Burn After Reflecting

the coen brothers are fucking awesome.

i just saw burn after reading. holy shit. that movie was so good, in so many ways. i can't even tell you. i'll start by saying that it is part of my personality (i have noticed) to put things on pedestals and lose a clear objective perspective on things (or people) i admire (or love). am i idolizing the coen brothers too much? am i convinced that the coen brothers are the smartest minds in filmmaking and art and everything that i love? 

no. because tarantino movies are fucking awesome too.

but seriously, my shit is kind of always slanted. someone asked me tonight, "do you really believe what you say?" and it stopped me dead. honestly, i don't know and for all the introspection that (i at least claim in public with possibly not-so genuine motives) i go through, how real and honest and (a word i have grown to love and hate) objective am i really about myself? but wow. we are not really talking about that. we are talking about why burn after reading was fucking awesome.

 

burn after reading was essentially a zoomed-in, stripped-down, hyperrealistic, dark, psychocomedic (apparently not a word. fuck. keeping it anyway.) satire of a medley of startlingly insightful choices of hollywood genres. it went the fuck there. it's really, honestly just operating on a completely different level than most of the cultural food pyramid bullshit hollywood churns out on a regular basis. these guys are fighting the system with this kind of filmmaking. it constantly changes the mental arena you exist and struggle to succeed in when one takes in art. we like to settle into what we're looking at and say, "oh, this is one of these movies." "it's this kind of painting." the coen brothers keep you on your toes. you will get your conception of what is acceptable or customary to appear on "the big screen" beaten in the skull with a fucking hatchet. we're just brainwashed by the big production studios to expect and (more noticeably here) not expect certain things from movies. it sucks. but it's all that much sweeter when someone actually takes notice and crafts such a brilliant and creative fuck you to the system. it works within a system to highlight the flaws of not just the mass media but also of (speaking to the film's actual plot and subject matter) many concerning contemporary topics, including why americans are stupid, why american politcs/ bureaucracy in general is a fucking joke, and (presumably and not necessarily consciously) why everything in the world is kind of fucked. let's be real. we have technology. we have admittedly some great and progressive thinkers out there, but still, the strength of the general human (or let's pump the breaks and safely say american) spirit has been tailspinning for awhile now. and it's only getting worse.

 

so. more or less, that's pretty much the gist of what i took from that movie. what i'd love to do is get a copy of the dvd and write why i thought this moment was genius, and why that moment was brilliant. i won't though. that would get a little excessive. let it be known however, that i could, and kinda was throughout the movie tonight. 

 

oh, shit. it was also fucking hysterical. all that garbage above was just what i realized after i got over how just funny this movie is, and how smart and perceptive the coen brothers are as a writing team. the sharpness of the script makes their actors truly puppets (in a good way) or (if you'd prefer) reflections of the directors' consciousness(es). sigh. i was the same way when i saw fargo, raising arizona, the big lebowski, no country. i won't deny, these guys are able to capture something that i seem to have a really intense admiration and respect for. 

 

so what to do now?