After his first Broadway play has him heralded as a visionary, Barton Fink takes a job for a film studio in Los Angeles. Tasked with writing a wrestling film, Fink finds himself crippled by writer's block, and taunted by a lone mosquito. Stars John Tuturro, John Goodman, John Mahoney, and Tony Shaloub. Directed and written by the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan, and released in 1991.
Barton Fink starts out as a fairly straightforward film with a lot of elements that can be mistaken as autobiographical, but those suspicions are quickly dispelled when the movie starts getting weird and surreal in the second act. While I suppose it is a statement on the corrupting nature of Hollywood and the perils of working in a town where reality isn't all it seems to be, it's also an examination of the hypocrisy of artists who claim to speak for the "common man." Tuturro's Fink is inspired by an idea of the common man yet is all but entirely repulsed by the reality them. The movie is filled with characters only the Coens could produce, reads like some sort of historical fantasy, and is simultaneously chilling and funny. This was an excellent period in a series of excellent periods for the Coen Brothers.
No comments:
Post a Comment