Burn After Reading: Nothing and Everything

Sorry I haven't been active as much as I'd like to be, but that's mostly because of a nasty infection which I only got rid of. So yeah, I'm back.

Recently, I had the pleasure of watching Burn After Reading, a Coen brothers film. It's a black comedy centered on an ex-CIA analyst and some secret files that end up in the wrong (and frustratingly idiotic) hands. This is not a review per se, but it's a pretty spoiler-heavy thinkpiece on the film, so turn back right now if you haven't seen or if you don't want to see it.

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Well, where to start! First of all, this film is about idiots. That's basically the "skeleton" of the plot. But that is not what I wanted to focus on, that's for another day. I wanted to talk about how this film handles comedy and death.

Brad Pitt plays Chad, a fitness trainer who works at a training gym called Hardbodies, John Malkovich plays the ex-CIA analyst Osbourne Cox, George Clooney plays a womanizing treasury agent Harry Pfarrer, Frances McDormand plays Linda Litzke co-worker of Brad Pitt's character at Hardbodies, Richard Jenkins plays Ted, the manager of Hardbodies.

The supposed "raw" intelligence files which are essentially the memoirs of himself that Osbourne Cox, by a turn of events end up in the hands of Chad and Linda. They hatch a plan to extort money from Osbourne Cox in exchange of his memoirs, but nothing goes according to plan. When they turn to the Russian embassy to give the "secret files" to the Russians, Linda tells them that they have a lot more files, which they didn't. So, Chad breaks into Osbourne's home and attempts to burn the files onto a disc.

Just as he is in the midst of this, Harry Pfarrer who is sleeping with Osbourne's wife enters the house and goes for a shower while Chad hides himself in the closet. Chad sees multiple opportunities to run out and escape but doesn't take them. The result? He gets accidentally shot in the center of his forehead by Harry when he is scared by Chad standing in the closet.

The scene is meant to be comedic but on a level it's also very sad, seeing as how Harry goes unpunished, and Chad's body isn't identified due to it having no ID on it and subsequently being cremated. I could've forgiven the Coen brothers if this was the single such incident in the film but it happens again near the end when Ted breaks into Osbourne's home for the same files. Osbourne finds him, shoots him in the chest before chasing him and gruesomely killing him in the streets with a hatchet in broad daylight.

It's not that I feel bad for the characters, the idiocy is major part of the characters. It's how the writers seemingly don't care for the characters. There is no satisfaction of seeing the guilty being punished. It's almost as if the movie doesn't care if it's character live or die because they all seem to be almost "forgotten" pretty quickly, it's almost as if the movie doesn't want you to care about the characters. And in the end, all that is accomplished is that Linda finally gets her surgeries for which she had been scheming through the whole movie. It's a movie where nothing happens and everything happens. And I'm definitely not putting that in any kind of metaphorical or hidden-meaning type bullshit, it's quite literally that.

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Does punishment exist in the real world? Did everyone who ever committed a crime got punished? I doubt it. It paints a grim picture of the world, but that's the way it is and you cannot change that. And so should be the case in fiction too. But when a film does not care for it's characters, then there's just no point. I get that it's a black comedy, but even in black comedy characters should be "care-able".

The film is certainly ripe with laughters so there's that. I enjoyed it quite a bit but I felt that these things were some of the major stuff that was wrong with the movie and I had to get it out. Glad I could. Hope you guys enjoyed it.