Review: Burn After Reading

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Or, “No Country for White Men.” It’s almost a sure bet that the Coen brothers share a chuckle when they’re not taken seriously. My first infuriation came with “The Hudsucker Proxy,” which set me off in a couple of ways, writing something to the effect that they’d finally crossed the thin but all-defining line between wise guys and assholes. But, if I were to slip it in tonight, I’d likely find some levels or elements that eluded me oh so many years ago. Seeing “The Big Lebowski” a few weeks before its release and interviewing the Coens as well, much of what I admire about it now eluded me. (If I’d only known that my then-girlfriend who I saw it with was a secret stoner: illumination might have been had on the spot.) “Lebowski”‘s become an ur-text in the decade since. Not only is the Dude’s behavior based on a real friend of the Coens, the ubiquitous producer’s rep Jeff Dowd, but also his political background. The Dude abides no lies. There’s also an undercurrent of the idea of masculinity’s reaction to generational displacement that’s as telling as anything in Eustache’s Euro-epic “The Mother and the Whore.” Similar things are at work in the genially splenetic “Burn After Reading,” which ends with the brothers’ fuck-you production company logo, but accompanies its end credits with a live performance by the Fugs, of Tuli Kupferberg singing, “Fuckin’ Amen” (the last line of the movie is “Tuli!”), a 1960s song about the CIA and CIA “men.” (“Who can squash republics like bananas because they don’t like their social manners? The CIA can.”) “Burn After Reading”‘s Coen of the realm is critiquing the alabaster reach of the high white reaches of American power. Their latest boobarama is populated with white people filled with black lies and dumb-ass dreams, white-on-white on blue sky. Whiter than Tilda Swinton’s complexion under her bright red bob, whiter than milk in snow. J. K. Simmons, a comic god of the present moment, takes honors as a high-high-up in the agency who listens to reports from fixer David Rasche about the workaholic knuckleheads, dreamers of low intelligence and limited imagination, wreaking havoc in their backyard with screw-you calm and fuck-you dispatch. His final line, a weary obscenity-blasphemy heard in variations throughout the movie, is perfect, especially with the shot that follows. Very Rumsfeldian. A profane snowflake. And explain it to me when it makes sense. As the disenfranchised CIA analyst whose troubles set the plot to pinwheeling, Malkovich plays to his Steppenwolf-style strengths as a Punchinello of verbal fuckery, and the image of this fabulous fop in carpet slippers and a dressing gown rampaging down the streets of Brooklyn (doubling for Georgetown) with a hatchet in his hand and murder on his lips is inspired. Still, McDormand’s Linda Litzke is the true anti-heroine, a resilient employee of Hardbodies Gym, of high spirits and ready frustration who wants only for four cosmetic surgeries, and like Linda Tripp, is prepared to spend any potential ill-gotten gains from blackmail on it. Simple! Focused! Brad Pitt’s turn as Chad, her goggle-eyed, ever-hydrating boob-in-arms, is better seen than described, although his blond skunk pompadour may be the first and last cinematic homage to his tresses in the forgotten “Johnny Suede.” George Clooney’s Treasury guy? The biggest idiot he’s ever played, and his sexual compulsion knows no bounds. If only he could get a run in… Dry and deadly, “Burn After Reading” is savage, cynical, sarcastic vaudeville about the powers that be. The only notable figure of color is an apparently Latino cleaning man who finds the CD that sets the story in motion on the locker room floor; presumably named after the premium brand of shoes favored by the Secretary of State. 96m. (Ray Pride)