tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18360914.post2762286479624717382..comments2024-03-25T16:57:51.919+00:00Comments on Bina007 Movie Reviews: BURN AFTER READING - a bleak tragedy shoehorned into a screwball comedy formatBina007http://www.blogger.com/profile/01622085135305501711noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18360914.post-25765007985892506822008-10-20T10:13:00.000+00:002008-10-20T10:13:00.000+00:00[ALERT!!! PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD!!!]Hmmm, disagree.Ye...[ALERT!!! PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD!!!]<BR/><BR/>Hmmm, disagree.<BR/><BR/>Yes, it was bleak. It was looking at the lives of people who were either deeply shallow, or deeply addicted. Of course it's going to be bleak.<BR/><BR/>But it also managed to capture the comedy of it all.<BR/><BR/>Take the scene where Malkovich sweats looking at the clock on the wall, desperately awaiting his 5pm justification. Yes, it's a tragically true depiction of an addict - go to any AA meeting you'll hear stories like this. But it's also funny - addictive behaviour, in its sad ridiculousness, is truly comic.<BR/><BR/>Or sex addict Clooney's "machine" - and how he destroys it when he realises his wife is leaving. He's been banging 2 other women in the same 24 hours - and yet we so clearly see his fear and desperation at his abandonment which is the driver of his addiction. We see it again in his pathetic phone-call to his wife, when he runs from his would be lover. Sure, it's tragic. But the whole machine is so tragic it's funny, and his irrational destruction of it is hilarious, esp. as the dildo refuses to break.<BR/><BR/>Or the woman selling government secrets for the money to get cosmetic surgery, thinking that the sexual attention of men will make her happy - all the time missing a man who truly loves her, and ends up dying for her, who is right in front of her nose. Yes, this body dysmorphia is tragic, but the results are, when you look at them objectively, hilarious.<BR/><BR/>I think that the film aptly, if sadly, captures the comedy of the character defects, mistaken beliefs and dysfunctional behaviours of the people it portrays.<BR/><BR/>My only downside is that it tries too hard to have a "different" narrative arc, thus the film is less a story than a bleak comment on middle-American life. At the end when the CIA bloke asks us what we have learnt from this, the answer really is "nothing" - no greater knowledge can be taken from the telling. Unlike Lebowski, where the story is unresolved but in a strange way complete, "Burn After Reading" has no heros, and only a boob-job for an ending.<BR/><BR/>I'd still recommend it to friends though.Daniel Plainviewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14968846401298741261noreply@blogger.com