The idiosyncracies of Joel and Ethan Coen are known at a glance, spotted from a distance, and as natural as childbirth. They rose from a murky first feature (Blood Simple) to refreshingly neurotic (Raising Arizona) before turning out one of the best noir films in history (Miller's Crossing). While working on Miller's Crossing, the brothers found themselves battling a creative block and, taking a title from a hotel location in Miller's Crossing, they attempted to make sense out of what was clearly a demoralizing ordeal.

To describe Barton Fink as lucid does much to dispel the eccentricities of the film. And yet, the lucidity is to be taken in stride with the eccentricities. In no small way, the Coens here have created a film in which the surreal and the painfully straightforward co-exist in a cunning way. If Miller's Crossing is to be named their first masterpiece (and some would quibble with the qualifier), then Barton Fink is the movie in which they solidified their brand of off-kilter humanity.

As perhaps the most verbose (in a metaphorical sense) of the Coen brothers' ouvre, summing the movie up in a few words is a daunting prospect. The plot is fairly simple:

Big splash Broadway writer Barton Fink (John Turturro) heads to Hollywood for the big money. He faces writer's block, grapples with a studio head (Michael Lerner) intent on channeling his highly-praised talents into a wrestling picture, meets a working class stiff (John Goodman) at his residency hotel, and becomes entangled with an admired novelist (John Mahoney) and his paramour (Judy Davis).

Simple, yes? But to truly understand the world of Barton Fink, it is necessary to understand the wellspring of its generation: Miller's Crossing. As the Coens are known for their frenetic inspiration in the course of making movies (Miller's Crossing begat Barton Fink; Hudsucker Proxy begat The Man Who Wasn't There), it is natural to work out where the inspiration first seeded. It is for this reason that an understanding of Miller's Crossing will act as a gateway into this film.

Where Miller's Crossing is a deft minimization of language in all characters, presenting one of the more interesting scripts this side of Mamet, Fink has a lethargic anti-flash to the language. Where Miller's Crossing had a witty, quick back and forth, Barton Fink lingers in the confines of what is not said, a place where the words leave room for wondering and the faces paint a clearer picture of what is meant to be picked up.

Look closer at Barton Fink and you'll find a movie obsessed with personifying sin. While Miller's Crossing coolly maneuvered the viewer through a world of sin without assigning any actual recognition of the sin (inherent in the film are moments that make you grin through the characters' casual acceptance of police raids and shootouts), Fink is obsessed with the shades of venality that sell the movie.

From the studio head as greed to his gluttonous assistant, straight up to the rage of Goodman's Charlie Meadows, each character seems intrinsically linked with sin. Fink the writer is a man who believes himself to be one of the vaunted definers of contemporary story, an intellectual who feels he speaks for the common man. As his interactions with Meadows prove, Fink is in fact quite remote and unable to actually relate to blue collar citizens. While insinuating that he has run from the hollow critical success of his talent on Broadway to the arms of Hollywood, we see a much clearer picture of a man obsessed with being obsessed about. The hurt in his facade is palpable when he is relegated to the wrestling picture, a task not worthy of the great mind he is sure he has. In short order, Fink is blocked utterly by his own untoward assignment, worshipfully enthralled with Hollywood novelist W.P. Mayhew, lustfully chasing Davis' Audrey Taylor, and punctuating his mournful, decaying hotel existence with tense conversations with rage personified, Meadows.

To say that this story meanders is not to do a disservice to the writers. On the contrary, they are to be applauded for the brilliant execution of the many layers they have added here. But to find a point to all of this, that's a bit harder. Barton finds himself out of luck on every front but now charged with a life he thought was over, carrying a box that just might contain a rather grim trophy and, eventually, entering the surreal paradise he has envisioned since his arrival at the hotel of disrepair.

And so we come, once again, to the idiosyncracies of the script. The Coen brothers have, from before this film and surely since, proven themselves to be an auteur force of off-kilter worldview. They show an amazing aptitude for becoming what they aspire to, whether it is the noir flair of Miller's Crossing or the slapstick triumph of Hudsucker Proxy or the sprawling details of Faulkner-aspiring Big Lebowski. To pinpoint the type of movie that Barton Fink became, now that's a task greater than I.

The colors in Fink are bi polar in many ways, much of the film taking place in the dank and deteriorating residency hotel that Fink calls home, only to be broken by the bright daytime of Hollywood in its heyday. As such, the atmosphere can move from depressing to menacing to disconcerting with each new scene. The direction is, of course, dynamic and interesting, eschewing the fluid motion of Miller's Crossing for a more sedate and steady look into the characters of the film.

After having swallowed the bittersweet taste of his exodus to Hollywood, Fink finds himself only marginally better off than when he set out. This may be the most damning indictment of the film, its contention that writing does not inform or enrich the life of the writer. Working off their own block to create a movie this...unique...stands as a testament to the amazing power of this duo and their singular vision has enriched the viewers for years and will surely continue to do so.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older