Gaping Plot Holes Do In Coen Brothers Parody
Whether you like parody or farce determines how you felt about a pivotal turn 10 minutes into the film. I was looking for a parody, a satirical imitation of a special brand of psychopathology-of-everyday-life that runs through Washington's culture of materialism and self-importance, where puffed up jobs in dulling Federal bureaucracies lead to chronic dissatisfaction, spiritual emptiness, and a polyamorous form of infidelity facilitated by Internet dating sites and escort services advertised in the yellow pages.
This parody begins promising enough when the film appears to set up a humorous cat-and-mouse game between ousted CIA analyst Oswald Cox (John Malkovich) and Treasury officer Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), whose promotion from the "young man's game" of personal protection into a desk job with the U.S. Marshals forces him to carry a concealed weapon out of vanity. The build-up of tension during this taut and intriguing 10 minutes is some of the best filmmaking I've seen in years ...
... and then it all falls apart when we're introduced to one of the dumbest and most deplorable characters in film: Linda Litzski (Frances McDormland). This is the point at which the Coens give in to pop culture silliness and BURN AFTER READING devolves from Woody Allen dysfunctional into farcically dumb and destructive Quentin Tarantino (e.g., Pulp Fiction).
Woody Allen proves you can write female characters who despite their cerebral proclivities and mature exteriors, exhibit a form of existential angst and lack of insight that ultimately translates into self-sabotage as well as unforeseen or invisible consequences to the world around them. HUSBANDS & WIVES features four such female characters and even though none of them are violent or developmentally delayed a la Litzske, we are not shorted social carnage. Why the Coens feel they need to have their plot flow through the moronic Linda (Frances McDormland) is beyond me. This is not a "moron" but a moron. Linda reasons morally and intellectually at a 2nd grade level and just like a chain can only be as strong as its weakest link, so BURN AFTER READING is doomed to juvenile absurdity once Linda pops on the scene.
And Linda is a comedy-killer. Despite their best efforts to eliminate sexual tension from the film by making attractive actors Pitt and Clooney look like dorks -- a sacrifice that can only help comedy -- they sabotage the comedy by giving Linda a loathsomeness that would bring a smile to Adolph Hitler. I mean, this is a woman you HATE. You want to walk on screen and take a led pipe to Linda's head. That kind of tension is not good for comedy. Now for a little background on Linda ...
Linda is shocked into self-righteous umbrage when her HMO will not pay for 4 cosmetic surgical procedures, which sends her into a search for money that a heroine addict would envy. Linda, a mere fitness instructor, asks her employer to advance her salary. Her prayers appear to be answered when two co-workers find in the woman's locker room a disc they mistakenly believe contains classified information. Suddenly, Linda assumes all ownership of the disc and hatches a scheme to extort its owner (Oswald Cox) for money in exchange for its return. When Oswald Cox (who is unclear how his memoir fell into their hands) does not play ball, the sociopath Linda slams the front of her Probe violently into the back of his diesel Benz 240D ("some people," she remarks of him) in the middle of moving traffic, flips him the middle finger, and then attempts to sell his disc to the Russians. When she is shocked into her self-righteous indignation that the Russians deem the information worthless "dribble," she uses her damsel in distress wiles to cajole co-workers to actually break into Cox's home to see what else they could steal from his computer, and both men are killed in separate incidents. Still, the unflappably selfish Linda reserves hope she can extract money from the Chinese and ultimately gets her money when the CIA itself decides to pay for her surgeries in exchange for her silence over the maelstrom of enigmatic events connected to their terminated CIA agent Cox.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
This is where the film jumps the shark in the worst imaginable way. I mean, the film suffers from a number of plot holes you can drive a truck through but this one takes the cake. Forget for a moment that the Coen brothers have never heard of a metropolitan police force. I mean, like any other level-headed person who wants to put an end to Linda's stalking, a real-life Oswald Cox would have phoned the police to report the hit-and-run on his car and the break-in to his home. Linda would have been taken into custody in mundane fashion and that would have been the end of her. But the CIA giving her money? How stupid to the Coens think we are. She thought the disc contained classified information. The CIA believed the disc must have contained at least level 3 clearance information. And yet they opt to pay her off instead of do what we have been doing in this country for decades: try her for treason and sentence her to death.
To add insult to injury, I believe the Coens intend for us to find Frances McDormland's Linda adorable (much like we do McDormland's character in FARGO). "Have you ever heard of the power of positive thinking," delivered in McDormland's signature schmaltz (along with "little chitland's feet -- chicki chicki chicki"), is supposed to warm the cockles of our heart. Yikes.
So the Coens break far too many rules to pull off this farcical story, which I suspect explains the low popularity on Rotten Tomatoes among audiences (64%) despite some hilarious scenes relating John Malkovich's Oswald Cox to his wife Katie (Swinton) and his employer (the CIA). How Malkovich loses his job and his wife makes for great comedy, and the Coens do not need to sacrifice realism -- or intelligence -- to deliver the laughs here. In fact, it's the gritty realism that makes these scenes so funny: Katie Cox shows more guile than her CIA analyst husband when she secretly conspires with her attorney to gather intel on his finances and serve him only after she's emptied their bank accounts and changed the locks on the door. Malkovich is robbed of his job with the CIA, his marriage and finances by Harry Pfarer and wife Katie, and then he has to deal with the attempted robbery of information off his computer by sub-mental physical fitness professionals.
D.C. is ripe for comedic satire. I suspect dating sites like OKCupid do far more transactions here in DC, where it seems everyone is at various stages of dating 6-7 other people at the same time, than in other cities. However I am not sure why the Coens thought it necessary to create an unrealistic dating site (BeWithMeDC.com) where only the male users are required to submit photos. I have never seen any site like this and no man would ever join one. Also, the Coens arrange for all their serial daters to meet at benches around the Mall as if there are no other restaurants or trendy metro neighborhoods in DC/MD/DC for people to meet. Women I have met over the net here in DC have never arranged to have me meet them on the Mall in full view of the Washington Monument, but rather in Reston Town Center, Pentagon City shopping mall, Old Town Alexandria pubs, etc.
George Clooney's Harry Pfarrer is not entirely unrealistic as the love-starved, sex-addicted philanderer employed with the Marshall's Service, but what strains credibility is his over-the-top theatrical acting. He reacts to every minor provocation with an absurd vocal intonation and facial contortion and in a way this breaks a tie between elements of parody and farce and drags the film into the realm of the absurd.
What also strains credibility is Harry's need to carry a gun on all his dates even though his promotion into an administrative position (out of personal protection) does not require him to have one. While it's not unrealistic for him to brandish his gun on dates, few women would feel comfortable letting a gun-toting stranger into their home let alone into a gated area inside their own basement (as Linda does).
This could have been a comedy for the ages. Oh well.