Flawed and anything but masterful, Drunken Father. The brilliant randomness of old becomes plodding contrivance. Even the brilliant Malkovich couldn’t elevate this clunker.
I guess you didn’t like the story, Z. Bart? I guess it was contrived, but still…
Also, it’s the only film that’s thwarted my girlfriend’s predictions! She always predicts correctly (even for Mulholland Drive), but this one she got wrong!!
I like this movie…it’s very entertaining. Doesn’t fit my definition of masterpiece…it’s in the Coen’s minor film bucket (Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, The Hudsucker Proxy)
Well, I’d like to hear a case for this being a masterpiece, Drunken.
I can’t remember too many details, but I didn’t think the film was very funny. The other thing that I recall is that it was just felt a little too mean—unnecessarily so.
I guess maybe why I feel like it’s a flawed masterpiece is that it seems to most clearly demonstrate the Coens’ worldview – people are terrible, but at least they’re funny. I really like the line the Tuckman-Marsh detective says to George Clooney – something about how George Clooney needs to calm down because divorce happens to everybody. He suggests that divorce is such a common thing that people should be reserved with their spouses, as if they can expect a divorce to come. Maybe I’ve just extrapolated too much from this one line, but I really like that theme and I feel like it shows up a little bit throughout the film. I feel like if they had spent a little longer working on this theme and making it more interesting it could have been their best movie. So I don’t think it’s a masterpiece, but it could have been. As it is, I give it four stars though… so good job to the Coens.
It’s one of my favourite films.
Your last comment is precise and apt, Drunken; there are always small-scale moments of marvel on Coen films, and you’ve pinpointed one.
Deteriorating relationships taking place among blackmail, murder, cosmetic surgery, infidelity, divorce, and internet dating. I loved this film, and could toss it in for a good laugh and intriguing acting anytime.I felt that all the comedic notes were hit perfectly, sometimes with a deadly (even too deadly) accuracy. The film utilizes modern symptoms to capitalize on all the depths that the characters stereotypes can evoke. Nothing the characters do is perfectly logical, but its handled as though its logical enough to be played straight, and this adds to the legitimacy of the stupidity of the events occuring. I thought everything was superb, including editing and cinematography. Brilliantly modern screwball comedy.
It made me laugh.
Midgrade Coen perhaps, but it made me laugh, too.
Not mid-grade at all. I thought the Coens couldn’t make a bad film, but I was wrong. Even “A Serious Man” is better than this one. Nice collection of actors though. And Malkovich is worth listening to just because of his voice. He’s one of those unique actors that always seems to be just on the edge of utter insanity, yet balances on the line with such ease. While I was fantasizing during this film I imagined that it was a prequel to “In the Line of Fire”. So I was sad to hear that Osborne Cox got shot and left in a coma…but he didn’t die!
Yeah, this movie sucked. Typical Coens. Follow up a masterpiece with a waste of time.
“I thought the Coens couldn’t make a bad film, but I was wrong. "
Clearly someone who never saw the Ladykillers or Intolerable Cruelty. Burn After Reading is far better than either of those.
Guilty as charged. No plans to watch either anytime soon.
I loved it, and laughed throughout the film (which I don’t do often) but I can see where people wouldn’t like it since a lot of the humor come for the pointlessness of it all, and how it escalates so absurdly. Plus, the humor is very dark, as it plays on the characters flaws and doesn’t give them much credit whatsoever. But, again, pretty nihilistic and almost cynical over all. Pretty specific brand of hilarity, maybe?
“Pretty specific brand of hilarity, maybe?”
Indeed, the Coens’ brand. A Serious Man was the exact same M.O., and even also the much-maligned Intolerable Cruelty and Ladykillers (both of which I also enjoyed). It’s definitely an acquired taste.
I know what Coens-brand hilarity can be, and it can be much better than this. Actually, though I still think it’s a bad film, I prefer “A Serious Man”.
You think A Serious Man is a bad film and you like the Coens? I’m becoming more and more certain that it’s their greatest achievement.
I love a lot of the Coens movies. I think Barton Fink, Fargo, and No Country For Old Men are their very best. But Burn After Reading is a film I can never see being called a masterpiece in a million years, but it is still very enjoyable.
You think A Serious Man is a bad film and you like the Coens? I’m becoming more and more certain that it’s their greatest achievement.
I am absolutely certain that it’s their greatest achievement! :D
I noticed a lot of people on the forum rate it pretty highly. I just can’t see it that way. “Fargo” and “No Country” are their best for me, though I am curious to see if the latter will hold up with time.
Hard to enjoy something with John Malkovich in. The man is a monster. He threated to kill the British journalist Robert Fisk. He should be in jail for death threats, but instead live in luxury, sick world we live in.
A monster for a threat? Hmm. Sick world indeed.
“You think A Serious Man is a bad film and you like the Coens?”
Yep. That’s me!
I’ve decided I prefer their dramas to their comedies (unless you count Fargo as a comedy, in which case that the exception). Not much of a fan of their brand of humor (Raising Arizona, O Brother Where Art Thou, A Serious Man, etc.).
I’m not gonna stand for anybody else saying anything bad about A Serious Man.
I’m serious.
nm
Ari said, I’m becoming more and more certain that it’s their greatest achievement.
I don’t know if I’d go that far (but I might be moving in that direction). In any event, A Serious Man is one of my personal favorites of the decade.
@Bobby
I’m interested in hearing why you think A Serious Man is a bad film, although this probably isn’t the thread for that. Did you post reasons in the existing thread on the film?
The only man that mattered in 2009 was A Single Man.
That’s right.
The truth hurts.
Drunken Father Figure of Old
Honestly, I really think Burn After Reading is a flawed masterpiece. To me, it’s a great depiction of contemporary malaise. Aside from the scene with John Malkovich’s catatonic dad (which really should have been deleted), the characters are great, the story is great, the acting is great, so why do so many people hate it so much?