Burn After Reading (2008)

“I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself,” says a character at the end of Joel and Ethan Coen’s cult classic The Big Lebowski; in a way, one could argue that that is the idea the Coen brothers have been milking throughout their celebrated 24-year career. In films like Fargo, Raising Arizona, and, yes, even No Country For Old Men, the seminal auteurs depict characters that get trapped in horribly mucky situations, often due to a bad moral choice, or just plain stupidity.

Their newest film, Burn After Reading, explores those same themes, with especially stupid characters. However, it never really comes together, simply because, while every character—whether it’s Frances McDormand’s man-hungry, liposuction-eager gym employee, or John Malkovich’s profanity-spewing alcoholic ex-CIA agent—has its own quirky motives (“I’m writing my memoirs,” purrs Malkovich), they really do feel like hyphenated screenplay throwaways, somehow existing in the same movie and crossing paths at some point, for no reason other than to make the audience laugh. Unfortunately, the movie isn’t especially funny, though it does have its moments; but generally, the viewer never really fully understands, or cares, about what is going on.

The Coens love playing with genre conventions, and while Burn After Reading is their take on an espionage thriller, it has none of the moral conflicts that go with the best entries in the genre. The characters just do and say until the proverbial wheel (if it can be traced) comes full circle. The story goes something like this: Malkovich’s character gets fired, a disc with classified information on it is somehow left at the gym where McDormand and Brad Pitt (in an intermittently amusing, expectedly bright performance) work. Malkovich’s wife is sleeping with George Clooney, a paranoid ex-cop who somehow starts sleeping with McDormand, who by that point has already caused trouble by attempting to blackmail Malkovich. Violence occurs, nothing occurs. There is no tension or feeling for any of the characters. And rather than having a Lebowski-esque profound statement at the end, to explain what it all means, we get shrugged shoulders: “Whatever it was, let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Joel and Ethan, please, follow your own advice.

Though it does have its moments of inspired dialogue and the wonderfully bizarre, Burn After Reading is a scattershot effort, an empty prototype of a movie the Coen brothers have done so well before, and probably don’t need to do again. Perhaps they’re letting off some steam after the dank nihilism of No Country for Old Men. There are two similarities, however, between this and last year’s Oscar winner: neither film gives us a clear exit; and while the earlier film leaves us pondering the meaning of its title, this film is as easy to forget as its title demands. I guess the true human comedy is that nobody—even the great artists—is perfect.