![]() However, it's also a particularly arch, cold and alienating piece that will turn off many audiences. As it goes on, the story turns increasingly darker, more metaphorical and surreal.īarton Fink is a complex, layered work from a pair of artists operating at the peak of their abilities. The film is also an examination of the writer's process with a back-handed dissection of the old "tortured artist" trope. More stellar supporting turns come from the likes of Tony Shalhoub, Judy Davis, Steve Buscemi and others. Michael Lerner gives a delightfully showboating performance as the blustery studio head who takes an uncharacteristic interest in Barton's work and demands immediate results. Also, if he ever paid attention to anything, he might notice that there's something very wrong about the guy.įor much of its running length, Barton Fink is a witty, biting satire of behind-the-scenes Hollywood. Further distractions come from an obnoxious hotel neighbor (John Goodman, never better) who would seem to be exactly the salt-of-the-earth that Barton claims to be writing for, if only Barton were capable of listening to another person or seeing beyond his own bullshit. His attempt to seek the assistance of a fellow writer he admires – a washed-up, alcoholic novelist played by John Mahoney channeling William Faulkner – bears little fruit. This wretched hovel soon becomes his own personal hell as Barton develops a crippling case of writer's block and is unable to complete his first assignment. So as not to be cut off from the lifeblood of the common folk he espouses so much love for, he refuses to stay in a writer's bungalow on the studio lot and instead takes up residence in a seedy, decaying hotel. Stifling his contempt for the base art form known as "the pictures," Barton heeds his agent's advice to move to Los Angeles and take a paying contract with a major Hollywood studio. He can speak for the average working class bloke on the street, but he certainly isn't going to be one. John Turturro stars as the title character, a pretentious New York playwright who fancies himself both the voice of the common man and a member of the rarified intellectual elite at the same time, so blinded by his own arrogance that he sees no contradiction in these two attitudes. The story is set in 1941, between World Wars. (That hairdo is pretty telling.) These things shouldn't work together, but the Coens have a strong vision that puts each puzzle piece in the right place. The characters patter as if in a Preston Sturges comedy, yet the hero winds up experiencing a closed-room psychological meltdown a la Roman Polanski with touches of horror surrealism by way of David Lynch. However, even more than their earlier works, this film is a mash-up of multiple disparate styles that might otherwise seem unresolvable when put together, but somehow coalesce into something decidedly the Coens' own. That's not to say that Barton Fink is without any obvious influences. ![]() That attitude started to change when their fourth film, Barton Fink, swept three top prizes (Best Director, Best Actor and the Palme d'Or) at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, finally entrenching the Coen brothers as genuine American auteurs. This complaint was unfair even at the time, but many critics of the day had trouble parsing the Coens' evolving style. For the most part, all of them were received well by critics, though often with a reservation that the brothers were more concerned with imitating the work of others than creating something original of their own. Their first three features were, respectively, a noir thriller, a screwball comedy and a period gangster drama. Early in their careers, Joel and Ethan Coen made a point of jumping from film genre to film genre, each different than the last but all inspired by classic Hollywood.
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