Welcome to the wonderfully wacky world of the Coen brothers. Joel and Ethan Coen are two of the most knowing filmmakers in America today. Every film they turn out is a cinematic gem, and “Barton Fink” is no exception.
The film centers around a slightly pompous, idealistic, left soar playwright, Barton Fink (John Turturro), who in 1941, after becoming the toast of Broadway as the pretentious speak of the celebrated man, goes west to Hollywood at the invitation of a major studio in order to try his hand at writing screenplays.
There, he meets studio head, Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner), and his yes man and whipping boy, Lou Ride (Jon Polito) . Asked to write a screenplay for a Wallace Beery vehicle about wrestling, a subject about which the bookish Fink knows nothing about, causes Fink to go into a professional tailspin.
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Ensconced in a decaying venerable hotel, seemingly race by its slightly creepy and unctuous bell hop, Chet (Steve Buscemi), who bizarrely appears on the scene out of a trapdoor gradual the hotel’s front desk, Fink begins his ordeal . The elevator is accelerate by a cadaverous, pock marked, elderly man. The corridors of the hotel seem endless. The wallpaper in Fink’s room is peeling away from the wall, leaving a viscous, damp ooze in its wake. His bed creaks and groans with a life of its maintain. It is also hot, oppressively hot.
No residents of the hotel are apparent, except for the appearance of shoes outside the doors in expectation of the free shoe shine the hotel offers its denizens and for the noise made by his neighbors. Finks meets one of his neighbors, the portly Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), a gregarious Everyman, possessed of an abundance of bonhomie. A self-styled insurance salesman, Charlie cajoles Fink out of his shell, befriending him in the process. Cramped does Fink know that beneath Charlie’s congenial exterior lies a horrific secret that will spillover onto him in the not so distant future.
At a luncheon with studio under boss, Ben Geisler (Tony Shalhoub), Fink meets a noted writer that he reveres, W. P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), a southern sot so steeped in drink that his companion/secretary, Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis), has to do his writing for him. Fink falls for Audrey but finds his overtures rebuffed. Unruffled, she is willing to try and support him overcome his profound writer’s block. In a classic Coen twist, it is this single act of kindness that acts as the catalyst for the nightmare that makes Fink’s life become a living hell on earth. He goes from living a life of self-imposed isolation and angst to one that appears to have been created by a Hollywood hack, filled as it is with the most astonishing situations, a accurate studio head’s dream.
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John Turturro is terrific as the introverted, tightly hurt, pretentious, and neurotic Fink, who in Hollywood, away from the womb of the Immense White Arrangement, is like a lamb led to the slaughter. With his sculpted afro, horn rimmed glasses, nerdy clothes, Fink is the stereotypic Hollywood thought of the commie writer. John Turturro makes the role his with a purposeful intensity.
John Goodman is sensational as the garrulous Charlie Meadow, the epitome of the working class man about whom Fink likes to write. Unfortunately, all is not as it seems, as Charlie has a sunless side to him, a very unlit side. John Mahoney is helpful as the Faulknerian-like writer, and Judy Davis outdoes herself, as the self-sacrificing Audrey Taylor.
Michael Lerner will razzle-dazzle the viewer with his over the top portrayal of a like a flash talking studio head who is willing to pay enormous bucks for the cache of having a top Broadway playwright turn out screenplay swill for the masses. Jon Polito is very edifying as the Uriah Heepish, quintessential yes man he portrays. Tony Shalhoub is great in his role, underscoring the absurdity of the former Hollywood studio system.
Steve Buscemi, looking surprisingly minute in his bell hop uniform, resembles an organ grinder’s monkey, at times. The viewer may also seek information from him to sob, “Call for Phillip Morris”, as in the archaic cigarette campaign, though he speaks in a controlled, respectful monotone, at all times. Detached, his very presence adds a slightly contaminated quality to the film, though he does nothing remotely outrageous, other than the method he makes his hide appearance. His entrance onto the shroud in this fashion foreshadows what is to reach.
This film is not for everyone, as it does not have a neatly wrapped ending. Instead, it goes beyond the standard expected ending into an absurdist foray. Quiet, those who treasure films by the Coen Brothers will not be disappointed by this satiric discover at Hollywood. It is tiny wonder that this film became the darling of the Cannes Film Festival.
For a long time, the absurdist masterpiece Barton Fink was only available in a dingy VHS release. It was better than nothing, but this film deserved better. Thankfully, it’s here - in all its stupefying glory.
I won’t portray the fable. Plenty of other reviews do that. Not long ago I was tempted to explain it. That unexcited seems a respectable course, as there is a honorable sense that, beneath its amusing, surreal surface, Barton Fink is trying to command us something urgent and distinguished. Perhaps, but the primal forces in a writer’s mind as s/he shapes a immense sage do that, anyway - often without the writer’s specific knowledge.
Rather than a simple allegory, Barton Fink is a collection of surfaces, styles, textures, and mannerisms. That they seem to add up to more than the sum of their parts is the huge trick, akin to the draw a painter can suggest the dappled depths of a forest with a few deft pats of a fan brush. Which isn’t to say the film is shallow. No; there is a lot going on here. But to suggest that this film has a specific meaning is also to suggest it has an retort. Only mediocre films (by the likes of, say, Stanley Kramer or Oliver Stone) provide answers in a attempt to effect themselves more distinguished. The Coens (writer Ethan, director Joel), like most of us, haven’t a clue about the Mysteries of Life. So they don’t try to “…swear us something about all of us, something handsome…” as Fink himself professes. Instead, they be pleased “…making things up…”, like the other writer in the film, the Faulkneresque W.P. Mayhew (played to perfection by John Mahoney) .
Somewhere in here, though, the sleight-of-hand, the postmodern flourishes (wherein genres clash and surfaces spill over one another in unexpected ways), cracks appear. Through them we spy something else…something truly repugnant.
Barton Fink’s resonances with the Holocaust are notorious (the noxious and Fascistic German and Italian cops, the Jewish Fink, the burning hallway, the story’s year - 1941, the nice guy next door - also with a German name - who turns out to be a madman; on and on) . These touches cannot be accidental. Yet, the Coens seem to have deliberately avoided any clear throughline, any markers which would provide for a certain interpretation.
Perhaps this is the point - that there is no design to form sense of the madness. Barton Fink, the character, is a writer who tries to celebrate the “popular man” - to write about “valid life”. Yet, exact life is incomprehensible to him. Nice Guy Charlie Meadows (the estimable John Goodman) is a crooked murderer. His idol is a raving drunk. His muse is a purveyor of formula hackery. The authorities are openly anti-semitic. And his bosses - Lipnick (Michael Lerner) and Geisler (Tony Shalhoub) - are utterly indifferent to his craft. The events that unfold around him are too horrifying and irregular to design sense of. Simply assign, they cannot be explained by any rational interpretation. Which, if this film is really a parable of the Holocaust, is as it should be, since there is no rationale in genocide.
When it comes to “making things up”, no one does it better than the Coens. Their skill in marshalling symbols is sublime: Mayhew’s latest book is called “Nebuchadnezzar”; Lipnick, like king Nebuchadnezzar, has a dream he wants Fink to clarify (the wrestling film he’s writing for Wallace Beery) . At a famous point in the film, a dazed, sleepless Fink opens the Gideon bible to the page where Nebuchadnezzar threatens to slice the Chaldeans’ tents to a dung-heap if someone cannot define his dream. He flips to Genesis, and there, on the page, is the opening of his screenplay - the only piece of it he’s been able to write. It’s a quick-witted sequence, that truly adds up. Lipnick is Nebuchadnezzar; Fink is trying to be Daniel. There is (literally) Hell to pay if he cannot do the job.
Beyond a few moments like these, though, trying to impose a specific meaning on Barton Fink is folly - like trying to impose a specific meaning on any of Luis Bunuel’s better films. There is something about it that, like Lynch’s best work, goes moral past the rational self and nestles more deeply in the unconscious. I acquire something from every viewing of this film, and share of its beauty is that I cannot stammer exactly what that is.
This DVD is nicely produced, with Roger Deakins’ blooming cinematography looking better than ever, and Dolby Surround sound track well reproduced. A 5.1 re-mix would have been welcome, as would a serious commentary track, should the Coens ever be able to bring themselves around to doing one that doesn’t lumber fun of commentary tracks.
John Turturro is helpful as the title character. Judy Davis acquits herself nicely as Mayhew’s secretary/lover/ghost-writer.
This is one of those films that’s worth really thinking about, and watching again and again. Don’t question answers; request an experience - and a worthy one at that.
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