BARTON FINK
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Very strange but supremely well-crafted film from Joel and Ethan Coen. The Coen Brothers have the best batting average in Hollywood. They have made four films and each of the four is highly recommended. During a bout of writer's block (which they obviously got over) writing MILLER'S CROSSING they wrote this strange film about a young playwright facing writer's block in Hollywood. Great performances, great photography, strange film. Rating: +3 (-4 to +4). (Spoiler follows the main body of this review.)
Joel and Ethan Coen have managed to do what no other American film makers have been able to do. Even Woody Allen turns out the occasional misfire. Allen is extremely creative and the really creative take chances. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. The Coen Brothers have made four films: BLOOD SIMPLE, RAISING ARIZONA, MILLER'S CROSSING, and now BARTON FINK. Each has been a totally original film and each has been spell- binding. They have made four winners out of four. If they made TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 6, every tuxedoed film critic in the country would be waiting in hushed excitement to see TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 6. Well, the concept of a chainsaw film at least sounds like it might have some action. But the idea of a comedy-drama about writer's block sounds like it is asking too much of even the Coen Brothers. What could be less cinematic than writer's block? It is something that is internal and creates no visual sparks for the viewer. Well, believe it or not, the Coen Brothers have made a fascinating and entertaining film about writer's block.
In the early 1940s, a great new social playwright, Barton Fink (played by John Turturro) has had his first play produced. It is a moving story about the sort of fishmongers he saw around his home on Fulton Street in New York. For a moment he has fame and that is just what he does not need. A Hollywood studio chief who has never seen his play wants the status of having Fink writing his pictures. With the force of big money he plucks Fink out of New York and lays him down in Hollywood. Fink has a tremendous fire in his belly to help humanity ("What do you do for a living?" "I try to make a difference."). But instead of a social drama he is given the task of writing a wrestling film for Wallace Beery, much like Clifford Odets wrote GOLDEN BOY.
Fink looks at Hollywood like a baby looking through the bars of a crib, with a combination of amazement and a lack of comprehension. It was as if he had suddenly been transported to another world. So that he will not lose touch with the common man he decides not to stay in glitzy Hollywood hotels, but at the economical and just slightly sleezy Hotel Earle. The Earle is just beginning to fall apart and boasts a staff that looks like the living dead. There in his room Fink sits trying to write a great film to make a difference for the common man--which will also be a wrestling picture for Wallace Beery.
One paragraph comes out of his typewriter and then nothing. His overwhelming drive to write is blocked by a symphony of minutiae. His room seems to become a living breathing creature. Some law of conservation maintains always exactly one mosquito in the room. The walls digest the glue that holds on the wallpaper. Then there is Charlie Meadows. John Goodman plays Charlie Meadows, who starts as a distraction, a noisy neighbor, and becomes Barton's only friend and confidante. Barton writes about the common man, but we get the feeling he has never really known one, in spite of his Fulton Street origins. Barton's play was literary and eloquent, but not very realistic. Charlie *is* the common man. The two make a stark contrast. Barton pulls everything he has inward in a tighter and tighter ball--even his hair seems tense. In contrast, Charlie lets everything out. He is outspoken; he oozes sweat and occasionally pus. His belly bulges and casually rolls out and over the top of his pants. And Barton is fascinated by the casual, unashamed animalness of his new friend. The scene shifts from his hours in the hotel trying to write and talking to Charlie to the weird alien world of the Hollywood studio. The studio life is back-stabbing politics (it is Barton's bad luck that the studio boss likes him, we are told and later come to believe). At the studio we meet weird people with whom Barton hilariously fails to connect. And Barton meets W. P. Mayhew, one of America's great writers, who has in recent years been sucked dry by Hollywood like a fly in a spider web. He meets and is attracted to Audrey Taylor, Mayhew's highly personal secretary. And thereby hangs a tale.
Many of the faces in BARTON FINK will be familiar to most viewers. Turturro is here in his second Coen Brothers film. His role as Bernie in their MILLER'S CROSSING will probably be the one for which he will be best remembered in years to come, though this performance probably equals that one. Another respected film maker, Spike Lee, has featured Turturro in no less than three films. John Goodman is also a repeat Coen Brothers actor, having played Gale Snopes in RAISING ARIZONA. He is, of course, well known for theater, film, and television work. Michael Lerner and John Polito (the latter of MILLER'S CROSSING) are incredibly boorish and weird as the studio chief and his favorite yes-man. Judy Davis of MY BRILLIANT CAREER, A PASSAGE TO INDIA, and the recent IMPROMPTU plays Audrey Taylor.
Coen Brothers' films are strong on good dialogue, but they also have a marvelous visual style that perfectly creates an atmosphere. As with MILLER'S CROSSING, their period feel in BARTON FINK is almost too rich to be believed. Here they bring us a sepia-toned 1940s worlds. The credits are shown over brown 1940s wallpaper that prepares us for the claustrophobic story to come. When we see the hotel room itself, it is decorated with perfectly placed slabs of light--sunlight reflected off dust in the air. It is a pleasure to watch a film as carefully crafted as this one. Peculiarly, there is one very bad continuity error and one it is hard to imagine was missed in the editing. Toward the end of the film we see a man in a military uniform. The ribbons on his chest seem securely in place and falling off in alternate shots. That one surprising fluff aside, this film is a visual marvel. Academy Awards are really deserved here.
BARTON FINK really is the best new film I have seen this year and well worth seeing. I give it a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
[Spoilers follow.]
My first reaction after seeing Barton Fink was that watching this film was like watching an expert gymnast on a trampoline who jumped just perfectly but came down wrong. When this story seems to be slowing down late in the film, it is only to allow it to make an acute left turn, one shockingly unexpected. On consideration, I think that is a sort of self- referential touch. The most common and banal of genres in Hollywood today is the psychotic killer film. BARTON FINK is a psycho-killer film as it would have been written by Barton Fink. Fink knew he was writing a wrestling film all along but kept the wrestling to a minimum and even then wanted to do a different take on wrestling. That is just what the Coen Brothers do with the psycho-killer plot. Alfred Hitchcock showed a psycho- killer film could become a genuine classic. It took the Coen Brothers to make one good enough to win the Golden Palm at Cannes.
Mark R. Leeper
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