Customer Reviews

Barton Fink

5 star:		(55)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

In my opinion, Barton Fink represents the greatest archievement from Joel and Ethan Coen. They mix here the two genre they are the best with : film noir and comedy, to create a perfect black comedy! The two John are perfect in there role and what about Michael Lerner.....one of these caracter like John *Jesus Quintana* Turturro in The Big Lebowski or J.K. Simmons of the recent Burnt After Reading that are just totally hilarious and typically *coen style*. The directing is top notch, and it's a pretty nice ambiant style. Honestly, if you enjoy Blood Simple, The Hudsucker Proxy or Fargo, this one is like a mix of the three!

This is a movie not to be missed.Its subtelty, plus the acting of John Goodman and John Terterro, marks it out as one of the Coen Brothers best.Terterro is an idealistic 'one hit' playwrite who attracts the attentiom of an Hollywood Mogul and is signed-up to write a film.It is made plain to him that he is not required to write an artistic script but one about wrestling: "Big men in tights" as its put to him.He takes a room in an hotel and from there the drama unfolds in the most unexpected ways. Both actors are brilliant in their roles but John Goodman (then in his prime) plays a part unequalled in its authenticity as someone truly insane, being both the gentle easy going giant and a brutal killer as and when the mood takes him.The whole film is a masterpiece with the last scene where Goodman enacts 'the life of the mind' in its most savage form, and then reverting to the 'gentle giant,being particularly moving.This is a film destined to become 'cult'and in the years to come collectible.It is not a film which reveals its full subtelty at first viewing but those who watch it more than once will be well repayed by increased insight into its complexity and drama. A must buy for the discerning.A.Murphy. Postgraduate
Psychology.

Barton Fink is a nightmarish film and a black comedy, much of which takes place in a lifelike hotel sparsely populated by grotesque characters. Barton is himself a nervous, self-absorbed nerd, and fits right in. His roomate, Charly, is an overweight salesman with an ear infection who has some kind of bizarre telepathic connection with the hotel. Their conversations are sublimely entertaining, and undeniably the work of the Coen brothers.

Even if the somewhat self-absorbed plotline of a playwright unable to write a wrestling screenplay due to personal eccentricities doesn't interest you, the film is visually fascinating from beginning to end. Stylistically, it resembles a mutation of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick, which in itself should promise a good, eerie, challenging two hours of surrealism and allegory. Indeed, it's full of clever visual clues that will spark arguments over what it all means. Should be of interest to the artsy-fartsy crowd, conventional types shoudn't waste their time.

Okay, "Barton Fink" is a satire on the old studio system. It may also well be a symbolic depiction of the Holocaust. The Book of Daniel certainly features strongly in the mix. And it's an attack on the foibles of the twitchy intellectual, particularly the self-righteous left-wing "voice of the people" type. But, just to keep the pot boiling, let me point out that the film's narrative framework is adapted from the legend of Faust. In large part, Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus".

The Faust figure is Barton, needless to say. Charley/Karl is Mephistopheles. And Audrey is Gretchen/Marguerite, the admired female figure who turns out to be a little less than what was desired. Barton is frankly devoted to the life of the mind, obsessed with creativity and the longing to learn the secret of life and bring it home to the Little Man, the Common Man. Charley/Mesphisto offers his assistance (by teaching him wrestling--this is a Coen brothers film, remember). He fails, but at last Barton does sell his soul--to Audrey, the no longer idealized "eternal female". And as the deal is sealed with a bout of sex, the camera glides to the bathroom sink, where it slides down (I stole this part from John Simon) straight to Hell, which is ruled not by friendly, easygoing Charley, but by Madman Mundt (the real Karl Mundt, by the way, was a notorious right-wing congressman of the period, for what that's worth).

So okay, it's not a one-to-one correspondence. But neither was "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" perfectly congruent with the Odyssey. (e.g. which one was Homer--the old black guy with the beard or the country DJ?) The Coens use these sources not as road-maps, but as takeoff points, which is as it should be.

As is often mentioned below, the cinematography here is outstanding, obtaining a kind of rotten lushness comparable only to "Blue Velvet". The Coens have always been standouts in dealing with actors, and this film is no exception. If Turturro wasn't so goofy-looking he'd be a superstar on the strength of this picture alone, but then he wouldn't have been in the picture. Seeing Lerner here makes me wonder why he isn't used more often. But the standout, as is so often the case, is Goodman. It's not easy to continue thinking of him as the jolly fat guy after seeing his "You don't listen." soliloquy at the climax.

A lot of people view the Coens as the cinematic exemplars of pomo, but I don't think that's true. Pomo demands you take the theories dead seriously while mocking everything else. The Coens reverse the formula, mocking all forms of intellectual pretension while taking life in general--and the horror that lies behind it--very seriously. That's a rarity in any art form, particularly film. So take a look, and be shown the life of the mind.

And oh yeah--I don't know what they're doing with that ending either.

Easily the smartest of the Cohen Bros. films (and the darkest), Barton Fink employs an amazing economy of substance to weave a multiplicity of complex stories and meanings into an entertaining piece of very appealing cinematography.

To be found here are a number of different parables, all well-developed and supported by the meticulous detail in the film... everything from an allegory on the rise and course of Nazism during the 1940's, to a critique of communism constructed as warning about the secretly borgeious nature of the common man's intellectual, to an 8 1/2-esque statement about the dangerous and self-digesting face of the commercial-artistic milieu in the modern marketplace-studio. At play also are a number of riddles, including an imagined head that pits postmodernism against phenomenology, a biblical dance with Nebuchadnezzar for those who know their Bible, and a reversal of the narrative order through the presence of a hidden film-within-a-film.

Many mainstream critics focus on one particular interpretation of the film or fixate on one of these riddles and gloss the rest of the film's richness away as "surrealism" or "stylized darkness." Readers who read a number of these seemingly disparate reviews might be startled to find them all to be correct when held up to the film itself. A much more enjoyable way to explore the complexity and astonishing intelligence of the writing behind Barton Fink, however, is to watch it repeatedly.

Indeed, you'll notice something new, connect a few different dots in a different way, each time you see it. That the Cohen Bros. were not more richly rewarded for constructing such a remarkable "text" is sad indeed!

One of the best films of the twentieth century.

Okay, so I didn't understand everything that happened in Barton Fink, but I enjoyed it none the less. At its core Barton Fink is a running joke about the pretentiousness of art and the substance of creativity. There's a thread of tension that runs from the beginning of this film to its end and maintains your curiosity throughout. With wonderful set direction and cinematography in addition to great acting you don't need to have an analytical understanding of all the components of this film; which is, I think, part of the joke. This is one of the best cinematographic satires of the creative process.

I am a huge Coen Brothers fan, I dont know why I like their films but I find them all entertaining. I guess because you never know whats comming next in a Coen's film because there are so many twists and turns, that you have your eyes glued to the screen all the way through. John Goodman and all the other actors are fantastic, I love the way that Coen Brothers Films use alot of the same actors it alot of their films. Also with Coen Brother's Films you are pritty much gauranteed amazing cinematography. Do I think that the ending left a lot to be desired? Yes. Do I think that the storyline could have been better? Yes. But I still rate it 5 stars. Why? Because I just Love it.

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 recount the story. Plenty of other reviews do that. Not long ago I was tempted to interpret it. That still seems a valid course, as there is a genuine sense that, beneath its comic, surreal surface, Barton Fink is trying to tell us something urgent and important. Perhaps, but the primal forces in a writer's mind as s/he shapes a great story 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 great trick, akin to the way 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 answer. Only mediocre films (by the likes of, say, Stanley Kramer or Oliver Stone) provide answers in a attempt to make themselves more important. 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 "...tell us something about all of us, something beautiful..." as Fink himself professes. Instead, they enjoy "...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 glimpse something else...something truly terrifying.

Barton Fink's resonances with the Holocaust are well-known (the sinister 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 obvious throughline, any markers which would provide for a clear interpretation.

Perhaps this is the point - that there is no way to make sense of the madness. Barton Fink, the character, is a writer who tries to celebrate the "common man" - to write about "real life". Yet, real life is incomprehensible to him. Nice Guy Charlie Meadows (the excellent John Goodman) is a twisted 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 strange to make sense of. Simply put, 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 interpret (the wrestling film he's writing for Wallace Beery). At a critical point in the film, a dazed, sleepless Fink opens the Gideon bible to the page where Nebuchadnezzar threatens to reduce the Chaldeans' tents to a dung-heap if someone cannot interpret his dream. He flips to Genesis, and there, on the page, is the opening of his screenplay - the only part of it he's been able to write. It's a brilliant 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 right past the rational self and nestles more deeply in the unconscious. I get something from every viewing of this film, and part of its beauty is that I cannot articulate exactly what that is.

This DVD is nicely produced, with Roger Deakins' glowing 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 poke fun of commentary tracks.

John Turturro is excellent 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 expect answers; expect an experience - and a powerful one at that.

Barton Fink is a New York writer with on the cusp of real success when he receives a lucrative offer. After earning accolades for a play he wrote about New York City fishmongers, Hollywood offers him a load of money to head out to Los Angeles to write motion picture screenplays. Fink is slightly unsure he should engage in such a shameless grab for money, but he decides to go for it after his agent assures him that all great writers and artists work in Tinseltown. The idea of a talented artist selling his soul to the moneygrubbers involved in the film industry is an important theme of Joel and Ethan Coen's classic 1991 film "Barton Fink." The picture is notably weird even for the Coen brothers, who made "Raising Arizona," "Fargo," and "The Hudsucker Proxy," all strange films in their own right. "Barton Fink" beats those films by a mile with its bizarre premises. What is this movie about? Oh, nothing more than your typical guy goes to Hollywood to make good, finds himself living next to a mass murderer, gets writer's block, has run-ins with evil studio heads, meets his idol and a pretty girl, winds up facing a murder rap, and encounters the devil himself (maybe). Just your typical, everyday sort of predictable plot passed off on the sheep that go see movies today, right? Dead wrong. This movie is one of the most original films I have seen in years. I never tire of watching it.

When Barton arrives in Hollywood he immediately sets himself up in a sleazy hotel, thinking that the claustrophobic atmosphere of his room will inspire him in his work. Problems, horrible, dangerous problems that hint at dark forces haunt him from the moment he checks in. The clerk manning the front desk seems a bit odd, especially considering he emerges from a trap door in the floor to help Fink sign in. Then Barton's neighbor appears on the scene after the writer complains to the front desk about the noise next door. This neighbor, a salesman named Charlie Meadows, at first takes umbrage with Fink's complaints but eventually comes to befriend the nervous screenwriter. The two men spend a lot of time cooling their heels in Fink's room, discussing such diverse topics as the plight of the common man and the difficulties of selling products door to door. While Fink begins to think the world of this portly salesman, there seems to be a sinister personality lurking behind the smiling eyes of Charlie that is occasionally off putting. Eventually, that secret will come to light in the most hideous of ways.

Before Fink's life turns to mud, he meets another man who presents a host of problems: his literary hero W.P. Mayhew. Mayhew is a raging alcoholic trying to earn a living in Hollywood. Fink eventually learns an upsetting secret about this writer as well, a secret involving Mayhew's sultry assistant Audrey. Compounding Fink's difficulties is a brassy, smarmy Hollywood big shot who wants Fink to write a screenplay for a wrestling picture starring Noah Beery. Barton Fink might have survived these countless debacles if he didn't suddenly come down with the worst case of writer's block he has ever had. When inspiration does suddenly strike him, it has little to do with a wrestling picture and more to do with his current situation. The people he is under contract with do not understand Barton Fink's screenplay. They don't understand Barton Fink. And they promise that Barton Fink will never work in this town again or as a writer because the contract stipulates anything Fink writes belongs to the studio. Hollywood can be a very unforgiving town.

Everything works in "Barton Fink." The performances from John Turturro (Fink), John Goodman (Charlie Meadows), Steve Buscemi (the bellhop Chet), Judy Davis (Audrey), John Mahoney (Mayhew), and Michael Lerner (studio boss Jack Lipnick) all rate off the charts. A special salute should go to Tony Shaloub in the sleazy role of Ben Geisler, an overbearing jerk constantly deriding Fink's position with the studio. The hotel's bleak atmosphere, with its peeling wallpaper, dusty furniture, and canyon wide hallways instills a sense of malevolent dread to the entire proceedings. Who could produce a work of art in such a seedy situation? Barton Fink can when he finally decides to rely on his true abilities by rejecting the typical Hollywood pap. There are many theories about the underlying themes of this movie, most of them quite valid, but I felt that the idea of a young writer selling his soul for a buck and thus nosediving into failure was the central premise. Only when he writes about something he has enthusiasm for does he find a sort of redemption, and even then Hollywood is right there to quash his masterpiece. I suspect the Coen brothers went through a similar experience when they started out in the movie business, that Barton Fink represents to some extent the success and failure of these two filmmakers.

The DVD version of the movie is good, not great. The most intriguing extras on the disc are the deleted scenes. They don't add much to the movie, but they do provide a glimpse into how the film might have looked before the final edit. The scenes rely on alternating black and white and color cinematography, which makes for a confusing feel that was appropriately dropped in favor of an all color format. "Barton Fink" is a winner of a film that really isn't all that confusing after repeated viewings. A commentary track from the directors would have been nice, if for no other reason than to confirm what is in that blasted box!

Ok. Before you read this, don't get me wrong. I liked this movie...a lot. It steps outside the conventions of hollywood. But I'm not exactly sure I understand the whole message. So here is what I got from the movie...decide for yourself:

Barton Fink, successful pretentious New York playwright is commissioned by a hollywood agency to create a screenplay for a low budget movie about wresteling. Fink reluctantly takes the job, despite his preconcieved notions of hollywood corrupting his values. This is the setup for the remainder of the plot (which I really don't want to go into, so if you want a plot outline, read another review). Suffice it to say that the plot line seems feasable -- even real -- but only up to a point.

Here's what I think the Coen's were trying to do (and no one else seems to get this...at least, not from any of the reviews I've read). The plot during the entire second half of the movie is completely implausable. It is almost at the precise time in the movie when the plot becomes implausable that Fink's ideas begin to flow, and his writers block is suddenly lifted. I believe that these implausable events in the movie WERE the events of Fink's screenplay.

This makes sense if you think about it. The events of the second half of the movie seem unreal...even surreal to a point. In fact, one could say that they are more similar to the plot of a B movie...the exact type of screenplay that Fink was commissioned to write. Fink's ideas began to flow almost immediately after these bizarre and twisted events began to occour. In other words, all of these strange events were all in Fink's mind. In fact, after all of it started to unfold, Fink simply sat down and started writing

Didn't anyone who saw this movie find it even remotely curious why Fink was never held responsible for his actions, or that he never tried to hide the evidence (the bloddy mattress, for one)? These events are precisely the type of cliched hackney pouring out of hollywood that Fink was trying to avoid, yet he became caught right in the middle of them.

You may find yourself wondering why, then, would Fink be writing about all these events, when they have nothing to do with wresteling. If you think about it, though, these strange events revolved around Charlie Meadows. The fact that Charlie used to be a wrestler ties the entire thing together.

At the end of it all, we are still inside the writer's mind. We are stuck "inside the painting" -- in Fink's own personal hell.

Even if this isn't what the Coen's were trying to accomplish, I still think that this movie surpassed all my expectations. This is a very well crafted piece of cinema.