Sex, nerdiness and mindless violence mix with ab-toning and stupidity to make a heady cocktail of unforgiving black humour in Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading. After last year’s Oscar success for No Country For Old Men, the Coen brothers are at the top of their game.
Joining them in their latest endeavour is an ensemble cast of Hollywood royalty – Coen regulars George Clooney, Richard Jenkins and Frances McDormand, along with first-timers Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich. At the headquarters of the CIA, analyst Osborne Cox (Malkovich) arrives for a top-secret meeting only to find he is about to be sacked for a drinking problem.
He does not take the news well, and returns to his whisky and memoir writing at his Georgetown home, where his wife Katie (Swinton) is embroiled in an affair with a married federal marshal, Harry Pfarrer (Clooney). Elsewhere in the Washington, DC suburbs, and seemingly worlds apart, Hardbodies Fitness Center employee Linda Litzke (McDormand) can barely concentrate on her work.
She is consumed with her life plan for extensive cosmetic surgery and confides her mission to can-do colleague Chad Feldheimer (Pitt). And all the while, the gym’s manager Ted Treffon (Jenkins) pines for her even as she arranges dates via the Internet with other men.
When a computer disc containing material for the CIA analyst’s memoirs accidentally falls into the hands of Linda and Chad, the duo are intent on exploiting their find. Unfortunately for them, they go about it in a not particularly intelligent way.
And it is this lack of even common sense in the lead characters that the relentlessly dark comedy exploits to make a script that is at once a heartwarming and chilling. Brad Pitt delivers a cleverly timed and nuanced performance as the gratuitously annoying and ingratiatingly idiotic gym assistant who bumbles merrily through life.
Frances McDormand, as his colleague and accomplice in the botched blackmail plot, succeeds in making her character aggravatingly pathetic, yet pitiable, whilst Tilda Swinton does bitchy ice queen like no one else – clad ever so stylishly in pearls and pastels.
Carrying on their on-screen partnership from the immensely successful Michael Clayton is George Clooney and his Harry Pfarrer, with an incredible nervous energy that can only spring from an actor who is very much at ease with himself and the directors. It is a well thought out and masterful performance.
But the best screen time without doubt is occupied by John Malkovich, who is the real crux of the film’s comic power, hurling obscenities indiscriminatingly and soaking himself in whisky. ‘I have a drinking problem? Fuck you. You’re a Mormon. Next to you, we all have drinking problems.’
Aside from the stellar performances, the two real winners for me were the perfectly paced script and Carter Burwell’s excellent score that brings out the structure of the seeming scattered stories with brilliant intensity. Oh, and watch out for a small appearance by Vladmir Putin.
This film is without doubt an excellent watch. Its savage humour and touching detail leave you with a sense of warmth – as well as dismay: that there may well be a Linda Litzke lurking in all of us.
Four stars
