Barton Fink

"I'll show you the life of the mind!" (Charlie Meadows)

I'm not gonna pretend to know everything there is to know about "Barton Fink", sometimes a great movie can reveal only what it should, the rest is a mystery. This is the kind of effect "Barton Fink" has on me when I watch it, a film that begins as it should and ends as it should, even though you're not quite sure what it all means. This is called ambiguity, it leaves a lot of questions open and unanswered, perhaps for you to ponder, I wish more films had the courage to do this.

"Barton Fink" was the fourth film from Joel and Ethan Coen, made in 1991, it swept the Cannes Film Festival that year going home with awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. Up to this time, this was probably the most complex and I would say personal film the brothers had made.

Barton Fink (John Turturro) is a playwright, he's been deemed a new and important voice in the theatre world in 1941. The film opens with his first real success on Broadway which wows the critics. Barton doesn't quite know what to make of this new found success, he finds it best to believe to not listen to what the critics have to say and just write what he feels is important. He has ambitions that his writing could usher in a new type of theatre full of realism, and a new focus on the common man, however his plans change when Hollywood beckons.

Barton decides to take a contract with a studio company. The studio's head is Jack Lipnick (Oscar nominee Michael Lerner), a man who talks fast and gets business done, yet he has no eye for talent really. He hasn't even seen Barton's play, but heard it was a success, so he puts Barton to work on a Wallace Beery wrestling picture. Lipnick wants it to have that certain "Barton Fink feel".

It becomes obvious that Barton has indeed been given the job of writing for a B-movie. He moves into The Hotel Earl, one of the most imaginative and strange hotels in all of movies. Barton's room is rundown, with walls that keep becoming unglued, and a mosquito that gives him some vicious bites every night. There only seems to be two people who work at the hotel, there's the always helpful front desk boy Chet (Steve Buscemi) and an elevator operator who seems to just sits there motionless.

But Barton also has a neighbour Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), a very neighborly guy with a very down home feel to him who sells insurance. Charlie comes off as the exact guy who Barton wants to write about, the common man, it isn't long before the two become friends.

Throughout the film, Barton is continuing to suffer from writer's block, only having the opening scene of the film, he looks for help from a celebrated novelist W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney) and his assistant (Judy Davies) on where to get started, but even that becomes a disappointment when he discovers Mayhew is nothing but a drunk. As the film goes on, Barton becomes more and more isolated, his hotel room becomes a living nightmare, and things start to happen to him that go beyond the unexplainable.

So what does "Barton Fink" really all mean? Some argue that this is the kind of film The Coens make just to confuse or isolate their viewers, that it is just them being too clever. What it really is, is the Coens being master filmmakers by not revealing too much. "Barton Fink" is about a lot of things, I think it's about a writer coping with fear. Fear of success, fear of failure, fear of compromise, and fear that what you thought was truth turns out to be an ugly lie.

Barton is very much a flawed character, he's a man battling his own demons inside, he believes writing comes from a great pain, but he's also someone who is not aware of what is going on around him. He's caught up in his noble persuit as a writer, he can't make sense of the reality surrounding him. Practically everyone Barton encounters in this film is a phony, particularly his good friend Charlie who we find out carries a disturbing secret. Barton cannot comprehend reality yet he feels he can write about it, I suppose it's a writer's worst fears come true.

"Barton Fink" came at a golden age for The Coens, it was just after they finished another masterpiece "Miller's Crossing", and not too far behind their most popular film "Fargo". The success of the film at Cannes was a way to show this filmmakers had come into their own and even more success was on their way.

To this day, "Barton Fink" remains one of the Coens true masterpieces, it's a Gothic comedy come to life. I still wonder about it, it remains a mystery, and I'm sure it will continue to always be one to me as long as I keep exploring it.