won me over, Clooney’s mugging and ludicrous pillow talk with uber ice queen Tilla Swinton did the trick, Malkovich unhinged, and McDormand’s utterly, undeservedly optimistic health club administrator, conquered my resistance. And all of them dumber than a box of hammers.

Essentially, what I found was a script so smart that it overcame my resistance. In one sense, this is the Coens’ corollary to expertly told horror movies; you buy into the stupid choices the characters make because the script is tight enough to make it work and it helps a thousandfold when you have a great cast. But it boils down to the script. Primarily and ultimately, if the script isn’t thought-out enough, the house of cards is going to collapse. 

The Coen brothers may well be the sole inheritors of a tradition that reached its apotheosis in the 1930s and 1940s, that rapid fire dialog and wit that readily spells out a character’s character and speeds the narrative along because so much is done with words so economically. It’s astonishing that while they were writing this movie, they were also working on “No Country for Old Men”, about as diametrically opposed in terms of dialog as you can get. 

“Burn” is very much in their wheelhouse thematically, though. It may be as nihilistic and dark as “No Country for Old Men”, for that matter. The characters here are idiots with inflated notions of their lives’ arcs, unrelentingly self-involve, and thoroughly ridiculous individuals. You wold need a cast of extremely charismatic actors to make these idiots somewhat charming and for that, the brothers enlisted the best. Outside the “clusterfuck”, there are people of some competence; the Russians at the embassy, the CIA operatives we don’t meet, and J.K. Simmons as the senior director of whatever office it was that Osborne Cox (John Malcovich) was fired from. Just about everyone else is borderline retarded (I know; it is not a word I would employ for the psychologically-diagnosed as intellectually challenged - but here, these characters are either stuck in neutral or plugged in reverse - there is no forward progress for them). 

All of that said, I have over the years found myself swept along by repeated viewings. The first time was rough, the second time I saw it, the film fired on all cylinders. It’s not just any one element: everything clicks into place like a well-oiled machine and by this point in their career(s), they nailed it. Repeatedly. 

I have found that a number of people actively dislike this film. Oddly, not my sister. She likes it as much as I do, despite its dark view of humanity and the assembled cast of hammers. Obviously, it’s how the darkness is packaged. In this way, what “Burn After Reading” accomplishes is not so different from certain Hitchcock films in which the players are fodder for ends so desperate that calling them pawns would be sugarcoating the enterprise. 

The fates meted out to this particular group of individuals are stark across the board with a not inconsequential body count: Osborne Cox, the ex-CIA analyst: brain-dead and not expected to recover. Ted, the owner/proprietor of the health club where Frances McDormand’s Linda Litzke works: dead. Her co-worker, Chad (Brad Pitt), the biggest idiot in a sea of big idiots: dead. Clooney’s Harry Pfarrar is divorced and will eventually be on a flight to Venezuela. Linda, last we heard, was in CIA custody, but will be released to …unemployment? Tilda Swinton’s Katie Cox? She may actually continue her life as a ruthless, hard-edged bitch. In fact, that might well be one of the telling points about how much “Burn…” embodies the Coens’ philosophy.

It is only the sang froid and the ruthless who are able to survive. They, and the efficient, above the fray experts like J.K. Simmons’ supervisor. You can commit a horrible act in a Coen brothers’ film and get away with it because you’re either too stupid or frankly, just really good at it or you will pay with your own life because some other idiot will finish you because he didn’t know what else to do. The randomness of each of our finalities is underscored to a point of hilarity. 

Of course, it’s not funny! 

Oh, but it is! In this regard, the Brothers Coen are not so different from Voltaire or Rabelais. They’re well aware of the absurdity of the human condition and if they are not atheists, their god is a humiliator beyond all reason. Literally. Everything that happens in a movie like this happens in a logical manner; each story beat makes sense in the overall context, and all of it is utterly, one hundred percent absurd on a scale that Alfred Jarry would appreciate.

I get why people really do not like this film. I really do. I know why I like it as heartily as I do: the wit, the dark (pitch black) humor, the asininity, the narrative construction, and oh, yes, the music. 

I found out recently that the Coens and Carter Burwell made a conscious decision that the score should be more emphatic and seemingly foreboding to provoke “meaning without meaning”; the score itself is an embedded character, perhaps the only one that knows what’s going on.

I typically don’t put “Burn After Reading” up there at the top of their oeuvre, but it’s not far from it. For anyone else, it would be a masterpiece. For them, it’s just another day in the life of characters who are literally fools, whose tales aren’t told by idiots so much as populated by them. And signifying what, exactly?

CIA Superior: What did we learn, Palmer?

CIA Officer: I don't know, sir.

CIA Superior: I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.

CIA Officer: Yes, sir.

CIA Superior: I'm fucked if I know what we did.

CIA Officer: Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say

CIA Superior: Jesus Fucking Christ.

Random Observations:

Clooney’s turn here as Harry is like Ulysses Everett McGill dialed up to eleven with far less self-awareness. 

Harry shooting Chad in Osborne Cox’s closet is a mirror image of Kyle MacLachlan shooting Dennis Hopper’s Frank Booth out of the closet. Nasty bits both, but one is almost side-splitting funny and the other brings a huge sigh of relief. I’ll leave it to you to guess which is which. Also, Chad might be an idiot, but he was no threat. I guess I’m saying he’s no Frank. But there is a similarity to both films; both pop the lid off of what can happen in broad daylight; both have psychosexual sociopaths at or near the center of the narrative and both films present a world that is not tailored to meet our needs, but is certainly designed to lead it to unforeseen demises.

Both Harry and Osborne’s wives were well ahead of the curve in ending their respective marriages. Hard to blame either, but gee whiz, one’s banging Dermot Mulroney and the other is nailing George Clooney (okay, Harry; and he’s not a prize…seriously, what did Katie see in him???)

What would a sequel look like with Harry and Linda meeting up after all these years? I shudder to think. 

I may need to add to the “how to survive a Coen Brothers movie”: you may also need to be amply paranoid (Harry). Only Harry had the good sense to think something was going on (although it wasn’t necessarily what he thought it was).

Osbourne Cox: I have a drinking problem? Fuck you, Peck, you're a Mormon. Compared to you we ALL have a drinking problem!

What an incredibly turgid tale Osborne’s memoirs would be. Harry was probably right about him; he seems like the kind of guy who had been given horseshit assignments for decades because he was limited in his scope despite his high opinion of himself (and really, Princeton ‘73). Maybe he was always a drunk? He would have fit the profile of the guy who thinks he’s doing more than he did and at the end of the Cold War was one of those who couldn’t parlay his career into much so he just stayed with the Company to fill out his days till retirement. Katie’s exasperation with him seems to say as much, and kicking him to the curb, while cold, is understandable. 

Osbourne Cox: And you're my wife's lover?

Ted Treffon: [shaking his head] No.

Osbourne Cox: Then what are you doing here?

[pause] 

Osbourne Cox: I know you. You're the guy from the gym.

Ted Treffon: I'm not here representing HardBodies.

Osbourne Cox: Oh, yes. I know very well what you represent.

[pause] 

Osbourne Cox: You represent the idiocy of today.

Ted Treffon: No, I don't represent that either.

Osbourne Cox: Yeah. You're the guy at the gym when I asked about that moronic woman.

Ted Treffon: She's not a moron.

Osbourne Cox: You're in league with that moronic woman. You are part of a league of morons.

Ted Treffon: No. No.

Osbourne Cox: Oh, yes. You see, you're one of the morons I've been fighting my whole life. My whole fucking life. But guess what... Today, I win.

[gun shot] 

Poor Ted. No one, and I mean, no one, conveys heartbreak like Richard Jenkins. And what kind of man would shoot someone like that? Oh, right. John Malkovich.

Speaking of Ted; so he was a Greek Orthodox priest for fourteen years. He quit because…? I love how the Coens leave elements like this so open-ended. He leaves the priesthood because? We are free to fill in the blanks; but I suppose the idea was that he sought other forms of solace from the world would be one take (that is, he wanted to taste the delights of the flesh/get laid) but wouldn’t it be better to think he had a dark night of the soul and fell into an irredeemable crisis of faith? Again, Jenkins brings so much to this with a hangdog look that it’s a small miracle of minimalism.