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.