Barton Fink (1991)

Directed by

Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Genre

drama film, comedy film, independent film, comedy drama, neo-noir, black comedy film

Country

United Kingdom, United States

Runtime

1h 56m

Rated

R

Rating

7.5 of 10 from 1,897 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A successful New York playwright in 1941 moves to Hollywood to write for a movie studio. He rents a run-down hotel room and struggles with writer's block while getting to know the odd insurance salesman next door.

cerebralunsettlingdarkly comicclaustrophobictensedreamlikeslow-burnmelancholic

What happens

Barton Fink is a 1991 American black comedy thriller film written, produced, edited and directed by the Coen brothers. Set in 1941, it stars John Turturro in the title role as a young New York City playwright who is hired to write scripts for a film studio in Hollywood, and John Goodman as Charlie Meadows, the insurance salesman who lives next door at the run-down Hotel Earle. The Coens wrote the screenplay for Barton Fink in three weeks while experiencing writer's block during the writing of Miller's Crossing. They began filming soon after Miller's Crossing was finished. The film is influenced by works of several earlier directors, particularly Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965) and The Tenant (1976). Barton Fink had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1991. In a rare sweep, it won the Palme d'Or as well as awards for Best Director and Best Actor (Turturro). Although the film was a box office bomb, only grossing $6 million against its $9 million budget, it received positive reviews and was nominated for three Academy Awards. Prominent themes of Barton Fink include the writing process; slavery and conditions of labor in creative industries; superficial distinctions between high culture and low culture; and the relationship of intellectuals with "the common man". The diverse elements of the film have led it to defy efforts at genre classification, with the work being variously referred to as a film noir, a horror film, a Künstlerroman, a postmodernist film and a buddy film. It contains various literary allusions and religious overtones, as well as references to many real-life people and events – most notably the writers Clifford Odets and William Faulkner, of whom the characters of Barton Fink and W. P. Mayhew, respectively, are often seen as fictional representations. Several features of the film's narrative, particularly an image of a woman at the beach which recurs throughout, have sparked much commentary, with the Coens acknowledging some intentional symbolic elements while denying an attempt to communicate any single message in the film. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

• Misery (1990)
• The Shining (1980)
• Heading Home (1991)
• Secret Friends (1991)
• Ferdydurke (1991)
• Naked Lunch (1991)
• Cape Fear (1991)
• The Prince of Tides (1991)