Burn After Family Viewing
September 18th 2008 18:11
In the Coen brothers most recent film, Burn After Reading, we see the directing duo stray from the rivetingly dismal No Country For Old Men, back to the black comedy antics that films like Fargo and Raising Arizona made them known for. Unlike the horrifyingly quiet and calculating demeanor Anton Chigurh possessed, the characters of Burn never shut up, and their horrific actions come instead out of bumbling misunderstandings motivated by petty drives such as vanity. The wood-chipper scene of Fargo comes to mind as Malkovich, perusing his newly lost home for alcohol and pearls, drives a hatchet hammer into an intruder's skull while dressed in a nightgown and underwear.
All of Burn's characters are completely absorbed by their perceptions of themselves, whether it be sexual deviant, blackmailer, or lover. Linda (Frances Mcormand's character) however, seems more obsessed with what she could be. Linda, a lonely late middle-aged woman obsessed with the notion that she needs plastic surgery, is constantly perusing the internet to find suitors to date. Her inability to find Mr. Right leads her to the belief that she needs several plastic surgery procedures in order to re-invent her self, and therefore her sexual exploits, hopefully landing a man. As watching Linda, absorbed in the glow of the LCD screen, I couldn't help but think of David Hemblem's character Stan in Atom Egoyan's 1988 film Family Viewing. Stan too uses the new media of his time (VHS) to reinvigorate his sex life. He becomes obsessed with the notion of himself on the screen, much like Linda does with her online profiles. Sex for Stan becomes an exercise in delusion, removing himself from the act and replacing it with the man on screen. By using the new technologies of their time, these two characters pull themselves away from the person they are, forming a distant persona entrapped in hi-tech sexual endeavors. In Family Viewing, Stan loses himself mentally to the technology, deteriorating into himself, but Linda stays daffy and positive throughout, even "winning" in a sense by finding a route to fund her procedures. Thus she instead loses her physical self by presumably going under the knife., but one must wonder, if the film continued far enough to see her "new" self, would the Coen's Linda suffer the same fate as Egoyan's Stan?
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