Skip to main content

Coen Brothers month: Barton Fink

 A review by Brooks Rich

This is the Coen's weirdest film hands down. It's a bizarre film about the struggles of the writer, set against an old Hollywood backdrop. This has always felt like an outlier in their filmography. There's not really another one of their films I can compare it to. It is the closest they have ever come to making a surreal horror film.

John Turturro plays the titular character, a successful New York playwright who in 1941 accepts a contract to write for a Hollywood studio. Barton moves to Los Angeles and checks into the Hotel Earle, a bizarre run down creepy hotel. There Barton meets his odd neighbor Charlie Meadows and suffers from writer's block as he struggles to write a wrestling picture. That's all I can about Barton Fink without spoiling it. 

Barton Fink is a film both about the struggles of the artist and what happens when an artist tries to change what they do. Barton's attempt to move from the stage to screen causes not only professional stress but personal as well. I guess Barton is having a midlife crisis in the film. Nothing is really black and white in this film. It's a baffling mix of horror, noir, and coming of age. Barton does go through a change throughout the film. What that change is and if it's a positive change is up to the audience to decide. 

This film is art directed to within an inch of its life. The set of the Hotel Earle is so strange that it almost feels like a different film whenever a scene takes place there. Outside of the hotel, Hollywood is bright and welcoming. Inside the hotel, it's dark and gloomy, with low light and noises echoing through the hotel. There are moments where the Coen's create a mood better suited for a horror film. The scene where Barton first hears Charlie is right out of a ghost story. 

This is will be the strangest film covered this month. The Coen's have even said that this film doesn't fit into a specific genre. It's closest genre is probably noir but even then it's not quite a film noir. Barton Fink is its own thing. I personally adore this film but I understand if it doesn't work for some people. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Forgotten Film Friday: Absolute Power

Clint Eastwood stars as Luther Whitney, a jewel thief who works in the Washington DC area. One night while he is stealing from a mansion he is forced to hide in a secret compartment with a two way mirror. From there he observes a sexual rezendevous with the wife of a powerful man and the President of the United States Alan Richmond (Gene Hackman) Suddenly the president gets aggressive and while defending herself the woman is shot to death by two Secret Service agents. Luther manages to get away with a letter opener the woman stabbed the president with. At first Luther plans to flee the country. But when he is disgusted by a statement the president makes, Luther decides to expose the crime. I miss these kind of films. The nineties was a great time for thrillers exactly like this. They are not the flashiest films but they are also not obsessed with big action scenes. It's all plot and character with them. Sure this plot might be a little out there but Eastwood makes it work. He's...
1 comment
Read more

John Candy month

 What can you say about John Candy? He was a comic genius who was taken from us too soon. There were a lot of comedic heavyweights of the eighties and nineties but Candy stood above most of them. If there is a Mount Rushmore of comedy I imagine John Candy would be on it. For the month of July we are honoring this comic genius. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Oscar bait month

 The Academy Awards. That time of the year when everyone debates what movies are truly the best and there is never a consensus and no one is ever happy. A movie can be incredibly popular and then it wins a bunch of Oscars and suddenly it's overrated and not very good or downright bad. It happens every year. But for the month of April let's take a look at those films that had Oscars on their mind and instead fell flat on their faces. Now Oscar Bait is a term that can also be applied to winners or films that did score a bunch of nominations. For example Bradley Cooper's film Maestro is very much an Oscar Bait movie even though it had a decent awards season. I want to talk about the films that did nothing. That were early contenders then either faded away eventually or just plain crashed and burned. Oscar Bait's biggest failures. What wrong here with these? Was the movie poor? Did something else just have a dominant run? Or were politics involved? Maybe all of the above. S...
Post a Comment
Read more