Burn After Reading

All detective movies, even the comedies, follow the same formula. A small-time guy is sucked into a big-time situation. At first, the detective thinks his goal is simple: collect some money, photograph an infidelity, track down a ditzy ingénue. He has no interest in the big picture. But the original task turns out to be more difficult than he imagined. In fact, merely extracting himself from the situation will require him to understand it, and his quest to do that expands his knowledge of how complex the world is and how depraved people can be. Ultimately, he finds himself the focal point of a high-stakes battle that affects many people, and shoulders him with a great moral responsibility that he doesn’t want.

The crux of the humor in Burn After Reading is that the heroes are thrilled to be caught up in the high-stakes drama. Not really good guys or bad guys, they’re goofballs who view the world of big money and global espionage so abstractly that they’re incapable of believing that anything they do personally can have a serious impact upon it.

Americans right now are caught between reveling in 21st-century middle-class paradise, and stepping up to temper the empire of globalization that makes that paradise possible. It’s no accident that Pitt’s character is a personal trainer, and McDormand’s is obsessed with cosmetic surgery. These are self-worshipers who want to live forever, and think that maybe they can. Their lack of concern about personally affecting the big picture doesn’t come from selfishness and greed; it comes from self-absorption and the conviction that life is a game.

The truth is that to be middle-class in America right now is to struggle constantly with the idea that maybe life is a game. It’s comforting, then, to laugh at characters who are not even aware enough to know that they should be struggling with the question, and we laugh harder because we’re afraid that we’re actually just like them.

Burn After Reading Trailer