Reading the Coens: "Burn After Reading" (2008)

-Some clown, or two clowns, have gotten a hold of my memoirs.
-Your what?
-My memoirs, the book I'm writing.
-Well why in God's name would anyone think that's worth anything?


In their most cynical comedy (and perhaps my least favorite of thier films), the Coens turn the infallible, omnipotent CIA into a farcical institution of bunglers and bureaucrats. The movie opens with a God’s-eye-view, something that underscores a theme of the movie. God looks down on the schemes of man and must marvel at our ineptitude…

Two gym employees, Linda and Chad, are convinced a misplaced disc they’ve found holds explosive secrets. They decide they can blackmail it’s source: Ozzie Cox, a desk-bound CIA analyst who’s just quit the agency.

Instead of high-stakes cloak-and-dagger intrigue, we get bungled threats, botched rendezvous, and tragicomic accidental shootings.

Meanwhile, Treasury Agent, Harry Pfarrer scuttles between affairs and cover-ups with both Linda and Ozzie Cox’s ex, Katie. (He clearly chases a sex addiction as a poor substitute to connection and relationship.) He bumbles into the chaos, and everyone is convinced they’re cleverer than their neighbors.

Nearly every misstep in Burn After Reading springs from the same root: self-importance. Linda and Chad think they’ve uncovered world-shaking intelligence; Ozzie and Katie treat their marital dissolution as a national crisis; Harry Pfarrer believes he can juggle sex, secrets, and surveillance without losing control. But like Icarus flying too close to the sun, their pride spells their downfall. They mistake their own schemes, petty blackmail, petty vengeance, for the design of a master strategist. And in that self-deceit, they prove spectacularly inept.

This comedy of errors is more than slapstick; it’s a parable about humanity’s futile attempts to replace God’s providence with our own plans. Just as the CIA is believed to pull strings on world affairs, we fancy ourselves architects of our destinies. Only to discover we’re clowns fumbling levers we don’t understand. Each character’s downfall underscores Jeremiah 10:23:

“I know, O LORD, that a person’s way is not their own; it is not for them to direct their steps.”

And yet the film offers no divine rescue. The CIA quietly cleans up two deaths and moves on. No moral reckoning, no graceful intervention—just bureaucratic shrug. In a gospel world we’d see God’s mercy or judgment; here we see only our own impotence writ large. The film pans back out into the God’s-eye-view perspective, and we move on with our lives. Hopefuly, questioning our own self-deception and vanity.

In Burn After Reading, the Coens hold a dark mirror to that vanity. We chase secrets, power, pleasure, believing ourselves gods of our small domains, only to find we cannot even save ourselves. The only true sovereignty lies beyond our reach.

“For the LORD is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King.” – Jeremiah 10:10