Barton Fink

1991 • 116 minutes

About this movie

Barton Fink is a Broadway playwright lured to Hollywood with the promise of untold riches by a boorish studio chieftain.  Despising the film capital and everything it stands for, Fink comes down with an acute case of writer's block.  He is looked after by a secretary who has been acting as a ghost writer for an alcoholic screenwriter.  Also keeping tabs on Fink is a garrulous travelling salesman, the most likeable, stable character in the picture.  Then comes the plot twist to end all plot twists, which plunges Barton Fink into a surreal nightmare.  Once more, Joel and Ethan Coen serve up a smorgasbord of quirkiness and kinkiness, where nothing is what it seems and nothing turns out as planned.

Ratings and reviews

The Coen Bro strike movie gold with a surreal, Roman a' clef romp through old Hollywood populated by their typically vivid cast of characters. John Turturro portrays Barton Fink, a thinly-disguised version of Clifford Odets who's been lured to write a wrestling picture for a Louie B. Mayer-like studio head. Fink is constantly distracted, first becoming involved with the mistress of another scribe--a wailing drunk, based on William Faulkner, hilariously realized by the late John Mahoney. All the while, Fink is housed in a seedy hotel where his neighbor, an overwrought salesman(the brilliant John Goodman) bumps about his room at night further distracting Fink from his task of delivering a script. It may not sound like it, but the Coens fashion some fascinating stuff out of this concoction. Highly recommended.

Under-rated, but absolutely worth seeing. A very strange tale, and not the typical Coen bros. film, but fantastic nonetheless.

The movie is a little tricky to get into, but does leave the mind wondering.