Title: Barton Fink (1991)
Director: Joel Coen
Cast: John Torturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, John Mahoney,
Steve Buscemi, Tony Shalhoub
Ask anybody who writes for a living and they’ll tell you, writing
can be a noble, rewarding and even cathartic affair, but most of all, it can
also be hell. In Barton Fink, the Coen Brothers captured this sentiment
perfectly by telling the story of Barton Fink, a playwright who writes stories
about “the common man”, the working stiff, Barton wants to be a voice for them.
The good thing is that Barton’s plays are getting rave reviews; he’s finally getting
a taste of success, of recognition. It’s at this same time that a Hollywood
mogul offers Barton a job “writing for the pictures” paying him a thousand
dollars a week. Barton accepts the job offer because he sees it as a way of
making money that can later allow him to write more plays, not because he is
thrilled at the idea of writing movies. So off Barton Fink goes to Hollywood.
He stays at Hotel Earl, a name that sounds a lot like Hotel Hell, which I’m
sure was the Coen’s direct intention. This is hell for Barton, because it’s
where he intends to write his first screenplay, it’s where he intends to escape
into the “life of the mind”. And so starts Barton Fink, a film that portrays
Hollywood as a place filled with wound up, greedy and downright crazy people, a
place that is not as glamorous as some might think.
So that’s the premise for Barton Fink, a film that’s a
double edged sword because it’s both about the struggles of a writer and the hectic
life of a Hollywood mogul, so it’s both a film about writing and about
filmmaking. The life of the writer is covered by the character of Barton Fink,
a character attempting to write his first screenplay. We follow him right down
to that intimate moment when the writer sits in front of his type writer trying
to write that first sentence, that first original thought, that first spark of
an idea that will get that screenplay going. Barton Fink really goes into that
mental struggle one must go through in order to write a story. This struggle
has been addressed in many films about writing like Naked Lunch (1991) and
Spike Jonze’s Adaptation (2002), it’s a common thing that writers go through:
how to get started, where to begin. At times Barton just stares at the blank
page, unable to type a single thing. Every little thing distracts him, he tries
to write and a fly buzzes by. He tries to type and his neighbor comes knocking
at the door. He tries to write and the wallpaper is peeling off the walls. When
he does write, he writes about the same themes he’d write in his theater plays,
he writes about “the fishmongers”, the working class; an interesting way in
which the Coen’s point out how sometimes, all throughout their body of work, writers
and filmmakers end up talking about the same themes repeatedly. So be ready for a film that analyses
the nature of writing and as a result, is a very brainy, complex film.
On the Hollywood filmmaking side of things we get to see Barton
meet film producers, which are portrayed as a hectic bunch, always speaking at
lightning fast pace, which perfectly captures the way Hollywood moguls think,
always trying to be one step ahead of what’s hot, what’s in, always trying to
stab each other’s backs first. If you know anything about Hollywood, then you
know what a wrestling match it can be to write a film with some depth to it and
then finding someone willing to fund it.
90 percent of the time, all Hollywood cares about is making the next
Transformers movie. There’s always that fight between the brainy writer and the
money hungry producer. In Barton Fink Hollywood is a stampeding train looking
for someone to ram and if this film is any indication, it’s the brainy, poetic writers
artistic integrity that is on its tracks. Even though they’ll tell you they
love you “kiss this man’s shoe!” in reality, they don’t want you to write a
sad, fruity picture. As soon as he arrives to Hollywood Barton meets Jack
Lipnick, a Hollywood producer who says he is where he is because he is meaner
and louder than anyone else in town. Lipnick (which by the way sounds like “limp
dick” and I’m sure this was intentional) wants Barton to write a film about
wrestling in order to make a quick buck, but Barton doesn’t want to write a silly
b-movie . In accordance with the persona of a writer, Barton is a more cerebral
kind of guy, so Barton is confronted with a conundrum: should he write a commercial
film about wrestling? A film that follows a formula? Or can he turn this would
be film into a commentary on the struggles of the common man? I enjoy how the film explores these ideas,
this dichotomy: to make an intelligent film that can actually say something
about life or to make a meaningless film that says nothing?
As is the case with practically any Coen Brothers film, the
cast is top notch. On Barton Fink we have two great actors who take up a big
part of the screen time and these are John Torturro and John Goodman, two
actors whom the Coen brothers continually work with. These two characters are
at the crux of what this film is about. On the one hand we have Torturro playing
Barton as the brainy writer who struggles with his own mind; he is continually
asking perfection of himself. ”Shouldn’t your first duty be to your gift?” He
is a writer determined to do something worthwhile, sometime that matters.
Though at the same time he comes off as a hypocritical character, at times
advocating for the common man, but then not even listening to the stories that
he might have to say, one could say that Burton sees himself as superior to the
common man. He sees himself as more refined, than the common man. Then on the
other hand we have Goodman playing Charlie Meadows, a guy who in the eyes of
Barton represents the common man that he wants to write so much about. In a
way, one feeds off the other. For example, Charlie enjoys talking with Barton
because he’s an intelligent individual who always has something insightful to
say. In Charlie’s eyes, Barton is not an idiotic sheep in the heard. To
Charlie, Barton is special and he admires him for that. Barton tells Charlie things
like “the life of the mind…there’s no road map for that territory…and exploring
it can be painful” and Charlie just eats it up. For Barton, Charlie is the
complete opposite. To Barton, Charlie is the quintessential common man, working
for the system as an Insurance Salesman; a sheep in the heard, slaving away to
have a little money with which to eat and drink his nights away. But boy, could
he tell Barton some stories; unfortunately, most of the time Barton won’t
listen to his stories, he just talks about himself. But they continually meet,
bouncing off their musings on life. Their encounters lead to a very unexpected place.
An interesting aspect of Barton Fink is that it is a film
filled with many symbolisms and possible interpretations; it speaks about many
things at the same time. Ultimately, Barton Fink will end up meaning different
things to different people, much like a David Lynch film. Actually, visually
speaking this film has many homage’s to Lynch’s own Eraserhead (1977), starting
with John Torturro’s crazy hairdo. Multiple interpretations aside, at heart, more
than anything, the film expresses the frustrations involved with artistic
compromise. The film itself has a very somber mood to it, very film noir, very
dark…we get the feeling that Hotel Earl is indeed hell. Every character that
stays in Hotel Earl is always dripping in sweat. The heat and humidity are
extremely palpable here. “Sometimes it gets so hot I want to crawl right out of
my skin” says Charlie at one point. One of the many interpretations for this
film is that Hotel Earl is hell and that John Goodman’s character can be
representative of either fascism, Satan or a figment of Barton’s own mind, take
your pick! I’ve also read that since Barton lives “the life of the mind” that
Charlie represents his physical side? There’s even another take on the film
that says that Barton’s hotel room represents his mind and that everything that
happens in the hotel is representative of what’s going on inside his head! So
just be ready for a movie that’s open to various interpretations. All these wild interpretations make sense, especially when we take in consideration that the film takes a turn towards the surreal side of
things.
It should be noted that Barton Fink came to be as result of
the Coen’s suffering from writers block while writing the screenplay for Miller’s
Crossing (1990). You see, writing Miller’s Crossing proved to be such a
daunting task for the brothers that they took a break from it; a hiatus so to
speak. Now, the Coen’s being such gifted writers, their hiatus involved writing
another masterpiece, which ended up being Barton Fink, a film that won critical
acclaim and numerous awards at the Cannes Film Festival! It’s a very special
film that I place next to Sunset Blvd. (1950), Adaptation (2002) and Ed Wood (1994)
as some of the best films about filmmaking out there. If you enjoy writing and
would like to see all your struggles to get that script, book or play off the
ground represented in a film, then do yourself a favor and check this excellent
film out, the common man will be here when you get back.
Rating: 5 out of 5
