Barton Fink
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Movie Reviews of Barton Fink
Movie Review: So hot...
Summary: 5 Stars
The Coens, eh? This is one of their best. I feel that over the years since "Blood Simple", the brothers have been leaning towards a far more main stream sensability. "Fargo" is where they were going, but "Barton Fink" is most definately where they've been. It's all peaks and troughs with these guys nowadays. I really didn't care much for "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?", and "Intolerable Cruelty" was just below them. When they were still young, excited and exciting, they just couldn't go wrong in my eyes, and this little number has to be one of my favourites from those bygone days.The whole film is certainly very srange, but not so much as to encumber it's rather magnetic style. It has the same quiet self-possessed quality that all the really great films of the last century have, but it's pervaded by that inimitable, colourful Coen flare. The hotel in which Turturro's character ,Barton Fink, is staying is a big player in itself, with "Citezen Kane" style lighting, wallpaper that peels from the wall because of the intense Hollywood heat, and a wonderfully strange cameo from Steve "Mr. Pink" Buscemi. The outstanding performance for me though lies with John Goodman. Who would have thought that Roseanne's screen husband could have rocketed to such stellar heights of thespian ability from those humble shitcom beginnings? Playing the travelling insurance salesman who turns out to be the devil himself (a common theme in the early Coen ouevre), Goodman utters one of my favourite lines of all time: "Sometimes it gets so hot, I just wanna crawl outta my skin." There's just something fantastically wierd and intriguing about the way he delivers the line, and this and other little nuggets of script writing mastery peppered throughout the film, are able testament to the brothers' ability to get the best from their cast.
This movie panders to no-one. Even the end doesn't 'deliver' in the usual way, but it does look and feel exactly like the end of "La Dolce Vita", which is no small task in itself. One of my favourite Coen films, this is not one for the lazy.
Movie Review: A thinking person's movie
Summary: 5 Stars
The other reviews describe the plot of this film, but seem to miss the point. Barton Fink is a self-proclaimed writer of and for the common man, and yet everyone in this movie, from the studio boss to Chet the hotel clerk, is presented as a stereotype. These characters are not real, but a part of Barton's stereotype of the common man. Charlie (Jonathon Goodman) is the one character who is not a stereotype and Barton refuses to listen to him. The writer's block that Barton displays through most of the movie is not surprising because he does not know the common man, and thus cannot write about him.
The pace of the movie changes drastically when Barton invites Audrey to his room to help him with his writer's block. Audrey tells Barton that writing for the pictures is just a formula. At this point, the Coen brothers adopt the formula of Hollywood movies and people start losing their heads. That is, there is plenty of what the common man wants to see-murder, suspense, action.
The theme of this movie is that the common man does not want to see movies about the "struggles and triumphs of the common man" as Barton seems to believe. Action is what makes money. Take a look at a list of the highest grossing movies and you will see that Barton is wrong-stories about the common man do not do well. My hunch is that the Coen brothers fashioned this movie as a criticism of the viewing tastes of the common man. In this way, the movie is wonderfully ironic and a joy to watch. The last scene of a woman at the beach reinforces both Barton's and our stereotypes of Southern California. This was not done as a joke, but as a social commentary.
For added amusement, pay attention to all the references to the head, both verbally and with objects, in the second half of the movie. As the action picks up, the heads come off. It seems like a pretty clear metaphor for the lack of thinking that goes on at the movies. This movie requires the viewer to think. The other reviews of this movie suggest that the Coen brothers are correct--the viewing public either does not want to think or is simply incapable.
Movie Review: What is the world coming to
Summary: 5 Stars
Imagine, the men who made this brillant movie about writing and Hollywood and pretentiousness, who then also made Lebowski and Fargo and some other good stuff, unfortunately also some nonsense about a divorce lawyer and a silly remake of a black crime comedy with displaced Tom Hanks, these movie geniuses had to pick a mediocre novel by an overrated novelist and put an excellent Spanish actor into it, but gave him a silly haircut and forbade him to act but instructed him to kill everybody in sight, which some people found funny or existentially relevant, these guys achieved their highest level of movie success with that perfect nothing, the movie about no country for old men.
The talent is there, guys, you can do it, you can make good movies after all! Please try to remember your skills!
P.S. I got attacked by my friend Metamorpho for not saying enough about Barton Fink but spending most of my review space on something else. Where he is right, he is right.
So here is comes. Turturro is a recently successful leftish Jewish New Yorker playwright who gets himself reluctantly signed up by a Hollywood tycoon for a stint as a movie script writer. Of course he develops a bad case of writer's block and starts befriending his hotel neighbor Goodman who seems to be a friendly insurance salesman, which of course he is not.
I mention the Jewishness of the title hero on purpose: one of the strongest scene in this movie, which is a mixture of black and screwball comedy, is when Barton gets interrogated by the police in a serial murder case. The cops make sarcastic comments about the fact that the hotel is obviously not restricted. Which tied in surprisingly with the other movie that I reviewed here on the same day: Focus. Also about US antisemitism in the times of WW2.
Another parallel: the hotel room does have some slight similarity to John Cusacks 1408. Just in terms of nightmarishness...
Movie Review: You will love Barton Fink
Summary: 5 Stars
Winner of three prizes at Cannes, including the Palme D'or, this movie is a real crowed pleaser and it is easy to see why.John Turturro plays Barton Fink, a mild-mannered but neurotic screenplay writer in the early 1940s who is hired to write a Hollywood script about wrestling. Fink wants to write scripts for the "working man" and tries hard to find social adequacy in among his elated Broadway critics who are all over him after his latest success and so Fink escapes to an LA hotel to write his wrestling movie.
Suffering from writer's block, a room with peeling wallpaper and mosquito bites, Fink discovers himself slowly bordering on the brink of insanity as he strives desperately to write a single line for his demanding film executive. Soliciting the help of a drunk esteemed screenwriter he ends up with his secretary instead and his friendly hotel room neighbor, Charlie Meadows, a "working man", chips in to help Fink start and finish the script.
The film is sometimes hilarious and extremely wacky. There are lots of memorable characters and set pieces. It is all quite crazy really, but three-quarters of the way through the story takes a sudden turn into the realm of serial killers and headless corpses and everything changes much more quickly than you would have thought possible.
This script about a screenwriter is amazingly witty and extremely well written. The dialogue is gold alone - "Your a sick f**k Fink" says one detective to Barton. Watch his expression. John Goodman who plays Barton's room neighbor, Charlie Meadows, is also wonderful in probably what is his best role to date. This could also well be the best movie that the Coen brothers have to offer from their superb collection. There is also a wonderfully surreal and moving ending to this great film!
Thoroughly pleasing and extremely unpredictable!
Movie Review: A stand alone classic
Summary: 5 Stars
What an honor to be the first to review a masterpiece such as this collection of celluloid.
"Barton Fink" explores the relationship between, artist, subject, audience, and those people of power whom facilitate art while not always sympathising with it.
Barton (played by Tutorro) is a playright who is responsable for a broadway hit based on the lives of fishmongers. Unlike other mediums in the performing arts, this is one wherin the author enjoys the lion's share of the adulation when adulation is due. Barton, however, is a man of princable and feels a great deal of trepidation when a new offer comes his way. The offer is from Hollywood, and with a great sense of guilt, he accepts.
Barton's princables, as well as his guilt, are the subject of this entire film. Ofcourse Joel and Ethan Coen do a magnificent job with the camera, characters, and sets, but if you can't sympathise with Barton Fink's torment, you might be better off seeing "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou". For those who enjoy trying to understand a character, his motivations, desires, ambitions, and insecurities, look no further.
John Tutorro (I can't be spelling that right) deserves the highest praise for bringing out every nuance in such a complex character. He really rose to the challenge, and if it were not so, the film surely would have drown in its lack. Look also for a ramarkable turn in John Goodman's resumee, he proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he can handle any chore a screenwriter might bequeeth him. He's not just a funny-man, and I for one would just like to say, "well done John, well done indeed.
I'm sure some will call the film pretensious, when in fact, it exposes the original sin, which is pretencion.
One of the best films of the 20th century!