Barton Fink

Barton Fink; satire / art-film, USA, 1991; D: Joel Coen, S: John Turturro, John Goodman, Michael Lerner, Judy Davis, John Mahoney, Tony Shalhoub, Jon Polito, Steve Buscemi

New York, early 1 9 4 0s. One famous Hollywood studio chief hires the young screenwriter Barton Fink to come to Hollywood and write a film script about a wrestler. But once there, in his new home, a hotel, Fink suddenly doesn't have any inspiration for such a B concept and just vegetates, while his cheerful neighbor Charlie often drops by. He meets Audrey and sleeps with her, but when he wakes up in the morning, he finds her murdered in his bed. It turns out Charlie is a serial killer. Fink then writes the script, but the chief doesn't like it, so he leaves to a beach.

Winner of several awards, "Barton Fink" is a rather stiff and uneven junction between thriller, drama and satire on Hollywood's screenwriters, whereas it even seems that the Coen brothers themselves had writer's block and decided to make a movie about it, in the metafilm manner of Fellini's "8 1/2". From every aspect of "Fink", it's obvious that the Coens are behind it, especially in their tremendous care for little stylish details, like a mosquito on a human skin; the bellboy (Steve Buscemi) placing his index finger on a ringing hotel bell to make it stop; or wallpaper hanging from a wall—whereas they sometimes deliciously spoof big Hollywood's treatment of small screenwriters ("The contents of your head are property of Capitol Pictures!")—but the thing simply isn't that funny, nor clear, nor enjoyable. Here, their emphasis lies in the strong mood and psychological observations that go to such measure that they completely control the reaction of the audience and take many functions—from a sustained display of grotesque problems that bug Fink and every other person, up to a cold portrait of our banal-dysfunctional society. Michael Lerner stands out as the hyperactive film studio executive, especially in the sequence where he chastizes Fink for his script: "They don't want to see a guy wrestling with his soul. Well, alright, a little bit for the critics...". Still, there is one big complaint: just like their title hero, they are slightly lacking true inspiration, and thus one irrelevant subplot stands out like a sore thumb (the serial killer subplot) since it was just shoehorned into the thin main storyline, resulting in a good, stylish film, but a one that has too much empty bizarreness and disparate elements which lead nowhere.

Grade:++