The Coen Brothers' Mean Streak

Something's happened to the Coen Brothers. Maybe it's success going to their heads (they've got my vote for Smuggest Oscar Acceptance Speech), maybe they're losing their touch, or maybe they're just plain cruel. This decade has been mostly uneven for them. There's O Brother Where Art Thou? (fun but lightweight), The Man Who Wasn't There (an underrated return-to-form), Intolerable Cruelty (intolerable, natch), The Ladykillers (forgettable), No Country for Old Men (strong moments in an overrated whole), and now there's Burn After Reading, which is the darkest and least gracious film of the Coens' careers. After watching it and No Country for Old Men, one has to wonder whether or not the Coens are growing misanthropic, nihilistic, and ugly in their middle age.

The Coens have almost always built their stories around idiots -- Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Josh Brolin in No Country for Old Men -- and Burn After Reading is no exception. This assortment of "heroes" is the dimmest the Coens have ever created, and while that should be the recipe for Coen comedy gold, the Coens forget the element that makes their films work: sympathy. Sure, their films have always been slightly cold and self-consciously clever stunts about dumb people doing dumb things, but what made the films so engaging was that the film (and the filmmakers) seemed to have a genuine love for these people who had good intentions but lacked the brains to carry them out correctly.

The characters in Burn After Reading are short on both brains and good intentions, and the film offers them no sympathy or redemption. If the audience does get any kicks out of the film, they come from feeling intellectually superior to the characters and taking pleasure in their failure. In this film, the Coens seem to have contempt for the characters, monogamy, the government, and the general populace. They now look at goofiness not as something to smile at but as something to punish.

By the end of the film, it's uncertain whether or not the audience is lumped in with the characters -- we're given nothing except the feeling that everything we just experienced was really meaningless. In short, Burn After Reading doesn't give a crap about anyone in it or anyone watching it. As much as it pains me to say this about two filmmakers I admire, it seems as though the Coens have to make everyone in this film completely stupid and pathetic in order to shed light on the only geniuses in the film: the Coen Brothers.

This could explain the sudden ultraviolent streak in Burn After Reading as well as the overall nihilism of No Country for Old Men. The Coens have always used fatal violence in their films, and while it hasn't always been used seriously, there's something different, something meaner about the violence in their two latest films (Miller's Crossing comes to mind as a film that balances using violence for irony and drama). Burn After Reading (and No Country) seems to look upon suffering and gunshot wounds as the highest form of comedy. They even craft one scene that attempts to outdo the "I Shot Marvin in the Face" scene from Pulp Fiction. Death and misery have become a joke to the Coens because the people in their films are no longer worth their emotional attachment; they used to love these people, now they just love to laugh at the futility of their petty existence. The Coens have replaced the custard pie in the face with a gunshot wound as the biggest gag there is, and in doing so, they have become the kind of nihilist they mocked in The Big Lebowski.

By the end of the film, nothing is of any importance. Not the characters, not the plot, not the comedy, and certainly not the resolution. The Coens have completely upended the Hollywood storytelling formula here, only they have replaced it with a smug void. It's hard to tell whether or not they do this out of outrage for the ineptitude of the intelligence community or out of contempt for the human race. Sadly, the film makes a much better case for the latter, with characters so vain, cruel, deceitful, conceited, or just plain stupid that there is no room for a sunny outlook or a constructive statement. Like its title suggests, Burn After Reading is destructive and disdainful, and when it's over, there is little left to take home but smoke and ash.

Comments

[Witkacy]

>misanthropic, nihilistic, and ugly

I'm surprised that you glossed The Ladykillers as "forgettable," before making this point: it's really an unmitigated statement of their nihilism, and the structure of the plot is pretty pure, in that respect.

For my part, I was shocked for some reason by the Coens' flippancy on the commentary track for The Man Who Wasn't There...But I'd really have to disagree that No Country is "overrated"--the book is damned good, and the movie's damned good...Nevermind that it won the Oscar; that's a distraction - after all, even Silence of the Lambs won the Oscar, and it was a pure potboiler.

[noughtagroos]

Obviously in my previous post I meant Burn After Reading, not No Country for Old Men.... ugh!

[loveglobe]

Mike, you're very brave to admit what I think many Coen Bros fans have felt for a while: vast disappointment with their newer films. The first time I saw Barton Fink, it left me with the sense of having witnessed cinematic genius, and wanting to analyze it frame by frame. No Country, for all it's Oscar hype, fails to inspire in the same way, and really i think you hit the nail on the head. Now, don't let something similar happen to your blogging!

[noughtagroos]

Because your analysis doesn't consider the historical context of No Country for Old Men, you miss the point entirely. In the age of the Patriot Act and its widespread abuses, of the hyper-secrecy of the Bush administration, and of the willful ignorance of a country that can (supposedly) reelect the worst president in its history, it's a mistake not to see film as stinging social/political commentary.

The characters' understanding of and engagement with the world of "intelligence" is figured through the comic and grotesque stereotypes of spy movies. This leads, of course, to catastrophe.

The film is a comedy in the classic sense of the word: a drama that represents people acting less than their true nature, as opposed to tragedy that represents their reach to unattainable greatness.

It's not that the Coen brothers are mean... it's more that they would have been dishonest to falsify this film with artificial empathy and a happier ending. Not every film has to follow the same formula to be effective.

[lesterfreeman]

Loved Burn After Reading. It's an ode to human folly and really really funny. Clooney is hilarious in it!

[talking snakes]

' Say what you will about the tenants of national socialism........at least it's an ethos ! "

[fuzzywuzzy6]

You have forgotten their first movie, Blood Simple. That was a very dark and disturbing movie about some very dumb and nasty people. Emmett Walsh was terrifying as a detective in that movie.

That movie reminded me of Butterfly by James Cain. That was not a novel about greed like Blood Simple, but it was about very stupid, ignorant hateful people.

I am not a reader of lengthy movie criticism, but I assume they are also fans of Cornell Woolrich.

The novels of these 2 authors are far more noirish than the movie adaptations.

I enjoy some of the Coen brothers' work. Presumably they will continue to have good works and less successful works, but at least they are willing to experiment.,

[kh333]

So they've stopped thinking stupidity is fun and a big ol' hoot, and they've started indicating that stupidity is just...stupid, and causes a lot of problems for a lot of people. Including death and destruction. Hmmm, can't imagine what might have motivated that sort of thinking.

I hear their next movie is called "Bridge to Nowhere."

[sammy50]

The point of "Burn After Reading" was to pay actors 20MM each for 3 months of work based on fans' silly
assumption that actors are not greedy and will produce a quality product.

I like Brad and Angelina's charity giving, but they really soured me when they bought a 73MM ,35 bedroom house in France. They wld be well served to remember the Schindler lamentation at the end of "Schindler's List."

[Clavis]

"No Country For Old Men" has the biggest Emperor's New Clothes-type moment since the last 5 seconds of "The Sopranos".

Hey, Coen Brothers -- NOT showing us something, so that we have to imagine what happened, doesn't make you geniuses. It makes US geniuses, since we're the ones who filled in the blanks and invented rationales and tied it all together. So how come the Oscar statues don't have "The Audience" printed on them?

[garlicpowder]

Personally, I slept thru most of Burn After Reading. That was my own fault. I always fall asleep at the movies. By the end I felt refreshed. Still, I was awake for the gunshot in the face and the hammer at the end which I found to be much more chringe worthy. I look forward to seeing this on dvd but I suspect that I will place this movie between Intolarable Cruelty and Ladykillers. Both movies I enjoyed tremendously but lost the dvds after they were burgled from me. Its a Cohn/clooney film which is to say entertaining but not Oscar worthy. btw I saw Hudsucker on the big screen so Im hardcore.

[dve2z]

if you mean that there are no clearly defined protagonist in their movies, I agree.

I don't think Big Lebowski was a movie about idiot. I guess to you I would be an idiot, too.

[GrandyK]

Aren't these pretty mean times? 'Burn After Reading" really gets under your skin. It is a fantastic film and an important social commentary!

[Swerinjer]

Commentary about what? Neither my gf and I could figure out if there was a point to the whole thing.

I hypothesized it was a cautionary tale on the abuses of a surveillance society, but joel coen shot that down. On the wiki page he says its not a satire on anything or have any political message at all.

[Mattyhorn]

Perhaps it would help you to look at Burn After Reading as more of the Coens' patented "shattering widely held myths".

D.C. is considered by many in the rest of the country as elite, the center of international diplomacy, braintrusts, think tanks, the intelligence community, etc.

What the movie showed was when the uninformed cross paths with the overeducated (or the over-hydrated vs. over-inebriated). Misunderstandings abound. Disaster ensues (with a few laughs in between).

This is a black comedy - perhaps not their best work (myself, I'm a sucker for Miller's Crossing) or even their funniest work (Lebowski, natch) - and, after their success for No Country, I think they're entitled to a little subversion and whimsy.

[londonexpat]

It's obvious you don't appreciate the Coen Bros- "Overrated whole"? Are you serious? I haven't seen this film yet, but in reminding me of all the great Coen films I have enjoyed in the past, I will have to make the time. SO, thanks for that.

[SpencerCat]

I concur.