"I'm a writer, you monsters! I create! I create for a living! I'm a creator! I am a creator!"
So whenever I watch a movie that I feel the urge to blog about right after it's finished, I usually restrain myself from doing so, and wait a day or two before starting the writing process. I do this make sure that I've had the possibility to think things over and get my head straight about my opinion and understanding of said movie, and as I'm sure most movie enthusiast will agree, distancing yourself from a film you've just seen like this, often makes you realise new things you hadn't though about before, and sometimes it even leads to the discoveries of entirely new layers, messages and plot points. Today, I'm gonna do the exact opposite, and give you the very first thought about Barton Fink that pops into my head, in order to spice things up a bit.
Barton Fink is from 1991 but takes place in the 1940's, and it stars John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis and Michael Lerner. Turturro play the titular Character of Barton Fink, a talented New York playwright who's brought to Hollywood to write for the movies, where he forms an interesting friendship with his next door neighbour Charlie, played by John Goodman. Fink is a lonely, frustrated and misunderstood man who truly believes in the craft and the art of writing, and he describes his work as being "for, about and by" the common man. He's extremely passionate about what he wants to write about, which is working class people and the everyday hardships that they suffer from, and if he doesn't like the final product he's created, not even the highest amount of praise or critical acclaim can change his mind about it. He moves to Hollywood in hopes of finding a better outlet for his creative frustrations, and is extremely perplexed and horrified to find out that Hollywood production companies and studios are even more superficial, money hungry and way less concerned about the art of their industry than his Broadway producers back in New York were.
As the movie gets going and as Fink's relationships to Charlie and the other different people he meets in Hollywood begin to unfold, a lot of slightly weird things begin to happen, and several interesting, provocative, eye-opening and jaw-dropping themes begin to show themselves. Barton Fink is a very abstract movie for sure, and it's very understandable to me why it's one the Coens' least publicly beloved movies to date. This doesn't mean that I think it's a bad movie though, as a matter of fact I absolutely loved almost everything about it, I'm just saying that nine out of ten people will find it weird, unrelatable and unrealistic. The plot might seem very straight forward for about an hour, but just about half way into the story, something extremely surprising happens, and everything you thought you knew about the plot and the characters gets completely thrown off kilter. From here on out the movie is almost unrecognisable, which is a very bold thing to do on behalf of the Coens, and I have to admit that it did take me out of the experience at first. I personally found the first half extremely well created and relatable, and to have that completely violated and messed with seemed very odd in the beginning. Once again though, another thing happens, and everything you though you knew about the reality that had just been changed, is thrown for yet another loop. It ended up working out very well in my opinion, but I do see how a lot people might find this structure very hard to keep up with.
I mentioned earlier that this movie deals with a lot of interesting themes, and by far the most interesting one of these is self-importance and the way it corrupts the human mind. In the first half of the movie, Fink is established as being a modest and good man, and the audience is supposed to think of him as being the only person from the movie-business who doesn't concern himself with fame, money and reputation. There are a lot of stereotypical Hollywood characters in this movie, characters who all seem so extremely over the top and unrealistically self-important that you can't help but absolutely loathing them, which only adds to the amount of pity that you feel towards Turturro's character. "What a great and humble man this Barton Fink is!" we think.
As the movie nears its end though, a few important event take place, which as I mentioned earlier means that a lot of the things you though you knew about the film changes completely. Seeing as I'm writing this just after having seen the movie for the first time and therefore haven't read up on any of this stuff, I could be completely wrong in what I'm about to say, but personally, I think that this movie's ultimate goal is to prove that things and people aren't always exactly the way they seem (Silencio!). People who seem like good, honest and loving characters on the outside might actually be something completely different on the inside, and vise versa. I'm not spoiling anything about any of the characters by saying this, cause the way the movie ends leaves everything completely open to interpretations like these, and you might end up understanding this movie in a completely different way than I did, which is an incredibly beautiful thing when you just thing about it.
Before I end this review, I have talk to about one the most important reasons behind why I enjoyed Barton Fink as much as I did. I've always known that John Goodman is a great actor, his memorable performances in several other Coen movies are proof of that, but I've personally never seen him shine as much as he did in role of Charlie Meadows. This character is much more important to the over all story of the movie and to Tuturro's character development than you might think, so much so that when the film was over and the credits started rolling, I felt like I had to rewind it a bit and watch a few of his scenes over again. When combined with the knowledge I had gained from watching the completion of the movie, the things I saw in these scenes where Charlie and Barton simply just talk together about nothing in particular, completely and utterly rocked my world. Not only is their back and forth dialogue extreme witty and well written, but the subtle hints towards the things that are going to take place later on are absolutely gorgeously interweaved into the things they talk about, which is largely due to Goodman's powerhouse performance. His understanding of his character's motivations and the situation he's in is nothing short of jaw dropping, and I'm sure my second viewing of this movie will be just as good as the first one, because of Goodman's performance's depth, importance and awareness of what's going on.
In the end, I have to admit that Barton Fink is on of the best "behind the scenes of Hollywood"-movie that I've ever seen, and it's definitely a strong contender for the title of my favourite Ceon brothers movie as well. There were only a few things about it that bothered me, one of them being my initial negative reaction to one of the film's many twists, which turned out not to be a very big problem at all anyway. Fink and Meadows are very interesting characters that I found incredibly multilayered and well acted as well, and the way Tuturro and Goodman tapped into these personalities and delivered the superbly written dialogue that the Coen brothers supplied them with is remarkable to say the least, and as a result, Barton Fink is a very well directed movie filled with interesting plot points, ideas and themes about greed, loneliness and ignorance. I'm very much looking forward to watching it again, that for sure. If you're a fan of the Coens and don't mind abstract movies that require a bit of thinking, I'd say that buying Barton Fink on BluRay is a very worthwhile investment. (5/6)
Barton Fink IMDb page here
Barton Fink trailer here
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