Tikkun Magazine, November/December 2008 

REVIEW

Sex and Satire

By Katje Richstatter

Burn After Reading, Focus Features

Towelhead, Warner Independent picture

                                      -Vladimir Nabokov           

Satires, parodies, dark comedies, darkly funny dramas—these classifications attempt to get to the meaning and perhaps the intent behind a film or novel, the "why" rather than the "how" of its creation. Good satire gives us wit, irony, and exaggerations for a purpose: It holds a mirror to society in some way, however distorted, that enables us to recognize ourselves and, perhaps, choose some other route. Lately, it seems there have been a lot of films with, at the very least, satirical overtones, like Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona, released earlier this year, and the two films reviewed here, the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading and Alan Ball's Towelhead.

Burn After Reading is uniformly critical of every character that populates it, as well as of marriage, sex, the government, and the modern cult of self-improvement. Towelhead takes on the suburbs, racism, teenage sexuality, and the hypocrisy surrounding each. Categorization and genres aside, one of these two feels more successful when examined on its own terms, within its own contained world (hint: it's the one that has been seen, to date, by about 1/l00th the audience of the other).

Filmed around the same time as Oscar victor No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading is saturated with star power and, to be fair, the expectations that follow such a cast. But if there's one thing that's consistent about the Coen brothers, it's their inconsistency; they have graced us with gems like Fargo but also with turkeys like Intolerable Cruelty. You can count on them to be prolific but not much else. In the light/dark espionage/caper vein, Burn After Reading delivers cleverness, usually in the form of its predominant emotional tone, vitriolic anger, in a Washington, D.C., that's populated entirely by assholes and idiots. On the asshole roster is Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), spitting out the best of the vitriol his wife, Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton), coldly conducting an affair with one of their mutual acquaintances, who happens to be both an asshole and an idiot, Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney.) On the pure idiot list is Linda Litzke (Frances Mc-Dormand), Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), and Ted Treffon (Richard Jenkins), worker bees at a gym called "Hardbodies" that might as well be called "Hardheads."

The plot chugs into motion around Cox's demotion from a CIA post for his alcohol problem (showcased during the rest of the film), and we quickly learn of his wife's affair, her disdain for Cox's post-job memoir project, and her intention to secretly assess what he's worth and divorce him. A CD of their finances and his tell-all ends up in the hands of Linda and Chad, who attempt to blackmail Cox. In retrospect, this may be the film's funniest sequence, though overall there were too few laughs, even uncomfortable ones, to consider it a comedy. Linda and Chad are almost cartoonish in their dimness, trying desperately to get a leg up in the world and seeing this as their opportunity, like "slipping on the ice outside of a fancy restaurant." Linda Litzky, in particular, spouts self-help truisms such as "maintain a positive attitude" and "don't sweat the small stuff" like it's her job—she's a true believer in transformation, which she hopes to achieve through plastic surgery, paid for with the blackmail money.

In Litzky, we are not meant to see ourselves, or even the sickness of our improvement culture; she is merely an object of ridicule. This is where the film misses countless opportunities to transcend parody and deliver something more substantial. We are instead presented with blanket misanthropy: characters that we are meant to laugh at, not with. In this childless world that strangely connects the most disconnected characters, marriages are untenable, but even the alternatives, internet dating and affairs, are devoid of passion or even modest fulfillment. The story connects the characters only to distance them from us, to form a world that is thoroughly without meaning. The sport of mocking this empty world might be tolerable, if only it were entertaining.

The world of Towelhead, based on Alicia Erian's novel, is not a gleeful place, either: it is an ugly Texas suburb shadowed by the first Gulf War and its "These Colors Don't Run" patriotism, and populated with characters enduring the pain and confusion of growing up. Fans of Alan Ball's HBO series Six Feet Under know not to expect much glossing-over of hard realities, but he does craft his characters with care, making even the most flawed and unlikable actually seem human. The story centers around Jasira Maroun (Summer Bishil), a half-Lebanese, half-white teen who is sent to live with her father in Houston after her mother's boyfriend is caught trying to shave the thirteen-year-old's pubic hair. The mother blames her boyfriend's inappropriate act on Jasira. The troubles in Jasira's life orbit around her awakening sexuality, the curiosity and shame of it, attracting attention that is both unwanted and desperately wanted. There's also the casual racism pervading her life, both directed at her by others, and espoused by her own father, Rifat Maroun (Peter Macdissi), who forbids her to date a black student in order to preserve her reputation. Rifat is alternately overbearing and unavailable, not a bad parent exactly but an inconsistent one, leaving Jasira to her own impulses. An immigrant, he seems to look at his adopted world with disdain and superiority, while simultaneously buying into the 'American dream" mentality.

The neighborhood functions like a small town, paradoxically isolating and brimming with secrets. Enter the family of an army reservist, Travis Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart) and peace corps wife Melina Hines (Toni Collette), pregnant with her first child. Both become, let's say, overinvolved in Jasira's life: Travis by acting inappropriately, and Melina by becoming a surrogate parent, getting a crash course in what it means to mother a girl. If there is instruction here, it comes through our discomfort at watching adults ignore or traverse adult-child boundaries, both in speech and action. Blinded by his own desire, Travis doesn't seem to realize until it's too late that Jasira, while sexually maturing, is still a child in many ways. Yet somehow Eckhart's monster is more pitiable than hateful, in a way that refuses to draw a clear line that would make Jasira victimized and wounded for life by his actions. At times, Towelhead seems too much like an after-school special, but it is saved by Summer Bishil's heartbreaking performance. This film is slyly stylized, in contrast to the verité feel of films like Raising Victor Vargas or Kids, but it has the same sharp eye for human vice, shortcomings, and unforgivable missteps.

On the surface, the intertwined lives in Burn After Reading may show a tentative form of connection, but the isolated suburbia of Towelhead is infinitely more relatable, which goes a long way toward keeping the audience's attention. Following an explosive (literally and figuratively) year of incredible—albeit overwhelmingly masculine—films (No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and Michael Clayton come to mind), 2008 has been a big of dud, marked by disappointment. Are we really being forced to choose between mindless pap, usually aimed at the womenfolk (Sex and the City, Mamma Mia!, The Women) and terribly bleak, cynical stabs at entertainment, like Burn After Reading? There is something about the cleverness of it, the attempt to send something up while floating, untouched and unimplicated, above it. Maybe coming of age in the ironic 1990s has made me too earnest, or at least resistant to meaning-free irony. Maybe it's the economy, stupid—the chaos and uncertainty, paired with a political arena more bizarre than any fiction you could have dreamed up even a year ago. You really don't have to make anything up these days. This kind of humor, expressed in visual language is, at its best, cutting and smart, exposing false postures and paring them down to the complex truths of being human. At its worst, it's glib, cruel, and pointless.

Katje Richstatter is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in the Utne Reader, Turning Wheel, SOMA, Punk Planet, and others. She can be reached at katjerichstatter@gmail.com.

Source Citation

Richstatter, Katje. 2008. Sex and Satire [Review of the movies Burn After Reading and Towelhead] Tikkun 23(6): 74.