The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
There's a story about Martin Scorsese's beginnings in film that goes a little like this... Scorsese has just finished "Boxcar Bertha" and it's been a modest success. However, on showing it to his film school buddy John Cassevetes, the latter says it's completely impersonal souless. As a result Scorsese goes off and puts every atom of his being into writing and making "Mean Streets", rooting it in his own experiences. Scorcese was thereafter hailed as a cinematic luminary.
A criticism often levelled at the Coens is that there films are all technique and no heart. Although this is, for me, completely unjustified, "Barton Fink" is the most personal film that the Coens have made, and also one of the best. Like many of their films it had critics creaming themselves but climaxed prematurely at the cinemas. However, here more so than in any of their other films, you can see the film makers themselves in their characters and they openly admit to basing the film on their own experience of writers' block when writing "Miller's Crossing". "Barton Fink" is the complete Coen's package: technical flair, sharp dialogue, surreal characters and events, and dark, jet black humour.
It's basically the story, set in the 1940's, of the proletarian playwright, Barton Fink (John Turturro), who moves to Hollywood after the critical success of one of his plays. Here he is commissioned to write his first film by a mad studio exec, problem is it's a wrestling film and poor Barton begins to suffer an acute case of writer's block. This isn't helped by the fact that he's moved into the hotel from hell where nothing's quite right, and despite the help of his friendly neighbour Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) he cannot get that initial idea that will get his script going. Fortunately he meets fellow writer W.P. Mayhew whose lover-secretary inspires Barton to write his script. Then after a night of passion with said lover-secretary everything goes completely MENTAL. Yup, that's big ol' capitalised mental in only a way that a Coen brothers film can be.
Unlike the majority of the Coens' films this isn't a film noir; it certainly contains noirish elements but there's no detective work going on. This makes it substantially less complicated than films such as the "Big Lebowski" and "Millers Crossing" where the plot can get fiendish enough to require note-taking. Indeed the Coens themselves admit to getting lost when writing "Miller's Crossing" and it is from this experience that "Barton Fink" was born. Having suffered from dual writer's block the Coens stopped working on "Miller's Crossing" and moved on to "Barton Fink" instead - a film about writer's block - that they finished in three weeks. The similarities don't end there.. Barton is the successful playwright, who has written "Bare Ruined Choirs" a massively acclaimed play about the struggles of everyday fishmongers. The Coens were successful film makers who had written and directed "Blood Simple" and "Raising Arizona" by this point, both of which had been praised to high heaven by the critics. Both the Coens and Barton are Jews in Hollywood. And here we find the heart and soul of "Barton Fink", a character with a personal level for the Coens.
Like all of the Coen films "Barton Fink" is filled with eccentric, surreal characters. There's Jack Lipnick the studio exec who has wardrobe cook him up a colonel's costume in the penultimate scene, door-to-door insurance salesman Charlie Meadows who turns out to be Karl "Madman" Mundt, a psychopathic axe-murderer. There's W.P. Mayhew, played by John Mahoney, who is a dead ringer for alcoholic author-turned-Hollywood-script-writer, William Faulkner. And there's Barton himself, an increasingly deranged scriptwriter. Yes, for a Coens' film that's an inordinately small cast and that's why it stays relatively simple in plotting terms. However, with all Coens' films the plot is relatively banale when you remove the characters and that's because the Coens write character-driven films. The plot is designed to take us on a course through these characters. In many ways it's like "Apocalypse Now" in Hollywood, a journey through a sequence of unreal, nightmarish events. Like the Dude in "the Big Lebowski" Barton doesn't instigate events, they happen around him and drag him along. The aim of the plot is nothing more than to create this nightmare.
Barton's nightmare begins with the writer's block. He can only write the first few lines of his script:
"A tenement building on Manhatten's Lower East Side. Early
morning traffic is audible, as is the cry fishmongers."
The Coens even hint that Fink is incapable of writing anything else apart from the stories of fishmongers, whatever pretensions he has of being a writer who portrays the struggles of the Common Man. Indeed, it only takes a few minutes before the paragon of the Common Man, insurance salesman Charlie Meadows is sitting in his room
unable to tell any of his stories because Barton is too busy rambling about his vision of real theatre.
This raises lots of interesting questions about the film and this is one thing that some people hate about Coen films. They are just too enigmatic and the Coens themselves are loathe to admit that there's any undertones coursing beneath their films. Some people have suggested that the film is a Barton Fink nightmare, with his Common Man transmogrifying into a mass-murderer and the hotel becoming increasingly hellish. The film's strewn with throwaway suggestions: the liftman and Barton say six three times, if you believe IMDB, and the Hotel eventually eventually starts to smoulder and release fire from the walls. All this while America was days away from the Pearl Harbour attack, adding to the WWII implications of the film; the Jewish Barton is caught between a German and an Italian cop at one point who question him rudely and mock his Jewishness. Whilethese interpretations are all plausible, the Coens refuse to give you enough of a hint to substantiate them, nor will they recognise the interpretations themselves.
This might make you shake your fist angrily at the Coen brothers for being manipulating audiences, but it does give their films a lasting quality. At the end of "the Usual Suspects" you think oooh clever Verbal Kindt isn't cripple; at the end of "French Connection": wooo psychological dimension; "Fight Club": wowwww they're the same person. All the thinking is done for you. It's an easy-to-swallow ACME twist - guaranteed to make your film a critical success. So maybe the Coens do leave you to do all the legwork yourself, but it makes their films infinitely more satisfying than those mentioned above.
"Barton Fink" doesn't just have heart and soul though, it's a technically superior film. In purely technical terms the Coens make the best films of the 21st Century on a consistent basis. Most of the camerawork is unobtrusive, but they do have their visionary moments such as the track down a plughole in this film, an extremely difficult shot to do. The way they shoot films makes their plots more accessible, their dialogue more snappy and their films more successful. The cinema-going public might not appreciate the labours their films clearly show, but anyone who's watched enough films to get an idea what directors are doing behind the camera will see how ahead of the field the Coens are.
Of the Coen brothers films I've seen, "Barton Fink" certainly made me laugh the most, from the opening scene of the fishmongers play, to the closing shot where a bird drops dead out of the sky to ruin the tranquillity of the panoramic view of the sea. It's very dark, but it helps to keep the film interesting while it's moving at a slow enough pace to convey the writer's block that Barton is suffering from. There's also a lot of jokes designed for the second-time viewer who will see all the amusing pointers to the events to come, such as people talking about losing their heads... but I wouldn't want to spoil it for you...
"Barton Fink" is conclusive proof that the Coen brothers are at the forefront of contemporary cinema. It's funny; it's intelligent; it's personal and above all it has the most fantastically named lead character in recent years. If you want more proof of the film's brilliance then think to Cannes, the critics' film festival, where good films actually win the awards. "Barton Fink" won all three major awards: Best Actor for John Turturro, Best Director for Joel Coen and the Golden Palm (for the best film), which it won unanimously, a rare occurence at Cannes. The film picked up some Oscar nominations, which it didn't get, and it didn't perform at the box office, but that was their loss, don't let it be yours too.
"Barton Fink" is currently doing the rounds on Sky Cinema, just keep checking your TV listings and it'll be back on in a few weeks.
A criticism often levelled at the Coens is that there films are all technique and no heart. Although this is, for me, completely unjustified, "Barton Fink" is the most personal film that the Coens have made, and also one of the best. Like many of their films it had critics creaming themselves but climaxed prematurely at the cinemas. However, here more so than in any of their other films, you can see the film makers themselves in their characters and they openly admit to basing the film on their own experience of writers' block when writing "Miller's Crossing". "Barton Fink" is the complete Coen's package: technical flair, sharp dialogue, surreal characters and events, and dark, jet black humour.
It's basically the story, set in the 1940's, of the proletarian playwright, Barton Fink (John Turturro), who moves to Hollywood after the critical success of one of his plays. Here he is commissioned to write his first film by a mad studio exec, problem is it's a wrestling film and poor Barton begins to suffer an acute case of writer's block. This isn't helped by the fact that he's moved into the hotel from hell where nothing's quite right, and despite the help of his friendly neighbour Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) he cannot get that initial idea that will get his script going. Fortunately he meets fellow writer W.P. Mayhew whose lover-secretary inspires Barton to write his script. Then after a night of passion with said lover-secretary everything goes completely MENTAL. Yup, that's big ol' capitalised mental in only a way that a Coen brothers film can be.
Unlike the majority of the Coens' films this isn't a film noir; it certainly contains noirish elements but there's no detective work going on. This makes it substantially less complicated than films such as the "Big Lebowski" and "Millers Crossing" where the plot can get fiendish enough to require note-taking. Indeed the Coens themselves admit to getting lost when writing "Miller's Crossing" and it is from this experience that "Barton Fink" was born. Having suffered from dual writer's block the Coens stopped working on "Miller's Crossing" and moved on to "Barton Fink" instead - a film about writer's block - that they finished in three weeks. The similarities don't end there.. Barton is the successful playwright, who has written "Bare Ruined Choirs" a massively acclaimed play about the struggles of everyday fishmongers. The Coens were successful film makers who had written and directed "Blood Simple" and "Raising Arizona" by this point, both of which had been praised to high heaven by the critics. Both the Coens and Barton are Jews in Hollywood. And here we find the heart and soul of "Barton Fink", a character with a personal level for the Coens.
Like all of the Coen films "Barton Fink" is filled with eccentric, surreal characters. There's Jack Lipnick the studio exec who has wardrobe cook him up a colonel's costume in the penultimate scene, door-to-door insurance salesman Charlie Meadows who turns out to be Karl "Madman" Mundt, a psychopathic axe-murderer. There's W.P. Mayhew, played by John Mahoney, who is a dead ringer for alcoholic author-turned-Hollywood-script-writer, William Faulkner. And there's Barton himself, an increasingly deranged scriptwriter. Yes, for a Coens' film that's an inordinately small cast and that's why it stays relatively simple in plotting terms. However, with all Coens' films the plot is relatively banale when you remove the characters and that's because the Coens write character-driven films. The plot is designed to take us on a course through these characters. In many ways it's like "Apocalypse Now" in Hollywood, a journey through a sequence of unreal, nightmarish events. Like the Dude in "the Big Lebowski" Barton doesn't instigate events, they happen around him and drag him along. The aim of the plot is nothing more than to create this nightmare.
Barton's nightmare begins with the writer's block. He can only write the first few lines of his script:
"A tenement building on Manhatten's Lower East Side. Early
morning traffic is audible, as is the cry fishmongers."
The Coens even hint that Fink is incapable of writing anything else apart from the stories of fishmongers, whatever pretensions he has of being a writer who portrays the struggles of the Common Man. Indeed, it only takes a few minutes before the paragon of the Common Man, insurance salesman Charlie Meadows is sitting in his room
unable to tell any of his stories because Barton is too busy rambling about his vision of real theatre.
This raises lots of interesting questions about the film and this is one thing that some people hate about Coen films. They are just too enigmatic and the Coens themselves are loathe to admit that there's any undertones coursing beneath their films. Some people have suggested that the film is a Barton Fink nightmare, with his Common Man transmogrifying into a mass-murderer and the hotel becoming increasingly hellish. The film's strewn with throwaway suggestions: the liftman and Barton say six three times, if you believe IMDB, and the Hotel eventually eventually starts to smoulder and release fire from the walls. All this while America was days away from the Pearl Harbour attack, adding to the WWII implications of the film; the Jewish Barton is caught between a German and an Italian cop at one point who question him rudely and mock his Jewishness. Whilethese interpretations are all plausible, the Coens refuse to give you enough of a hint to substantiate them, nor will they recognise the interpretations themselves.
This might make you shake your fist angrily at the Coen brothers for being manipulating audiences, but it does give their films a lasting quality. At the end of "the Usual Suspects" you think oooh clever Verbal Kindt isn't cripple; at the end of "French Connection": wooo psychological dimension; "Fight Club": wowwww they're the same person. All the thinking is done for you. It's an easy-to-swallow ACME twist - guaranteed to make your film a critical success. So maybe the Coens do leave you to do all the legwork yourself, but it makes their films infinitely more satisfying than those mentioned above.
"Barton Fink" doesn't just have heart and soul though, it's a technically superior film. In purely technical terms the Coens make the best films of the 21st Century on a consistent basis. Most of the camerawork is unobtrusive, but they do have their visionary moments such as the track down a plughole in this film, an extremely difficult shot to do. The way they shoot films makes their plots more accessible, their dialogue more snappy and their films more successful. The cinema-going public might not appreciate the labours their films clearly show, but anyone who's watched enough films to get an idea what directors are doing behind the camera will see how ahead of the field the Coens are.
Of the Coen brothers films I've seen, "Barton Fink" certainly made me laugh the most, from the opening scene of the fishmongers play, to the closing shot where a bird drops dead out of the sky to ruin the tranquillity of the panoramic view of the sea. It's very dark, but it helps to keep the film interesting while it's moving at a slow enough pace to convey the writer's block that Barton is suffering from. There's also a lot of jokes designed for the second-time viewer who will see all the amusing pointers to the events to come, such as people talking about losing their heads... but I wouldn't want to spoil it for you...
"Barton Fink" is conclusive proof that the Coen brothers are at the forefront of contemporary cinema. It's funny; it's intelligent; it's personal and above all it has the most fantastically named lead character in recent years. If you want more proof of the film's brilliance then think to Cannes, the critics' film festival, where good films actually win the awards. "Barton Fink" won all three major awards: Best Actor for John Turturro, Best Director for Joel Coen and the Golden Palm (for the best film), which it won unanimously, a rare occurence at Cannes. The film picked up some Oscar nominations, which it didn't get, and it didn't perform at the box office, but that was their loss, don't let it be yours too.
"Barton Fink" is currently doing the rounds on Sky Cinema, just keep checking your TV listings and it'll be back on in a few weeks.
If you want to see a hilariously bad film then watch Deep Rising.
It is funny all the way through and the surf board bit at the end just puts you in hysterics! Oh...memories! :-D
It is funny all the way through and the surf board bit at the end just puts you in hysterics! Oh...memories! :-D
Same to anyone in fact, Grix, Mouldy Cheese, Vottantor. Mi subscription to sky es tu subscrition to sky.
It's definitely worth getting sky... you get Sky Premiers 1,2,3,4 and Wide Screen that show a load of good films, mostly recent though. You get Sky Moviemax 1,2,3,4 and 5 which show a load of bad action films that are frequently hilarious. I saw Simon Sez, starring Dennis Rodman the other day. It was brilliantly bad. And then you get Sky Cinema 1 and 2 which are always showing great films. They've had "Miller's Crossing" on in the past and now "Barton Fink" is coming into its stretch... That means that "the Hudsucker Proxy" will be coming soon and I can't wait...
Oh and you can filmFour + two other filmfours for an extra £5 a month if you want them. And FilmFour shows and funds brilliant films; although the other day I sort Notting Hill on the little info box and I wasn't too impressed.
Barton Fink rules... if you remind me the next time it's on I'd be happy to video it for you and send you copy.
Oh and you can filmFour + two other filmfours for an extra £5 a month if you want them. And FilmFour shows and funds brilliant films; although the other day I sort Notting Hill on the little info box and I wasn't too impressed.
Barton Fink rules... if you remind me the next time it's on I'd be happy to video it for you and send you copy.
Nice.
Big Lebroski [sp] is the only Coen's film I've seen. I shall try to redeem that.
Big Lebroski [sp] is the only Coen's film I've seen. I shall try to redeem that.
Well, luckily I've already seen Fight Club, Usual Suspects and French Connection (not that that one was ruined anyway).
I haven't seen Barton Fink though. I love Coen Brothers' films and I've wanted to see Barton Fink for quite some time now. So as you can imagine, when I saw a picture from it in my TV guide I was quite excited. However, as I went on to read the paragraph written about it, the dreaded words were seen.
SKY CINEMA
AAARRGGHHH!!! I want Sky so badly. But no, I'm stuck with terrestrial TV where little or no good films are shown. And when one that I do want to watch finally comes along (Air America - Robert Downey Jnr) it is cancelled.
Oh well, at least I've still got Papillon, Rollerball and Entrapment. Although no doubt Entrapment is crap.
Hey, this is Easter! Good films haev to be shown! :-D
I haven't seen Barton Fink though. I love Coen Brothers' films and I've wanted to see Barton Fink for quite some time now. So as you can imagine, when I saw a picture from it in my TV guide I was quite excited. However, as I went on to read the paragraph written about it, the dreaded words were seen.
SKY CINEMA
AAARRGGHHH!!! I want Sky so badly. But no, I'm stuck with terrestrial TV where little or no good films are shown. And when one that I do want to watch finally comes along (Air America - Robert Downey Jnr) it is cancelled.
Oh well, at least I've still got Papillon, Rollerball and Entrapment. Although no doubt Entrapment is crap.
Hey, this is Easter! Good films haev to be shown! :-D
Yeah, but I'll have to buy Barton Fink first. The Usual Suspects will wing its way to me on release day, thanks to SR.
Mouldy Cheese wrote:
> You just spoilt the ending of both The Usual Suspects and French
> Connection. Lucky I've already seen Fight Club.
Technically, "Psychological dimension" doesn't ruin the ending... and I thought that everyone had seen the Usual Suspects... but I didn't spoil that one too badly.
Look on the bright side there were no "Barton Fink" spoilers in there so you can watch that above all else unspoilt :-)
> You just spoilt the ending of both The Usual Suspects and French
> Connection. Lucky I've already seen Fight Club.
Technically, "Psychological dimension" doesn't ruin the ending... and I thought that everyone had seen the Usual Suspects... but I didn't spoil that one too badly.
Look on the bright side there were no "Barton Fink" spoilers in there so you can watch that above all else unspoilt :-)
They're the same person in Fight Club?
Damn you
Damn you
You funner.
You just spoilt the ending of both The Usual Suspects and French Connection. Lucky I've already seen Fight Club.
Put something saying 'SPOILERS FOR 3 GREAT FILMS THAT RELY ON THE TWIST AT THE END TO BE WORTH WATCHING' next time.
Moron.
You just spoilt the ending of both The Usual Suspects and French Connection. Lucky I've already seen Fight Club.
Put something saying 'SPOILERS FOR 3 GREAT FILMS THAT RELY ON THE TWIST AT THE END TO BE WORTH WATCHING' next time.
Moron.
There's a story about Martin Scorsese's beginnings in film that goes a little like this... Scorsese has just finished "Boxcar Bertha" and it's been a modest success. However, on showing it to his film school buddy John Cassevetes, the latter says it's completely impersonal souless. As a result Scorsese goes off and puts every atom of his being into writing and making "Mean Streets", rooting it in his own experiences. Scorcese was thereafter hailed as a cinematic luminary.
A criticism often levelled at the Coens is that there films are all technique and no heart. Although this is, for me, completely unjustified, "Barton Fink" is the most personal film that the Coens have made, and also one of the best. Like many of their films it had critics creaming themselves but climaxed prematurely at the cinemas. However, here more so than in any of their other films, you can see the film makers themselves in their characters and they openly admit to basing the film on their own experience of writers' block when writing "Miller's Crossing". "Barton Fink" is the complete Coen's package: technical flair, sharp dialogue, surreal characters and events, and dark, jet black humour.
It's basically the story, set in the 1940's, of the proletarian playwright, Barton Fink (John Turturro), who moves to Hollywood after the critical success of one of his plays. Here he is commissioned to write his first film by a mad studio exec, problem is it's a wrestling film and poor Barton begins to suffer an acute case of writer's block. This isn't helped by the fact that he's moved into the hotel from hell where nothing's quite right, and despite the help of his friendly neighbour Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) he cannot get that initial idea that will get his script going. Fortunately he meets fellow writer W.P. Mayhew whose lover-secretary inspires Barton to write his script. Then after a night of passion with said lover-secretary everything goes completely MENTAL. Yup, that's big ol' capitalised mental in only a way that a Coen brothers film can be.
Unlike the majority of the Coens' films this isn't a film noir; it certainly contains noirish elements but there's no detective work going on. This makes it substantially less complicated than films such as the "Big Lebowski" and "Millers Crossing" where the plot can get fiendish enough to require note-taking. Indeed the Coens themselves admit to getting lost when writing "Miller's Crossing" and it is from this experience that "Barton Fink" was born. Having suffered from dual writer's block the Coens stopped working on "Miller's Crossing" and moved on to "Barton Fink" instead - a film about writer's block - that they finished in three weeks. The similarities don't end there.. Barton is the successful playwright, who has written "Bare Ruined Choirs" a massively acclaimed play about the struggles of everyday fishmongers. The Coens were successful film makers who had written and directed "Blood Simple" and "Raising Arizona" by this point, both of which had been praised to high heaven by the critics. Both the Coens and Barton are Jews in Hollywood. And here we find the heart and soul of "Barton Fink", a character with a personal level for the Coens.
Like all of the Coen films "Barton Fink" is filled with eccentric, surreal characters. There's Jack Lipnick the studio exec who has wardrobe cook him up a colonel's costume in the penultimate scene, door-to-door insurance salesman Charlie Meadows who turns out to be Karl "Madman" Mundt, a psychopathic axe-murderer. There's W.P. Mayhew, played by John Mahoney, who is a dead ringer for alcoholic author-turned-Hollywood-script-writer, William Faulkner. And there's Barton himself, an increasingly deranged scriptwriter. Yes, for a Coens' film that's an inordinately small cast and that's why it stays relatively simple in plotting terms. However, with all Coens' films the plot is relatively banale when you remove the characters and that's because the Coens write character-driven films. The plot is designed to take us on a course through these characters. In many ways it's like "Apocalypse Now" in Hollywood, a journey through a sequence of unreal, nightmarish events. Like the Dude in "the Big Lebowski" Barton doesn't instigate events, they happen around him and drag him along. The aim of the plot is nothing more than to create this nightmare.
Barton's nightmare begins with the writer's block. He can only write the first few lines of his script:
"A tenement building on Manhatten's Lower East Side. Early
morning traffic is audible, as is the cry fishmongers."
The Coens even hint that Fink is incapable of writing anything else apart from the stories of fishmongers, whatever pretensions he has of being a writer who portrays the struggles of the Common Man. Indeed, it only takes a few minutes before the paragon of the Common Man, insurance salesman Charlie Meadows is sitting in his room
unable to tell any of his stories because Barton is too busy rambling about his vision of real theatre.
This raises lots of interesting questions about the film and this is one thing that some people hate about Coen films. They are just too enigmatic and the Coens themselves are loathe to admit that there's any undertones coursing beneath their films. Some people have suggested that the film is a Barton Fink nightmare, with his Common Man transmogrifying into a mass-murderer and the hotel becoming increasingly hellish. The film's strewn with throwaway suggestions: the liftman and Barton say six three times, if you believe IMDB, and the Hotel eventually eventually starts to smoulder and release fire from the walls. All this while America was days away from the Pearl Harbour attack, adding to the WWII implications of the film; the Jewish Barton is caught between a German and an Italian cop at one point who question him rudely and mock his Jewishness. Whilethese interpretations are all plausible, the Coens refuse to give you enough of a hint to substantiate them, nor will they recognise the interpretations themselves.
This might make you shake your fist angrily at the Coen brothers for being manipulating audiences, but it does give their films a lasting quality. At the end of "the Usual Suspects" you think oooh clever Verbal Kindt isn't cripple; at the end of "French Connection": wooo psychological dimension; "Fight Club": wowwww they're the same person. All the thinking is done for you. It's an easy-to-swallow ACME twist - guaranteed to make your film a critical success. So maybe the Coens do leave you to do all the legwork yourself, but it makes their films infinitely more satisfying than those mentioned above.
"Barton Fink" doesn't just have heart and soul though, it's a technically superior film. In purely technical terms the Coens make the best films of the 21st Century on a consistent basis. Most of the camerawork is unobtrusive, but they do have their visionary moments such as the track down a plughole in this film, an extremely difficult shot to do. The way they shoot films makes their plots more accessible, their dialogue more snappy and their films more successful. The cinema-going public might not appreciate the labours their films clearly show, but anyone who's watched enough films to get an idea what directors are doing behind the camera will see how ahead of the field the Coens are.
Of the Coen brothers films I've seen, "Barton Fink" certainly made me laugh the most, from the opening scene of the fishmongers play, to the closing shot where a bird drops dead out of the sky to ruin the tranquillity of the panoramic view of the sea. It's very dark, but it helps to keep the film interesting while it's moving at a slow enough pace to convey the writer's block that Barton is suffering from. There's also a lot of jokes designed for the second-time viewer who will see all the amusing pointers to the events to come, such as people talking about losing their heads... but I wouldn't want to spoil it for you...
"Barton Fink" is conclusive proof that the Coen brothers are at the forefront of contemporary cinema. It's funny; it's intelligent; it's personal and above all it has the most fantastically named lead character in recent years. If you want more proof of the film's brilliance then think to Cannes, the critics' film festival, where good films actually win the awards. "Barton Fink" won all three major awards: Best Actor for John Turturro, Best Director for Joel Coen and the Golden Palm (for the best film), which it won unanimously, a rare occurence at Cannes. The film picked up some Oscar nominations, which it didn't get, and it didn't perform at the box office, but that was their loss, don't let it be yours too.
"Barton Fink" is currently doing the rounds on Sky Cinema, just keep checking your TV listings and it'll be back on in a few weeks.
A criticism often levelled at the Coens is that there films are all technique and no heart. Although this is, for me, completely unjustified, "Barton Fink" is the most personal film that the Coens have made, and also one of the best. Like many of their films it had critics creaming themselves but climaxed prematurely at the cinemas. However, here more so than in any of their other films, you can see the film makers themselves in their characters and they openly admit to basing the film on their own experience of writers' block when writing "Miller's Crossing". "Barton Fink" is the complete Coen's package: technical flair, sharp dialogue, surreal characters and events, and dark, jet black humour.
It's basically the story, set in the 1940's, of the proletarian playwright, Barton Fink (John Turturro), who moves to Hollywood after the critical success of one of his plays. Here he is commissioned to write his first film by a mad studio exec, problem is it's a wrestling film and poor Barton begins to suffer an acute case of writer's block. This isn't helped by the fact that he's moved into the hotel from hell where nothing's quite right, and despite the help of his friendly neighbour Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) he cannot get that initial idea that will get his script going. Fortunately he meets fellow writer W.P. Mayhew whose lover-secretary inspires Barton to write his script. Then after a night of passion with said lover-secretary everything goes completely MENTAL. Yup, that's big ol' capitalised mental in only a way that a Coen brothers film can be.
Unlike the majority of the Coens' films this isn't a film noir; it certainly contains noirish elements but there's no detective work going on. This makes it substantially less complicated than films such as the "Big Lebowski" and "Millers Crossing" where the plot can get fiendish enough to require note-taking. Indeed the Coens themselves admit to getting lost when writing "Miller's Crossing" and it is from this experience that "Barton Fink" was born. Having suffered from dual writer's block the Coens stopped working on "Miller's Crossing" and moved on to "Barton Fink" instead - a film about writer's block - that they finished in three weeks. The similarities don't end there.. Barton is the successful playwright, who has written "Bare Ruined Choirs" a massively acclaimed play about the struggles of everyday fishmongers. The Coens were successful film makers who had written and directed "Blood Simple" and "Raising Arizona" by this point, both of which had been praised to high heaven by the critics. Both the Coens and Barton are Jews in Hollywood. And here we find the heart and soul of "Barton Fink", a character with a personal level for the Coens.
Like all of the Coen films "Barton Fink" is filled with eccentric, surreal characters. There's Jack Lipnick the studio exec who has wardrobe cook him up a colonel's costume in the penultimate scene, door-to-door insurance salesman Charlie Meadows who turns out to be Karl "Madman" Mundt, a psychopathic axe-murderer. There's W.P. Mayhew, played by John Mahoney, who is a dead ringer for alcoholic author-turned-Hollywood-script-writer, William Faulkner. And there's Barton himself, an increasingly deranged scriptwriter. Yes, for a Coens' film that's an inordinately small cast and that's why it stays relatively simple in plotting terms. However, with all Coens' films the plot is relatively banale when you remove the characters and that's because the Coens write character-driven films. The plot is designed to take us on a course through these characters. In many ways it's like "Apocalypse Now" in Hollywood, a journey through a sequence of unreal, nightmarish events. Like the Dude in "the Big Lebowski" Barton doesn't instigate events, they happen around him and drag him along. The aim of the plot is nothing more than to create this nightmare.
Barton's nightmare begins with the writer's block. He can only write the first few lines of his script:
"A tenement building on Manhatten's Lower East Side. Early
morning traffic is audible, as is the cry fishmongers."
The Coens even hint that Fink is incapable of writing anything else apart from the stories of fishmongers, whatever pretensions he has of being a writer who portrays the struggles of the Common Man. Indeed, it only takes a few minutes before the paragon of the Common Man, insurance salesman Charlie Meadows is sitting in his room
unable to tell any of his stories because Barton is too busy rambling about his vision of real theatre.
This raises lots of interesting questions about the film and this is one thing that some people hate about Coen films. They are just too enigmatic and the Coens themselves are loathe to admit that there's any undertones coursing beneath their films. Some people have suggested that the film is a Barton Fink nightmare, with his Common Man transmogrifying into a mass-murderer and the hotel becoming increasingly hellish. The film's strewn with throwaway suggestions: the liftman and Barton say six three times, if you believe IMDB, and the Hotel eventually eventually starts to smoulder and release fire from the walls. All this while America was days away from the Pearl Harbour attack, adding to the WWII implications of the film; the Jewish Barton is caught between a German and an Italian cop at one point who question him rudely and mock his Jewishness. Whilethese interpretations are all plausible, the Coens refuse to give you enough of a hint to substantiate them, nor will they recognise the interpretations themselves.
This might make you shake your fist angrily at the Coen brothers for being manipulating audiences, but it does give their films a lasting quality. At the end of "the Usual Suspects" you think oooh clever Verbal Kindt isn't cripple; at the end of "French Connection": wooo psychological dimension; "Fight Club": wowwww they're the same person. All the thinking is done for you. It's an easy-to-swallow ACME twist - guaranteed to make your film a critical success. So maybe the Coens do leave you to do all the legwork yourself, but it makes their films infinitely more satisfying than those mentioned above.
"Barton Fink" doesn't just have heart and soul though, it's a technically superior film. In purely technical terms the Coens make the best films of the 21st Century on a consistent basis. Most of the camerawork is unobtrusive, but they do have their visionary moments such as the track down a plughole in this film, an extremely difficult shot to do. The way they shoot films makes their plots more accessible, their dialogue more snappy and their films more successful. The cinema-going public might not appreciate the labours their films clearly show, but anyone who's watched enough films to get an idea what directors are doing behind the camera will see how ahead of the field the Coens are.
Of the Coen brothers films I've seen, "Barton Fink" certainly made me laugh the most, from the opening scene of the fishmongers play, to the closing shot where a bird drops dead out of the sky to ruin the tranquillity of the panoramic view of the sea. It's very dark, but it helps to keep the film interesting while it's moving at a slow enough pace to convey the writer's block that Barton is suffering from. There's also a lot of jokes designed for the second-time viewer who will see all the amusing pointers to the events to come, such as people talking about losing their heads... but I wouldn't want to spoil it for you...
"Barton Fink" is conclusive proof that the Coen brothers are at the forefront of contemporary cinema. It's funny; it's intelligent; it's personal and above all it has the most fantastically named lead character in recent years. If you want more proof of the film's brilliance then think to Cannes, the critics' film festival, where good films actually win the awards. "Barton Fink" won all three major awards: Best Actor for John Turturro, Best Director for Joel Coen and the Golden Palm (for the best film), which it won unanimously, a rare occurence at Cannes. The film picked up some Oscar nominations, which it didn't get, and it didn't perform at the box office, but that was their loss, don't let it be yours too.
"Barton Fink" is currently doing the rounds on Sky Cinema, just keep checking your TV listings and it'll be back on in a few weeks.