Barton Fink

Posted by abby on February 13, 2011

“Barton Fink” is a Coen Brothers movie that doesn’t feel like a Coen Brothers movie. It’s got the trademark dark humor and odd characters, and uses most of their regular cast members (Steve Buscemi, John Goodman and John Turturro, among a smattering of other noticeable Coen favorites) but in most other ways, it feels like someone else’s work. I kept thinking of David Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch,” perhaps because of the similar aesthetic (but probably more so because both movies feature Judy Davis).

Barton Fink (Turturro) is an idealistic Arthur Miller-esque writer who wants to write theater for “the common man” in 1940s New York. At the beginning of the movie, his first play has opened to rave reviews. He’s the toast of the theater world. He receives an offer to write a screenplay for a Hollywood “boxing movie” for a nice fat sum, money that Barton’s agent assures him will allow him to keep writing all that “theater for the unwashed masses” stuff.  So, Barton heads to L.A. where he’s put up in a past-its-prime hotel with a friendly neighbor (John Goodman), and is left to stew over his screenplay.

Perhaps the weirdest bit about “Barton Fink” is how unfocused it seems. At times, it feels like a commentary on the creative process and the mind of creative types. At others, it’s a satire of slick Hollywood businessmen and the sellout writers they hire to write their scripts. Barton is entrusted to write a script for a movie he knows nothing about, other than it’s a “boxing picture”, and encouraged by the studio head to write something with a “Barton Fink feeling,” although the head himself hasn’t read anything Barton’s written. There’s also a hard-drinking, depressive southern writer, W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), an obvious parody of Tennessee Williams, who hates himself for working in such a low-culture industry.

And every now and again, there are little touches of Cronenbergian surrealism—gooey peeling wallpaper that leaves trails of paste on the wall, a mosquito that keeps biting Barton, despite the studio bosses’ claims that there are no mosquitoes in L.A., sexual encounters ending in frightening ways. And then there’s Goodman, the talkative “common man” neighbor who Barton would rather talk at than listen to—a habit that leads to some nasty consequences in the film’s frown-inducingly bizarre conclusion. It’s all fairly interesting, but none of it seems to cohere. What’s the message? What does it all represent?

“Barton Fink” is an ambitious movie that tries to tackle a lot of concepts, and perhaps that’s why it falls short. It’s about highfalutin writers who claim a desire to write in a realistic voice, but who won’t even listen to the people they claim to represent. It’s about Hollywood head honchos who bring in creative talents to work on movies, but only do so because they see dollar signs. And it’s about writer’s block. These feel like they should be compatible ideas, but when you try to jam them together with a compelling plot, they come out looking a little like jumbled patchwork than a full picture. “Barton Fink” isn’t an awful movie, but it’s far from brilliant.

The Verdict:

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