Starring: John Turturro, John Goodman, Michael Lerner
After scoring a big hit with his latest play, bookish writer
Barton Fink (Turturro) is offered work for a movie studio and is commissioned
to write a “wrestling picture”. Fink doesn’t know anything about the subject
and experiences writer’s block. Not even the advice of an alcoholic veteran
writer (John Mahoney) or Barton’s genial salesman neighbour (Goodman) can seem
to pull him from this slump.
When 1990’s Miller’s Crossing bombed at the box office (only
to be rediscovered as a classic), you couldn’t blame studios for being a little
gun-shy when it came to the Coen brothers. Perhaps the duo themselves had lost
confidence in their work (similar themes appear in this film) and whilst it
never gave the Coens a financial break, Barton Fink was at least a critical
improvement (until the aforementioned rediscovery
of Miller’s Crossing) for the Coen brothers and stands as a solid film in its
own right. Stylistically, Barton Fink seems to be a strange combination of a
Woody Allen comedy, strange surrealism and film noir, but lead John Turturro
(who had a supporting role in Miller’s Crossing) playing up Barton as a
world-class, slightly pretentious and very unlucky schmuck who’s given enough
life and personality thanks to the writing and acting to at least still make
him believable. All the supporting players do well in their roles but John
Goodman, after turning in a decent but unremarkable performance at first,
really comes through in the second half.
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