Burn After Reading

I think the movie can be pretty well summed up in a line from the movie itself – “Christ, what a cluster-fuck !!”

Burn After Reading has a bevy of stars – George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton & Frances McDormand – and one goofy storyline. The movie begins in the CIA office in Washington, where an analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), explodes in rage on being demoted by his boss. He prefers to quit rather than accept a demotion and storms out ranting that he will write a tell-all memoirs. We come to know he might have an drinking problem ….

His wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is a pediatrician who’s not so impressed by her husband’s activities, especially his latest one. She is having a fling with a married US Marshal Henry Pfarrer (George Clooney), who is a compulsive womanizer. Unrelated to them (atleast in the beginning) are two Hardbodies gym trainers Linda (Frances McDormand) and Chad (Brad Pitt) – and their boss Ted (Richard Jenkins). Linda thinks she desperately needs cosmetic surgery as she is getting old and Chad (who is the male equivalent of a blonde) is good friend of hers. The gym boss Ted has a major crush on Linda, but she never gives him any consideration.

The story begins when Chad discovers a CD full of Osborne’s memoirs in the gym’s ladies locker room floor. Linda and Chad are convinced they have a goldmine of classified information on their hands and hatch a plan to demand $50,000 for returning the CD. When Osborne gets the extortion call, he is enraged and flatly refuses to pay – threatening them with Official Secrets Act and Federal crimes etc. And from here the script just takes off …

This movie is less about the story and more about the characters. All the characters are complete oddballs – the paranoid Pfarrer, the enraged Osborne, the stupid but optimistic Linda, the harebrained Chad - and they make the movie rather quirky. Pfarrer is the most interesting character by far – his philandering, his paranoia about being followed – and especially his pastime of making mechanical devices in his basement (you gotta see it to believe it). But I think Brad Pitt steals the acting honors in this movie with his bimbo-brained act.

I would classify this as a goofy spy movie – but a very smart one - far removed from the Austin Powers’ kind. The comedy is much more mature and black, there is nothing at stake (like WMDs or billions of dollars in other spy movie spoofs) – just people convinced about their own superiority in some quirky situations. Ofcourse, coming from Coen Brothers*, violence is not far away and it suddenly explodes in the narrative, when you least expect it. The running time is just 95 minutes and final scene in the movie is by far the best I have seen in sometime – even though it doesn’t cleanly tie all ends up.



* The Coen Brothers – Joel and Ethan Coen – are a celebrated director duo and their last release ‘No Country For Old Men’ won the best picture Oscar.