Thursday, October 30, 2008

Burn After Reading (Ethan and Joel Coen)

Once again the Coen brothers put together a suspense film without any of the logic of a typical Hollywood thriller. Burn After Reading is nothing but an excellent joke about how idiotic people (of all sorts of age/generation/career/upbringing/social status/etc.) can be. In spite of having spies, suspense, assassinations and thrills, it comes across as a surreal satire about spy thrillers.
The characters are madly absurd - no one really knows anything and what they do know isn't very important to anyone but themselves. The plot is completely ridiculous, nothing adds up as everyone lives in their own little bubble of obsession and confusion.
The film shouldn’t work, but it does.

Harry (George Clooney) is a federal marshal who is addicted to internet dating websites and has a weird fetish for wooden floor finishings. He is having one too many affairs: 1 - Linda (Frances McDormand), a needy secretary as well as a jittery instructor at Hardbodies Gym who convinces herself that costly cosmetic medical procedures will make her more desirable; and 2 - a bitter, loathsome paediatrician Katie (Tilda Swinton) who is married to Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich). Osbourne is a CIA agent who gets sacked because of his drinking problem and the fact that his wife, Katie, is banging more wooden planes of his boat than ever the ocean waves did, seems to be totally beyond him.
There's also Chad (Brad Pitt), a bubble-gum air-head who works as a trainer at the gym who can't live without his bike or his iPod and is Linda's best buddy.
The plot thickens and the characters come together when a CD of incomprehensible CIA type material referred to as “top-secret shit” by Chad containing Malkovich’s mad Balkan memoirs is discovered on the floor of a changing room at Hardbodies.

On the whole there is chilling cynical tone to the whole film but one has to be very attentive to notice it because the hilarious scenes, the set details and the great photography are bound to grab your attention.

No comments: