Prologue
First off let me get some things straight here. This movie is more than just a thumbs-up/thumbs-down for me. The Coen bros. are my favorite modern film directors/writers. They hold a spot in my heart that’s near the top, and that’s dangerous. Though I do recognize my own fanboy-itude, even it’s awareness is not enough to quell it from my expectations. So needless to say, going into the movie, I was hoping for a lot. The Big Lebowski is in my top three films of all time, and while I thoroughly enjoy the bros. dramas as well, their comedy greases my gears above all else.
About an hour and a half after meeting up with the usual suspects we suited up to the theater late Sunday. A good time to see a movie in my opinion. After about an hour of previews, the show started. Now this is when most reviewers, even the reputable ones, tend to take the reader through a synopsis of the movie. I say, “fuck that.” Instead I’ll replace that synopsis with my reactions.
I laughed at a good portion of the film, not just chuckles but some really inspired laughter. That was a good thing. This is a comedy, so points for laughter to the Coens. However throughout the movie, I couldn’t help falling into my usual trap of over-analysis. I couldn’t really figure out where this movie was headed, even though the storyline was pretty straightforward. I kept trying to peel it apart for some deeper goal, some “whoa” moment that would surely come. But of course, it never came. But the ending did. Abruptly.
Walking out, I felt abandoned by the movie, perhaps because I had put too much stock in the film’s merits, or I just wanted something to make sense. On the way home my two cohorts and I got in a bout over the movie. I wanted more from it, but they didn’t. I wanted some metaphor, something to glue all these random characters together to form one cohesive message. It’s why I enjoy creative expression, the messages, the meaning. I couldn’t accept it, I had to find a way to rationalize my feelings.
I scraped together some reviews that aligned with my ideas. The New York Times probably did the best job, but I still think it was missing something. And other reviews left me cold as well, either because they were out of touch, angry or just plain lost on the Coen’s voice. Tons of reviews referenced “No Country…” which is ridiculous if they were expecting anything from that movie to wander its way into “Burn” [even this review]. But the reviews calmed me down, the positive ones seemed all-too-eager to quickly race to identify with the film as a “well the others are too stupid to get it,” while the negative ones were just too tired to tolerate their irreverent experiment into film characters.
So I thought. I couldn’t stop. I tried reading a little out of Kitchen Confidential, but each paragraph was interrupted by a snippet of analysis from “Burn.” And now, after this hellride, like a schizophrenic, I’ve rationalized my ideas on the movie into something I can cope with. Here they are.
Review
I left my seat feeling empty, and I think that was the whole intention. Even if it wasn’t the intention, it was most certainly the result. And it makes sense. “No Country…” left the audience cold, with a chaos that only Reality can muster. I loved it then. I immediately saw it for what it was mostly because it was the outlier. The one that was different from the rest. That way, people could pick it out, and then eat it. But “Burn” is much more ambitious. Instead of leaving the audience with a little snippet of reality, they are force-fed throughout their entire experience, getting full on the bullshit that makes this world churn, hoping that something will turn it around, give this comedy its rightful happy ending, but no. Instead of purging us, we’re forced to swallow. And swallow we do. In many ways, at least in my own little head, it reminds me of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The audience rebelled against this new form of music, discordant and fragmented. It was not pleasant to their ears. Decades later it would be hailed as the single most important piece of music in the 20th century.
Will we hail this the same way? No. Probably not. But why the long face audience? What really is it that makes this movie so cold and unmerciful? It’s a comedy for christ sake. It can’t be that gloomy. And that’s just it, it really isn’t all that gloomy. The plot is alike any other mischievous intertwined who-dunnit, but it’s the characters that really forced me into the queasiness. Because the characters are completely 100% 1-dimensional. None of them have any redeeming qualities. And for some reason, to me, this seems like a revolutionary concept in this context because most movies use this very same approach. They create hero and villain archetypes to pit 1-dimensional motives against one another, but in “Burn” the good guy doesn’t win. In fact, nobody does. The archetypes are tragic, but their context is comedic. Even the lovable archetypes [of which there are few] are 1-dimensional in their pursuit.
So often in ensemble casts such as this, characters have some conflicting qualities that tend to take them down interesting paths. Even the villains can be identified with. At least that’s the kind of dimension I have come to expect of the better film makers. But leave it to the Coen’s to turn that idea on its head in an effort to expose the inner workings of story through character development in film as if to say “This is what happens when people don’t change. When they become conditioned by society and all its bright lights. When people refuse to grow or move on. We’re stuck in cyclical hell, doomed.”
I don’t know if I like this movie. I may like it after watching it a couple more times. But nonetheless I think it’s an important movie. An experiment in what’s possible, even today when film and story seem fully matured. As a postscript, I’d just add, that I can’t help but feel somewhat like an over-analytical rube trying to find meaning in the meaningless. Like a water aficionado, tasting the same tap water with different labels, convincing himself that it tastes of minerals that don’t exist.