The Art of Ridicule: Burn After Reading (2008)

National security in the hands of dopes.

For May, I’m doing a miniseries called The Art of Ridicule. I’ve selected four films that cast a satirical eye at America, politics and the general mess we find ourselves in. These aren’t necessarily a one-to-one skewering of our current political moment, but I think there’s some evergreen stuff in these movies that helps explain how we got to where we are.

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The cleverest joke in Burn After Reading comes from its visual and aural choices. Joel and Ethan Coen’s film plays it loud, with quick cuts, flashy satellite imagery and a bombastic score. It feels urgent and propulsive, like any great spy thriller. To stumble upon it on TBS, you could briefly mistake it for a Bourne movie.

But it’s all in service of a plot that twists itself in circles, going nowhere because none of it matters. It’s the story of narcissistic morons, all of whom are deluded enough to believe the conspiracy in which they find themselves goes All The Way to the Top – despite the fact that their superiors can’t remember their names and are, in the end, just grateful everyone involved is either out of the country, comatose or dead. The ones who aren’t can be bought off with plastic surgery.

The league of morons

Burn After Reading was the Coens’ first film after winning Oscars for best picture, screenplay and director for No Country for Old Men. Coming off that film, it was easy to assume the brothers might deliver another scathing, dark-hearted masterpiece, even though they’d previously pivoted from Raising Arizona to Miller’s Crossing and the silliness of The Big Lebowski was preceded by the stark thriller (by comparison), Fargo¹. So, it was on brand for them to move from Cormac McCarthy’s haunting, hopeless drama to a piffle involving smoothie-gulping gym rats and sex-obsessed government workers.

The one who kicks off the convoluted conspiracy is Osbourne Cox, a low-level signal analyst (John Malkovich) who, in the opening scene, is demoted from his Balkans desk because his work is slipping and it’s believed he has a drinking problem (the film’s first of many great lines is Cox retorting “You’re Mormon. To you, everyone has a drinking problem.”²) While his boss offers him a nice, quiet reassignment, Cox instead quits in a hail of obscenities and tells his long-suffering wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) he’ll go into consulting. But then he decides to write his memoirs, which he believes could incite a firestorm of controversy and, it’s implied, money. But Obsbourne only pounds out a few lines of his memoirs³ before he switches on reality TV and passes out on the sofa.

Not that Katie really cares. She’s sleeping with family friend and retired government operative Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), who marvels at his friends’ floors (“is that pine?”) and confuses his food allergies, such as having “lactose reflux” and an allergy to “shell food.” Katie’s planning to divorce Osbourne – believing Harry’s repeated promises that he’ll leave his wife – which is how his memoirs and financial records eventually get on a CD that Katie’s lawyer leaves at the local gym. It falls into the hands of energetic but dunderheaded trainer Chad (Brad Pitt), who convinces coworker Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) that they should try and return it for a “Good Samaritan reward”...which of course turns into unintentional (??) blackmail and a host of misunderstandings, with the loop constantly going back and forth and getting more complicated when Linda begins dating Harry, who constantly trolls for new conquests on a D.C. dating website.

I was inspired to watch Burn After Reading again after the recent Signal fiasco (coincidentally, I’d decided to watch it – but hadn’t yet gotten around to it – shortly before Scott Tobias did his own fantastic revisit at The Reveal). In my memory, the Coens’ film had been a scathing indictment of national security operatives and politicos. And that’s kind of true. The film’s over-the-top aesthetics and score speak to these individuals’ self-ascribed importance, as well as the way mystique and grandeur we give to those in the halls of power (the film’s funniest gag is the way it frames Harry building something mysterious in his basement, which we assume to be a weapon of mass destruction or something similar, only for it to be…something I won’t repeat in a family newsletter).

But the film constantly highlights how little real power these characters have. When Osbourne’s memoirs leak to the Russian embassy, the head of the CIA (J.K. Simmons, walking away with the movie in two quick scenes) waves it off because Cox’s security clearance was so low that they would have nothing of import anyway. Besides, the Russians don’t want it, telling Linda (who tries to sell it to them) that it’s “dribble;” also, Cox covered the Balkans…why would the Russians want it? The only reason it gets into their hands anyway is that Chad is so convinced it’s classified intelligence because of the government-speak in the text (again, attaching import to something because of presentation) and what he believes are codes; in actuality, they’re just financials Cox’s wife is gathering for leverage in the divorce. None of it means anything and, in the film’s gut-busting final scene, even the government is baffled. “I guessed we learned not to do it again,” Simmons’ character says, before exhaling “F—ed if I know what we did.”

Stupidity tinged with sadness

What I saw in theaters as a light piffle about inept bureaucrats revealed itself to be, on this latest viewing, also a Coens’ critique on self-absorption. What makes the humor of Burn After Reading stick to the ribs is the sadness that mingles with these characters’ soullessness. Most of these individuals are searching for something, but they’re so solipsistic that they have blinders on to anyone else and rationalize their pettiness.

Cox is an arrogant prick – it’s probably why the CIA was happy to demote him – who can’t see that it’s costing him his marriage and his sobriety. He could probably pay Chad to return the memoirs – or, truthfully, just trick him into giving them back – but he’s so angry at the “league of morons” that he thinks are out to get him that he instead lashes out and verbally harangues Chad before punching him in the nose and kicking him out of his car; a decision which causes a minor fender-bender with Linda, resulting in Katie finally getting the gumption to leave him.

Not that Katie’s winding up with a winner. Yes, he looks like George Clooney, but he’s a surface-level dunce who had a danger-adjacent career but never had to draw his weapon. He’s paranoid, constantly looking over his shoulder at a car he believes to be following him. He’s a serial adulterer; the Coens reveal that he has the same pickup line (“well, hello), takes his dates to the same movie⁴, and even has the same post-sex routine (“maybe I can get a run in”). Working for the Coens always brought out Clooney’s best buffoon, and Harry Pfarrer might be the pinnacle of this collaboration. The longer the film goes on, the more pathetic Harry appears; in the end, he’s just an empty, lonely man – his tearful phone call to his wife near the end (who, of course, is cheating on him and getting ready to divorce) shows that he’s just a ball of insecurity, loneliness, and paranoia, trying to fill it all with sex and adventure.

And then there’s Linda. Although not in the government’s employ, she’s no less self-obsessed. She’s introduced talking to a doctor about expensive plastic surgery; she’s consumed with the idea of creating her ultimate self and following the power of positive thinking. She’s cheery and nice, but lonely and self-hating. She wants companionship and love but on her terms, but she’s constantly battling for it with people who also want it on their own terms (early on, she sleeps with a man and rifles through his wallet, where she find a note from his wife to bring home groceries). She’s so absorbed with her problems that she can’t see that her boss, Ted (Richard Jenkins), adores her. That said, she does have limits. When Harry comes to her distraught, she kicks him out because she can’t take his negativity – even though Harry’s distraught because he shot a man who broke into the house of his lover, and neither Harry nor Linda know that the man was Chad.

It’s not that everyone in this movie is evil, although several of them do evil things. It’s just that they’re so consumed with their own problems and searches for happiness that they ignore the ways they collide into each other. In a pretty pointed commentary, all of them have jobs that are supposed to be in service of others – whether it’s the government officials who are supposed to protect national security or the gym trainers who are supposed to help others achieve their goals. Even the two most “innocent” characters – Chad (who originally just wanted a reward until Linda pushed him into blackmail) and Ted – wind up dead at the hands of others because of their own desires to a.) get more dirt or b.) bail Linda out of a jam.

It would all be too cynical and nihilistic to bear were the Coens’ script not so constantly funny, both in its sharp-tongued dialogue and the way these threads careen into and twist around each other. It also helps that they have A-list, Oscar-winning actors playing these complete dopes. Clooney has never been funnier, and McDormand weaponizes her folksiness while Malkovich does the same with his arrogance. But, of course, the highlight is Pitt, who somehow seems to have discovered how to lower his IQ several dozen points while the camera is trained on him. Chad is stupid. Chad is greedy. But Chad is also blissfully energetic and exuberant. He also has one of the rare death scenes that made me gasp and laugh at the same time.

Does any of this make sense if you haven’t seen the film? To be fair, I don’t know that it completely makes sense while you’re watching it – which is why Simmons’ character and his underling spend so much time doubling-back on where everyone winds up. It’s a tragedy involving government workers that has no global stakes, but goes ‘round in circles because none of these characters are self-aware enough to see their own stupidity and self-absorption. In the end, Chad and Ted are dead, Osbourne is comatose, Harry’s on a flight to Venezuela, and the government is baffled. But at least Linda got her plastic surgery. You can almost hear Marge Gunderson asking “And for what? For a little bit of money (or love, or looks)? There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don'tcha know that?”

Burn After Reading isn’t a scathing indictment of American politics so much as it is a ridicule of how our insecurities, flaws and narcissism inflate our own importance and blind us of the consequences our actions have on others. Were it the former, I’m sure it would be an enjoyable film; but as the latter, it’s a great one.

1. The Coens make really, really good movies, don’t they?

2. If Osbourne doesn’t have a drinking problem when the film starts, he’s sure in the grip of one by the time it ends.

3. I don’t know what’s funnier, the way Malkovich drops an f-bomb or Cox’s pronunciation of “memoir.”

4. Two thoughts on this: One — it’s revealed that the movie Harry takes his dates to stars Dermot Mulroney. Near the end of the movie, we see his wife on a TV talk show and learn Mulroney is their next guess…right before it’s revealed that she’s having an affair. Feels like a missed opportunity not to close the loop even further by having Mulroney show up to play her paramour. Two — I wonder if Soderbergh saw this before Black Bag.