Barton FinkSomeone once said that there are two kinds of writers, those who make it appear as effortless play, and those for whom it is a herculean effort to "plumb the depths of the soul"; Barton Fink (John Turturro) decidedly falls into the latter category. Barton Fink is the story of the eponymous playwright from New York City, who has achieved some renown on Broadway, and is thus placed under contract for Capitol Pictures in Hollywood. Barton is tasked to write a "wrestling picture", yet despite his pedigree, he finds himself struck with a soul-annihilating case of writer's block.
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Barton Fink is set in 1941, although the Hollywood depicted is more of a caricature, with knowing nods to recognizable figures of the day. For example, Barton Fink has been likened to writer Clifford Odets, while the studio mogul who recruits him, Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner), could easily be David O. Selznick. Even a literary idol of Barton's, a lush of a writer named W. P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), was probably inspired by William Faulkner. This might be a movie version of Hollywood and its golden days, but from the anxiety-ridden, high-strung point of view of Barton Fink, it is more like a fun house mirror--warped and nightmarish--causing his tightly wound nerves to snap like dried out rubber bands. Barton often feels like a fish out of water, transposed from the east coast to the west, as though it were a parallel dimension rather than just a few time zones away. Alternately, the Hollywood of Barton Fink--especially his residence at the Hotel Earle--is like Hell itself, somewhere Barton has been condemned to inhabit. The hotel is dimly lit, and looks like it is in a constant state of entropy and decay. Its faded halls seem to go on forever, and it is as if it were a genuine relic of the real Hollywood days somehow still in operation when the film was made in 1991--a ghost of the past. From the moment Barton steps foot in his hotel, there is a sense of unease, with frequent suggestions to an almost supernatural undertone of suffering--at times, is more pronounced and overt (like in the climax). Barton's contract with the studio has devilish subtext to it--forever under the thumb of commercial producers like Ben Geisler (Tony Shalhoub) or Lipnick whose fickle attitudes make them mercurial at best, and where they abuse their power to torture their prisoners with varying degrees of subtlety. The suggestion of Hollywood being an underworld is ubiquitous; even the "rassling" picture dailies Barton previews for ideas is titled "Devil on the Canvas". The polite bellhop, Chet (Steve Buscemi), resembles a little goblin, emerging from the lower depths of the hotel when Barton first meets him. The hotel is frequently sweltering, indicated by the wallpaper that peels in goopy layers. The sounds of extreme emotion--from passion, laughter, and distress--all reverberate through the paper-thin walls like the wails of the damned. Most of all, Barton's neighbor, Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), is a massive (if superficially good-hearted) fella who sells insurance and shows Barton a couple of wrestling moves between sharing drinks. He is kind man--too kind--and is like a looming, sinister echo of the hotel--his home--offering aid to Barton to help him out of his assorted binds...a kind of Mephistopheles to his Faust...
...Or is it all in Barton's head? Is Barton doing this to himself, and the Hollywood of Barton Fink is a reflection of his increasing neurosis and mania? Earlier in the film, when Barton is receiving the praise of his friends and of the Broadway critics, it is evident that Barton is presenting a disingenuous version of himself and his interests. He shrugs off the praise by arrogantly proclaiming that he seeks to create a theater for the "common man", but when he is approached by Charlie who offers up aphorisms and all the tropes he could ever hope for to purge his writer's block, he is oblivious to the inspiration, only going on and on about his "admiration" for Charlie being a common fellow, which comes out more condescending than considerate. Barton does get passionate about his desires--his noble aspiration--so there is the sense that Barton does have a real drive for producing something marvelous, some kind of art which is a reflection of his soul. The irony is that it is possible that Barton's soul isn't really that deep to begin with; that would explain why the act of scouring that well of inspiration is such a painful process--he digs deeper than the depths allow, carving into his very sanity. In fact, for all of the acclaim that Barton receives for his Broadway show, even the small snippets of it that we catch in the opening of the film suggests that it is a cliche stage drama, with all the tired lines and routines of the stage that drove people to the movies in the first place. Even these same lines of rote dialogue get repurposed for his screenplay opus, and sound just as artificial there. It's a sad thing to realize that for all your depth of feeling and effort to "share something beautiful", as Barton puts it in the end, that what comes out is merely mediocre. On the first viewing of Barton Fink, I found that Lipnick's shattering critique of Barton's final work was overly vicious and patronizing; it is that, true, but it also has an inescapable ring of truth to it. Commercial or no, Barton has to live with this revelation.
There is a substantial amount of allusions to heads in Barton Fink--largely as the battleground of the soul. Charlie coyly pitches to Barton that in selling insurance, he is selling "peace of mind"...or is that "piece of mind"? Barton comments that in his pursuit to conceptualize his ideas, he is engaged in the "life of the mind". To an extent, the Earle is a reflection of Barton's mind, a place which grows increasingly sour and rotten as his stagnation continues. Barton describes his writer's block as being "all blocked up", a phrase more commonly associated with constipation, as though the entropy and deterioration of the Earle were a result of his metaphorical bile building up, trapped and fouling up his life. His proclaimed inability to write is something he seems to use as a crutch, feigning annoyance with distractions but secretly relishing the excuse not to write. Created by Joel and Ethan Coen, Barton Fink is--in keeping with their oeuvre--both a satire and homage of this time and place in American history, enhanced by its nods to other films. Barton's attitude of his status as a writer entitling him to special considerations--not to mention the hellish, cabin fever inducing hotel--makes him resemble Jack Torrance from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. The claustrophobic paranoia that is constantly ratcheted up in Barton Fink also recalls the "Apartment Trilogy" by Roman Polanski, consisting of Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion, and The Tenant. Even Barton's wide-eyed expression and hair standing up on end resembles another nightmarish descent into the surreal, David Lynch's Eraserhead; like the latter, there is also a significant emphasis on the head being a realm of mystery and metaphysical danger in Barton Fink. Unlike Barton's own writing--what we get of it in the film--Barton Fink is a film which pokes fun at the cliches of Hollywood by tearing them down as the story progresses. There are hints of romance, of a murder mystery, of the quest for the "hero" to deliver his screenplay to joyous fanfare against the odds...all of these are designed to reflect the kind of chaos afflicting Barton's psyche, as well as challenge the audience's expectations without merely supplicating them with rote plots and tired cliches. This is the theater Barton was crying for; too bad he wasn't strong enough to make it himself.
Recommended for: Fans of a novel and playful black comedy in the signature style of the Coen Brothers. It is a film which defiantly plays with your expectations, and is steeped in metaphor and allusion with coy dialogue and colorful characters.
...Or is it all in Barton's head? Is Barton doing this to himself, and the Hollywood of Barton Fink is a reflection of his increasing neurosis and mania? Earlier in the film, when Barton is receiving the praise of his friends and of the Broadway critics, it is evident that Barton is presenting a disingenuous version of himself and his interests. He shrugs off the praise by arrogantly proclaiming that he seeks to create a theater for the "common man", but when he is approached by Charlie who offers up aphorisms and all the tropes he could ever hope for to purge his writer's block, he is oblivious to the inspiration, only going on and on about his "admiration" for Charlie being a common fellow, which comes out more condescending than considerate. Barton does get passionate about his desires--his noble aspiration--so there is the sense that Barton does have a real drive for producing something marvelous, some kind of art which is a reflection of his soul. The irony is that it is possible that Barton's soul isn't really that deep to begin with; that would explain why the act of scouring that well of inspiration is such a painful process--he digs deeper than the depths allow, carving into his very sanity. In fact, for all of the acclaim that Barton receives for his Broadway show, even the small snippets of it that we catch in the opening of the film suggests that it is a cliche stage drama, with all the tired lines and routines of the stage that drove people to the movies in the first place. Even these same lines of rote dialogue get repurposed for his screenplay opus, and sound just as artificial there. It's a sad thing to realize that for all your depth of feeling and effort to "share something beautiful", as Barton puts it in the end, that what comes out is merely mediocre. On the first viewing of Barton Fink, I found that Lipnick's shattering critique of Barton's final work was overly vicious and patronizing; it is that, true, but it also has an inescapable ring of truth to it. Commercial or no, Barton has to live with this revelation.
There is a substantial amount of allusions to heads in Barton Fink--largely as the battleground of the soul. Charlie coyly pitches to Barton that in selling insurance, he is selling "peace of mind"...or is that "piece of mind"? Barton comments that in his pursuit to conceptualize his ideas, he is engaged in the "life of the mind". To an extent, the Earle is a reflection of Barton's mind, a place which grows increasingly sour and rotten as his stagnation continues. Barton describes his writer's block as being "all blocked up", a phrase more commonly associated with constipation, as though the entropy and deterioration of the Earle were a result of his metaphorical bile building up, trapped and fouling up his life. His proclaimed inability to write is something he seems to use as a crutch, feigning annoyance with distractions but secretly relishing the excuse not to write. Created by Joel and Ethan Coen, Barton Fink is--in keeping with their oeuvre--both a satire and homage of this time and place in American history, enhanced by its nods to other films. Barton's attitude of his status as a writer entitling him to special considerations--not to mention the hellish, cabin fever inducing hotel--makes him resemble Jack Torrance from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. The claustrophobic paranoia that is constantly ratcheted up in Barton Fink also recalls the "Apartment Trilogy" by Roman Polanski, consisting of Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion, and The Tenant. Even Barton's wide-eyed expression and hair standing up on end resembles another nightmarish descent into the surreal, David Lynch's Eraserhead; like the latter, there is also a significant emphasis on the head being a realm of mystery and metaphysical danger in Barton Fink. Unlike Barton's own writing--what we get of it in the film--Barton Fink is a film which pokes fun at the cliches of Hollywood by tearing them down as the story progresses. There are hints of romance, of a murder mystery, of the quest for the "hero" to deliver his screenplay to joyous fanfare against the odds...all of these are designed to reflect the kind of chaos afflicting Barton's psyche, as well as challenge the audience's expectations without merely supplicating them with rote plots and tired cliches. This is the theater Barton was crying for; too bad he wasn't strong enough to make it himself.
Recommended for: Fans of a novel and playful black comedy in the signature style of the Coen Brothers. It is a film which defiantly plays with your expectations, and is steeped in metaphor and allusion with coy dialogue and colorful characters.