The Coen brothers turned out one of the best films from American cinema this decade last year, and possibly their best film, No Contry for Old Men of course. So now, just a meagre year later, they have another film ready for the cinema. Throughout their career they have had a tendency to make a slightly more silly film after their serious film. This is apparent here as well, as No Country for Old Men was quite a thoughtful and serious film, with the slight cameo of the Coen’s own brand of dark humour.
In Burn After Reading this dark humour is the core part of the film, and for what it is worth, it is probably the Coen’s best straight comedy in quite a while. The film is filled with dark and almost nihilistic. The characters are simply all idiots, not likable, and generally self-centred. But this works quite nicely, because it creates a nice little unique Coen world, where the rules are somewhat bended compared to the “real world”. The cast is also fairly vast, featuring George Clooney, John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins, and of course the wonderful Frances McDormand, who was great in Fargo (Joel Coen, 1996). They all do an adequate job, but I thought George Clooney was one of the better ones, creating a very strange character, but the team of McDormand and Pitt was also very funny, and an inspired pairing. The main point of the film is that all the characters are after something, however no one has any idea of what the hell is going on. Characters are misled, they believe things that aren’t true, usually because of their own idiocy or misjudgement, and in the end nothing really resolves. It is a film that was made just for good fun, and I thought it worked quite well at that, the humour is at time sublime, however, as a piece of filmmaking one cannot deny that it comes well short of No Country for Old Men. The story is interesting though, the characters are quirky and fun, and the structure of the film keeps one interested throughout.
I’m looking forward to seeing what more the Coen’s can come up with. They had quite a spell where most their films were quite sub-par, but with these recent two they seem to be back on track. Well see what kind of film their next will be, but I sort of doubt that they will in the foreseeable future make a film that tops No Country for Old Men. Back to the film itself, it will never become a true Coen classic, it doesn’t have quite the darkness and cleverness of Fargo, nor is it as funny as The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen, 1998). It is a nice and quirky little piece of comedy that probably will stay as one of those Coen films like The Hudsucker Proxy (Joel Coen, 1994). The Coen’s are in this way similar to Woody Allen, coming up with new films almost every year and have had quite a quality curve. One thing I like about Burn After Reading which I usually wouldn’t like in films is that the characters have minimal development, and don’t really learn anything. This is due to their exceeding stupidity. A lot of people hated Burn After Reading, calling it perhaps the worst Coen film. I don’t agree with this though, the dark humour works well, several times I laughed, several times I laughed a lot. The ending was also fantastic, and punctuated the film in a great way. I thing the reason why someone might not enjoy the film is because they will be quite detached from the characters. But I like the detachment, because it works well with the dark humour and ridiculing of the characters.
All in all, I enjoyed Burn After Reading. It is an enjoyable comedy, but not a great piece of filmmaking. It’s a good outing from the Coen’s, but I think we will see better films than this to come from them in the years.
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