It seems so easy to reference a movie/tv plot to today’s political headlines. Idiocracy comes to mind too quickly yet now the latest connection is between Don Don Jr’s Russian affair with the horrible 2008 movie Burn After Reading.
Way can’t anyone make political reference to Blues Clues or the Wiggles? – PB/TK
We Are Living in the Coen Brothers’ Darkest Comedy – By Jeet Heer / July 15 2017
“OSBOURNE COX: The Russians?
HAL: Uh-huh.
COX: The Russians?
HAL: Uh-huh. Russian embassy, yeah.
COX: Are you sure?
HAL: Hey, the guy was not hard to follow. As you know.
COX: Why the fuck would they go to the Russians?! Why the fuck?”
–Burn After Reading (2008)
Imagine a group of dunderheaded Americans who think they would benefit from a covert alliance with the Russian government. They make overtures to that country’s ambassador, blithely ignorant that they’ll be monitored by U.S. intelligence. A series of cascading mistakes ultimately brings disaster crashing down on their heads.
That might sound like a summary of the latest news about the White House, but it is also the plot of Burn After Reading, the 2008 film that stands as singularly prophetic of the Trump era. The Coen Brothers’ black comedy echoes this unique period in history not only because of the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russian operatives, but the wider culture of deceit that made Donald Trump’s rise possible. More than just a satire on espionage, the movie is a scathing critique of modern America as a superficial, post-political society where cheating of all sorts comes all too easily. Unlike movies such as Citizen Kane, Burn After Reading doesn’t offer any easy one-to-one character analogies to Trump and his cronies. Rather, it captures the amorality that leads people to become entangled in mercenary treason.
Burn After Reading is a divisive film. The New Yorker’s David Denby spoke for many when he complained that it suffered from “terminal misanthropy.” Yet it is precisely because the film takes such a dim view of humanity that it seems eerily true to life. It’s not just that the characters in the film are almost all amoral, but that they are so relentlessly stupid. These are not the super-heroic secret agents found in James Bond movies or the Mission Impossible franchise. They aren’t even the grubby but competent professional spooks of John Le Carré. Rather, the plot of the movie is driven by imbeciles who have only the most limited understanding of the world around them. As such, they call to mind figures like Donald Trump Jr. and the music promoter Robert Goldstone, who were witless enough to discuss over email the Russian government’s support of the Trump campaign
Continue to newrepublic.com article: https://newrepublic.com/article/143875/living-coen-brothers-darkest-comedy
