Burn After Reading: Why It’s the Feel-Good Movie of the Year!

The film opens with a scene that sets a tone of deep-seated intrigue, starting with a panoramic view of Earth from space that narrows down to the east coast of the United States, centering on a sprawling complex amid a wooded area – the CIA’s main hub in Langley, Virginia – all set to a backdrop of intense, pounding music. It soon becomes clear, however, that the 2008 film by Joel and Ethan Coen, “Burn After Reading,” a spy thriller parody, is not about unveiling grand secrets but about its characters engaging in futile pursuits, wandering through misleading paths, and ultimately learning nothing.

In a typical Coen brothers’ twisty narrative, gym employees Linda (played by Frances McDormand) and Chad (Brad Pitt) in Washington DC stumble across a CD containing the draft memoirs of former CIA analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich). Chad quickly assumes it’s “highly classified shit” and together, they scheme to extort money from the former intelligence officer in exchange for the disc. Concurrently, Linda starts an affair with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a paranoid US marshal who is also secretly involved with Osborne’s wife Katie (Tilda Swinton).

This culminates in a bleakly humorous farce that features perhaps the most foolish and least likable cast of characters ever to lead a Coen brothers film. Known for their penchant for putting their characters through the wringer, in “Burn After Reading,” the Coens show no mercy. They take jabs at Osborne’s Ivy League arrogance (he pronounces “memoir” as “mim-wah”) and Harry’s egocentrism (he imagines himself the protagonist of his own spy thriller, perceiving threats everywhere), or subject their characters to sudden, shocking, and ludicrously comical demises.

The film’s most substantial gag, though, is its defiance of the concept that a movie must be about something significant, particularly with such a star-studded cast and award-winning team behind the scenes. The Coens had just won Oscars for best director and best picture shortly before this film’s release. They, alongside a lineup of famous actors and recognized character actors, all portray dimwits with a deadpan seriousness. This is complemented by longtime Coens’ composer Carter Burwell and renowned cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who treat even the silliest scenes, like the reveal of a homemade sex apparatus, with artistic reverence in sound and vision.

What this assembly brings to “Burn After Reading” is a weightiness that deliberately contrasts with the triviality of its content, creating a uniquely comic form of art.

The setting in Washington DC lends itself to more profound interpretations. There’s a potential commentary on the ineptitude and selfishness at the core of American governance, a notion that echoes both during the Bush administration when the film was set, and in the Trump era. An example is when Linda and Chad attempt, and fail, to sell Osborne’s memoirs to uninterested Russian parties, not realizing that the Cold War has ended and that Russia is, at that moment, not considered an adversary.

However, politics has never been a central theme in the Coens’ films, and the directors have themselves stated that “Burn After Reading” was not meant as a commentary on current American politics. According to Ethan Coen, the film is more about the universal “inner knucklehead” in everyone; essentially, it’s a movie about the spectacle of its own foolishness. In one scene, Harry and Linda laugh uproariously at a cheesy Dermot Mulroney romantic comedy, with the Coens poking fun at what they see as vacuous contemporary culture. Yet, if there was ever a Coen brothers film that allows you to switch off your brain, it’s this one.

“Burn After Reading” is often seen as one of the Coens’ more throwaway works. Yet, it’s this very disposability that, for me, makes the film consistently amusing—a knowing triviality that serves as a relief in serious times, such as those we are currently experiencing. Positioned between their more solemn film “No Country for Old Men” and a rare autobiographical project “A Serious Man,” “Burn After Reading” showcases the Coens playing with their material and audience expectations just for the sheer joy of it.

In the movie’s final moments, a CIA boss portrayed by JK Simmons with comical bluntness ends the saga of “Burn After Reading” while dismissing any lingering thoughts that the story was about much of anything. “What did we learn?” Simmons asks in frustration. The camera then pulls away from Langley and ascends back into space, implying that the Coens, akin to playful deities, have been amused all along by the sheer folly of their creations.

• Burn After Reading is available on Amazon Prime in the US and for digital rental in the UK and Australia