Barton Fink

Released 1991
Stars John Turturro, John Goodman, John Mahoney, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner, Jon Polito
Directed by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

"Barton Fink," the latest Coen film, tells the story of a man who would like to sell out to Hollywood, if only he had the talent. Barton Fink, played with a likable, dim earnestness by John Turturro, is a left-wing New York playwright, modeled on the Clifford Odets of "Waiting for Lefty," who writes one proletarian hand-wringer in the late 1930s and then is summoned to Hollywood, where Jack Lipnick (Lerner), the vulgarian in charge of Capitol Pictures, pays him piles of money and assigns him to write a wrestling picture for Wallace Beery.

Goodman, as the ordinary man, is revealed to have inhuman secrets, and the movie leads up to an apocalyptic vision of blood, flames and ruin, with Barton Fink unable to influence events with either his art or his strength. The Coens mean this aspect of the film, I think, to be read as an emblem of the rise of Nazism. They paint Fink as an ineffectual and impotent left-wing intellectual, who sells out while telling himself he is doing the right thing, who thinks he understands the "common man" but does not understand that, for many common men, fascism had a seductive appeal. Fink tries to write a wrestling picture and sleeps with the great writer's mistress, while the Holocaust approaches and the nice guy in the next room turns out to be a monster.

Summary by Roger Ebert

I'm not familiar with Clifford Odets, so I didn't catch all the historical references and the allegory about the Nazis. I could see Barton was one of the left-wing intellectuals from the 1930's, but to me the film is about his descent into hell. During the first half I thought it was a version of the Coen's idea of heaven, a place where the writer is worshipped above everyone else--even when he's a pretentious hack. Then in the second half, heaven turns into hell. There were signs of this in the beginning, like Barton's room being on the sixth floor and the elevator being covered in sixes (never a good sign), but I didn't want to read too much into it. However, I knew Charlie (John Goodman) was something evil, because the DVD menu shows him hollering while strolling through the burning corridor. I knew it was going to be a scene near the end, and it certainly ruined the surprise. I suppose they expected the viewer to have already seen the movie since it's over ten years old, but I've been waiting a long time for it to come out on DVD. I'd like to watch it again, because I would completely buy into the theme about hell, and it would take on new significance. As with all Coen efforts, it's darkly funny. My favorite line comes near the end when their true feelings about Hollywood are exposed, and Lipnick tells Barton, "you're not a writer--you're a write-off." That's a great line. --Bill Alward, October 26, 2003