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Welcome to the wonderfully wacky world of the Coen brothers. Joel and Ethan Coen are two of the most incandescent 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 waft playwright, Barton Fink (John Turturro), who in 1941, after becoming the toast of Broadway as the pretentious vow of the favorite 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 Scamper (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 dilapidated hotel, seemingly speed 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 urge 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 hold. 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. Petite 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 well-known 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. Quiet, she is willing to try and attend 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 unbelievable situations, a loyal studio head’s dream.
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John Turturro is terrific as the introverted, tightly injure, pretentious, and neurotic Fink, who in Hollywood, away from the womb of the Huge White Map, 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 shaded side to him, a very sunless side. John Mahoney is valid 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 stout bucks for the cache of having a top Broadway playwright turn out screenplay swill for the masses. Jon Polito is very advantageous as the Uriah Heepish, quintessential yes man he portrays. Tony Shalhoub is agreeable in his role, underscoring the absurdity of the dilapidated Hollywood studio system.
Steve Buscemi, looking surprisingly puny in his bell hop uniform, resembles an organ grinder’s monkey, at times. The viewer may also quiz him to scream, “Call for Phillip Morris”, as in the traditional cigarette campaign, though he speaks in a controlled, respectful monotone, at all times. Level-headed, his very presence adds a slightly gross quality to the film, though he does nothing remotely unsuitable, other than the method he makes his mask appearance. His entrance onto the camouflage in this fashion foreshadows what is to arrive.
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. Composed, those who fancy films by the Coen Brothers will not be disappointed by this satiric behold at Hollywood. It is runt 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 relate the record. Plenty of other reviews do that. Not long ago I was tempted to define it. That unruffled seems a suited course, as there is a great sense that, beneath its amusing, surreal surface, Barton Fink is trying to scream us something urgent and indispensable. Perhaps, but the primal forces in a writer’s mind as s/he shapes a astronomical myth 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 gigantic trick, akin to the map 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 acknowledge. Only mediocre films (by the likes of, say, Stanley Kramer or Oliver Stone) provide answers in a attempt to acquire themselves more famous. 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 “…verbalize us something about all of us, something fair…” as Fink himself professes. Instead, they delight in “…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 notice something else…something truly ghastly.
Barton Fink’s resonances with the Holocaust are noted (the detestable 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 positive throughline, any markers which would provide for a definite interpretation.
Perhaps this is the point – that there is no blueprint to invent sense of the madness. Barton Fink, the character, is a writer who tries to celebrate the “well-liked man” – to write about “sincere life”. Yet, precise life is incomprehensible to him. Nice Guy Charlie Meadows (the profitable John Goodman) is a hooked 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 unique to construct sense of. Simply build, 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 considerable point in the film, a dazed, sleepless Fink opens the Gideon bible to the page where Nebuchadnezzar threatens to slash the Chaldeans’ tents to a dung-heap if someone cannot elaborate his dream. He flips to Genesis, and there, on the page, is the opening of his screenplay – the only allotment of it he’s been able to write. It’s a vivid 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 just past the rational self and nestles more deeply in the unconscious. I collect something from every viewing of this film, and allotment of its beauty is that I cannot explain exactly what that is.
This DVD is nicely produced, with Roger Deakins’ magnificent 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 high-tail fun of commentary tracks.
John Turturro is qualified 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; question an experience – and a considerable one at that.
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