Tag Archives: Coen Brothers

Burn After Reading

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Burn After Reading

 

Although every Coen Broth­ers film is unmis­tak­ably theirs alone (can the Auteur The­ory apply to more than one per­son at once?), Joel and Ethan have a rep­u­ta­tion for rarely mak­ing the films audi­ences want or expect from them at any given time. After Fargo, when every­body wanted another snowy mid­west­ern noir, Joel and Ethan gave the world The Big Lebowski instead (read The Dork Report Review). After a recent string of genre exper­i­ments like the Hep­burn & Tracy-esque roman­tic com­edy Intol­er­a­ble Cru­elty and a remake of Eal­ing com­edy The Ladykillers, the Coens sur­prised every­body yet again with the dead-serious nail­biter No Coun­try for Old Men. And, per­haps because they just can’t help them­selves, they give us whiplash all over again with Burn After Reading.

George Clooney and Francis McDormand in Burn After ReadingClooney and McDor­mand give this movie two thumbs up

Osten­si­bly another caper com­edy like The Big Lebowsi, Burn After Read­ing is actu­ally more amus­ing than hilar­i­ous. The char­ac­ters are a pecu­liar kind of stu­pid com­mon in Coen films: unaware of their lim­i­ta­tions, yet mani­a­cally dri­ven. But the mis­chie­vous Coens under­mine the light enter­tain­ment value of the film by punc­tu­at­ing the con­vo­luted noirish plot and seem­ingly light tone with scenes of extreme violence.

Burn After ReadingJohn Mal­covich being John Malcovich

At the time, The Big Lebowski fea­tured many of the Coens’ reper­tory play­ers (John Good­man, Steve Buscemi, John Tur­turro). In con­trast, Burn After Read­ing sports the mar­quee names Clooney and Pitt, per­haps giv­ing it more atten­tion than it can hold. But its biggest hin­drance to join­ing the ranks of the best of the Coen Broth­ers is that it lacks a highly mem­o­rable (and quotable) char­ac­ter like H.I, Marge, or The Dude.

Burn After ReadingBrad Pitt is in pos­ses­sion of, as they say in movies like this, cer­tain documents

Offi­cial movie site: www.burnafterreading.com

The Big Lebowski

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big_lebowski.jpg

 

In 1998, when all the world wanted from Joel Coen and Ethan Coen was another Fargo, they got The Big Lebowski instead. The Coens recently repeated this trick by fol­low­ing up another mas­ter­piece, No Coun­try for Old Men, with the happy-go-lucky Burn After Read­ing. The Dork Report won­ders if this com­pul­sion is by design or if the Coens just can’t help themselves.

Viewed with some puz­zle­ment upon release, The Big Lebowski is now the sub­ject of pop art, annual con­ven­tions, and action fig­ures. The far­ci­cal film noir is ulti­mately an extended “wrong man accused” pas­tiche in the spirit of Alfred Hitch­cock and Ray­mond Chan­dler, but The Coen Broth­ers infuse it with their trade­mark anar­chic spirit and pop­u­late it with char­ac­ters with low (or oth­er­wise chem­i­cally impaired) I.Q.

big_lebowski1.jpgWe don’t roll on Shabbos

The film’s 10th anniver­sary was recently cel­e­brated in a Rolling Stone fea­ture arti­cle, The Decade of the Dude by Andy Greene. John Good­man, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, and Sam Elliott reveal a wealth of anec­dotes and all seem gen­uinely delighted at the film’s cult sta­tus. Good­man, how­ever, alludes to hav­ing had a kind of falling out with the Coens after Oh Brother Where Art Thou. The arti­cle also states that The Coen Broth­ers decline to dis­cuss the The Big Lebowski at all any­more, for unspec­i­fied rea­sons. How­ever, the DVD edi­tion screened by The Dork Report includes the orig­i­nal 1998 con­tem­po­rary elec­tronic press kit includ­ing an inter­view with the Coen Broth­ers in which they gamely dis­cuss the pro­duc­tion (Joel is cred­ited as direc­tor and Ethan as writer, but in truth they have always shared the duties equally). The DVD also pro­vides a peek at cin­e­matog­ra­pher Roger Deakins’ spec­tac­u­lar fan­tasy sequences and unique bowl­ing footage actu­al­ized with a motor­ized cam­era capa­ble of run­ning up to 20 M.P.H.

Jeff Bridges reveals the extent of his actorly craft in prepar­ing for each scene: he would sim­ply ask The Coens, “Did the Dude burn one on the way over?” Most often, the answer was yes, so he would rub his eyes to approx­i­mate the degree of red­ness appro­pri­ate, and pro­ceed. The Dude copes with the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of life with the motto “The Dude abides,” but the cir­cum­stances in which he finds him­self dur­ing this mis­ad­ven­ture leave him less in a state of zen than one of para­noia. No doubt a life­time of pot abuse has harshed his mel­low somewhat.

big_lebowski2.jpgYou don’t &$%# with the Jesus!

Despite hav­ing only barely more than a cameo appear­ance, John Tur­turro nearly steals the movie with the unfor­get­table char­ac­ter Jesus Quin­tana (that’s “Jesus” with a hard “J”), a sex­ual preda­tor and cock­sure bowler. The Coens speak about want­ing to write a Latino char­ac­ter for Tur­turro, but where did the rest of his out­ra­geous char­ac­ter­i­za­tion come from? Did they just wind Tur­turro up and let him go? Other notable cameos include David Thewlis (Naked, Harry Pot­ter) as a gig­gling asso­ciate of Maude (Moore), and musi­cians Aimee Mann and Flea as hap­less nihilists.

Offi­cial movie site: www.biglebowskidvd.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.