Barton Fink (1991) The Coen Brothers

Barton Fink (1991) The Coen Brothers

Coen Motifs:  Howling Fat Men: Charlie Meadows in the flaming Earle hallway  Blustery Titans: Jack Lipnik  Vomiting: Mayhew vomits, as does Charlie Meadows upon seeing Audrey  Violence: Audrey decapitated; Charlie Meadows with his shotgun; serial killing  Dreams: The whole film is dreamlike  Peculiar Haircuts: Barton’s absurd haircut  Lost Hats: None, but heads are lost (including Pete’s in a filmed but not included scene) The Coen Brothers From Tricia Cooke and William Preston Robertson. The Big Lebowski: The Making of a Coen Brothers Film. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998:

Barton Fink (1991) The Coen Brothers Clifford Odets ( )

Barton Fink (1991) The Coen Brothers

Barton Fink (1991) The Coen Brothers Louis B. Mayer ( )

The Coen Brothers William Faulkner( )

The Coen Brothers Roman Polanski (1933- ) Polanski was President of the jury at Cannes that awarded Barton the Palme d'Or.

The Coen Brothers “Fink, played with a likable, dim earnestness by John Turturro, checks into an eerie hotel that looks designed by Edward Hopper.”—Roger Ebert Edward Hopper, Office at Night (1940)

The Coen Brothers “Fink, played with a likable, dim earnestness by John Turturro, checks into an eerie hotel that looks designed by Edward Hopper.”—Roger Ebert Edward Hopper, Hotel Lobby (1943)

The Coen Brothers “Fink, played with a likable, dim earnestness by John Turturro, checks into an eerie hotel that looks designed by Edward Hopper.”—Roger Ebert Edward Hopper, New York Movie(1939)

The Coen Brothers The name of Barton’s new play, the opening night of which begins the film: Bare Ruined Choirs William Shakespeare Sonnet LXXIII That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

The Coen Brothers The Coens mean this aspect of the film, I think, to be read as an emblem of the rise of Nazism. They paint Fink as an ineffectual and impotent left-wing intellectual, who sells out while telling himself he is doing the right thing, who thinks he understands the "common man" but does not understand that, for many common men, fascism had a seductive appeal. Fink tries to write a wrestling picture and sleeps with the great writer's mistress, while the Holocaust approaches and the nice guy in the next room turns out to be a monster.—Roger Ebert

The Coen Brothers The story ends with a surprising coda in which Fink walks on the beach carrying the box. Like the box, the film is an enigma that elicits strong feelings. Though the Coens have clearly shared with Fink the temptation to betray their ideals in order to get the next word on paper, they are still more interested in provoking audiences than pandering to them. "Barton Fink" is stimulating entertainment, as rigorously challenging and painfully funny as anything the Coens have done. But it's necessary to meet the Coens halfway. If you don't, "Barton Fink" is an empty exercise that will bore you breathless. If you do, it's a comic nightmare that will stir your imagination like no film in years.—Peter Travers in Rolling Stone

The Coen Brothers The Minnesota-born Coens are most frequently hoisted on the petard of their own curriculum vitae. Joel Coen, 36, is a graduate of New York University's film school. Ethan Coen, 34, has a degree in philosophy from Princeton but shares his brother's lifelong obsession with genre movies. "Blood Simple" was their take on film noir, "Raising Arizona" the screwball comedy and "Miller's Crossing" the gangster epic. Coen bashers consider this raiding of Hollywood's past to be grounds for dismissing the brothers as clever showoffs trying to hide the emotional emptiness of their films.—Peter Travers in Rolling Stone

The Coen Brothers “When it's over, Barton Fink feels like a sophisticated joke you didn't get but laughed at anyway for fear of looking stupid.”—Desson Howe in The Washington Post

The Coen Brothers If the Coens are heavy on style, they weigh far lighter on substance. That picture of the beach girl, for instance, is given a deep significance at the movie's conclusion. But it feels more like a punchline for punchline's sake, a trumped-up coda. Things reach a definite high point -- an incendiary one at that. But it all adds up to something small. Like the mysterious, bound package Goodman gives Turturro (the contents are never revealed), the Coens isolate a small area of interest, bind it with psycho- atmospheric finesse, then wait for something significant to emerge. Even after a second viewing of this movie, it doesn't.—Desson Howe, The Washington Post

The Coen Brothers The winner of an unprecedented three prizes at the Cannes Film Festival this year, Barton Fink is certainly one of the year's best and most intriguing films. Though it defies genre, it seems to work best as a tart self-portrait, a screwball film noir that expresses the Coens' own alienation from Hollywood. A cineaste's landmark on a par with Blue Velvet, this is an experience to savor over and over. – Rita Kemply, Washington Post

The Coen Brothers Ethan: We wanted the audience to share the interior life of Barton Fink, and his point of view. But there's no need to go further. It would've been silly of he woke at the end into a larger reality than that of the movie. In the sense that it's always artificial to speak of the 'reality' of a fictional character, we didn't want people to think he was more 'real' than the story. --The Coen Brothers Interviews (49)

The Coen Brothers Joel: Ethan always described the hotel as a ghost ship set adrift, where you get indications of the presence of other passengers without ever seeing them. The only cue would be the shoes in the corridors. You can imagine it peopled with traveling salesmen who’ve had no success, with their sad sex lives, crying alone in the their rooms. --The Coen Brothers Interviews (52)

The Coen Brothers Joel: This was a simpler movie to make than Miller’s Crossing, and the budget was a third less, as was the shooting time: eight weeks instead of twelve. --The Coen Brothers Interviews (53)

The Coen Brothers Joel: [W]e knew that [Barton Fink] wasn’t going to be Terminator 2, you know? So we weren’t surprised that we’re not in twenty-two hundred theaters. --The Coen Brothers Interviews (58)

The Coen Brothers Joel: We got a letter from ASPCA on [Barton Fink], or some animal thing. They’d gotten hold of a copy of the script and wanted to know how we were going to treat the mosquitoes. I’m not kidding. It’s true. --The Coen Brothers Interviews (59)