The Cinema of the Four

Burn After Reading

In the annals of cinema, there are few siblings with such a notorious career as that of the Coen brothers. Where the American West once saw brotherly fame based on gunplay and crime, as with the James brothers or the Dalton brothers, one now finds the new West populated by such as the Pang brothers, the Wachowski brothers, and the Coens. And while each has their claims to fame, none have spread their path as wide as that of Joel and Ethan Coen.

Their preferred modus operandi is either the crime drama or the comedy, studiously dwelling on the eccentricities of the locals, wherever their films are set. Chance interactions, paths that cross and re-cross in patterns both simple and bizarre . . . the Coens work is both award-winning and absurd, from “Raising Arizona” to “No Country For Old Men.” And somewhere in the midddle of all that, we find “Burn After Reading.”

“Burn After Reading” has some funny moments, but it’s a bit dark for pure comedy. Sometimes it ponders too long upon the mundane to build cascades of laughter. Yet it is so much lighter than the bloodiest of their films. Perhaps the funniest part of the movie is its summation at the end by J.K. Simmons, almost like the punchline to a joke that’s been an hour and a half in setting up.

Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt give very funny performances, yet the script keeps their characters too grounded for them to be as hysterical as they might have been. George Clooney, John Malkovich, and Tilda Swinton are playing their parts with an ernestness that would have been better used with funnier material . As it stands, too many of their scenes seem like something from a more serious movie.

‘Tis a decent enough film, but let the ticket buyer beware.

What Great-grandfather Sherlock might have said:
“ . . . peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes . . .”