Barton Fink [Blu-ray] [1991] [Region Free]

Watching "Barton Fink" will be a torture if you don't like Coen Bros and their unique style of filmmaking: ironic, surrealistic and allegorical. Winner of 3 prizes at Cannes including the Palme D'or in 1991, Barton Fink is no exception at all, even it is the most eccentric and enigmatic work in their filmography. Here, don't expect "Big Lebowski" or "O' Brother Where Art Thou" type of dark comedy or "Blood Simple" or "Fargo" type of thriller. This is PROFOUND and UNUSUAL kinda movie. Challenging all available genres and defying a simple categorization, it is almost a comedy, almost a thriller, almost a horror, almost nothing...

Writing a script about a screenwriter by taking a satiric look at Hollywood seems a great Coenistic idea, just like their other brilliance, "Hudsucker Proxy". Set in early 1940s, the story centers around a commie writer's living Hell on Earth after being paralyzed by writer's block in a bizarre hotel room in California. He's a sinner and must be punished, because he let down the "common man". Instead of staying in NY and assisting the Theatre, he moved to Hollywood in order to make a buck by writing clichéd screenplays for B-grade wrestling flicks for greedy and blustery Hollywood hotshots. Yes, he's a sinner and must be condemned to Hell, Hotel Earle.

The film tries to find its own answer to this question: does any creative, non-commercial art like literature or drama provide individual and/or societal enlightenment, or does it produce entanglement ultimately leading to solipsism, egocentricity and self-absorption?

By doing this, the movie does a creative and unique study of human psyche, utilizing a rich array of symbols and metaphors we see nearly all Coen films: Oppressively hot atmosphere all along; Hotel Earle itself, wallpaper sweating off the wall, leaving a viscous ooze in its wake; endless, cavernous hallways; ventilators; cadaverous and pock-marked elevator man; mosquito bites; never opened mysterious box; hundreds of shoes put outside the doors in expectation of free shine offered by hotel; lots of oddballs, perfect dialogue and subtle humor. Highly recommended...

This marvellous surreal movie from the Coen brothers centers around Barton Fink (John Turturro), a successful New York playwright who is lured to Hollywood with the prospect of big money and stardom. On arrival though he gets writers block and is unable to produce the screenplay for the wrestling picture that Jack Lipnick requires.

Lipnick as played by Michael Lerber is the classic studio boss taken to the extreme. Both terrifying in his power and very funny. A truly mesmerising performance by Lerner. However the cast are all excellent. John Mahoney is also great as W.P. Mayhew a famous Hollywood writer that Barton looks to for help. As it turns out he is a roaring drunk and his wife actually does most of the writing. The scenes involving Mayhew are hilarious. A lot of the time he is not even in shot but you can hear him screaming in the background (for example "Honey! Where's my honey?") as Barton tries to arrange a meeting with him through his wife.

And then there is John Goodman. He plays Charlie Meadows ostensibly an insurance salesman staying in a room near Barton in the same hotel. However Meadows is not what he seems, but I'll leave it up to you to decide what he really is..... Goodman as he was in The Big Lebowski is in scene stealing form.

So this is a typical Coen brothers movie, very funny in places, very weird in places, and overall superb.

Barton Fink, the Coen Brothers' fourth film, won the Best Director and Golden Palm awards at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, as well as the Best Actor award for John Turturro. With an engaging script, great character performances by, among others, Turturro and Goodman, Barton Fink is funny and gripping in equal measure. Ethan Coen mused in an interview that this was "a buddy movie for the 1990s" [see www.coenbrothers.net/interviewbarton.html] but, like other films made by the Coen Brothers, Barton Fink cannot be neatly categorised and is a film of stark contrasts. Violent, yet humorous, this is a psycho-drama with a host of amusing and intriguing characters.

Barton Fink (Turturro) is a serious and critically-acclaimed playwright in 1940s New York. Having come to the attention of a Hollywood movie mogul, he is lured to Los Angeles to write for the movies. Finding himself contracted to write a "wrestling" film, Fink is tormented by writer's block and seeks help from another writer's secretary (Judy Davis). Lodged in the eerie Hotel Earle, with its dim lighting, peeling wallpaper and eccentric plumbing system, Fink also encounters his neighbour, insurance-seller Charlie Meadows (Goodman). Despite passionately espousing the virtues of theatre for and about "the common man", Fink's lack of interest in his neighbour's own stories about working life has disturbing consequences. It is the heightened drama in Fink's own life that finally gives him the impetus he needs to write again.

It is the Coen Brothers' characteristic wry, ironic sense of humour and quirky style, together with Turturro's intense brooding performance as Fink often captured in long takes and periods of silence, which makes watching this film a thoroughly enjoyable experience.