Barton Fink
Directed by Joel Coen
Written by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring John Turturro and John Goodman
Reviewed by Ulrike Erhardt
Barton Fink is all about heads. Heads that think, drink, feel superior or inferior and sometimes get chopped off.
But to make a short story long, Barton Fink (John Turturro) is a playwright who has written a hymn to the working-class man which made him an overnight success.
Not surprisingly, he is called to Hollywood, where he meets the mercurial head of Capitol Pictures and his bystander and is asked to write a wrestling movie.
After this encounter Barton is no longer sure whether he has done the right thing by leaving New York in the first place, but his nightmare has only begun.
Keen to identify with the working-class man, Barton has booked himself into a seedy hotel when a heat wave aggravates his writer's block. Feeling disturbed by all kind of noises, he complains to the management, which brings Charlie Meadows, an affable, talkative salesman around (John Goodman in his element but best known for being the co-star in the TV series Roseanne).
Charlie is the prototype of a working man, and Barton immediately thinks him inferior but still likes his presence as a welcome relief to his loneliness. Still, he keeps looking for his equal, another writer.
When he finds a William Faulkner look-alike, a hard-drinking southern novelist whose secretary is his lover and writes most of his stories too (delightfully played by Judy Davis), Barton feels drawn to this caring woman. When she decides to take Barton under her wing too, he is in for a major shock.
At the end of this witty dialogue movie, Barton Fink becomes somewhat less self-absorbed and changes his perception about himself and the people around him. He even dares to talk to a girl on the beach.
Barton Fink is a very human but not necessarily likeable character with an even stranger story. But the film's message, "to never judge a book by its cover", comes home loud and clear.
Cannes gave the Coen brothers, who produced, directed and wrote the film during their writers' block while working on Millers Crossing, the Palm d'Or for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (John Turturro). If you liked Blood Simple and Raising Arizona, done by the Coen brothers too, you will like Barton Fink.