You're a Sick Fuck, Fink

Because of some traveling I'm behind on my continuing series on 1991 films.

I saw Barton Fink at an advance screening--I won free tickets from Vin Scelsa's radio program. It was at the Plaza Theater in the West 50s--a beautiful, old-fashioned stand alone that probably has seen the wrecking ball by now.

This was the fourth feature from the Coen Brothers, following Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, and Miller's Crossing, an uneven by highly entertaining trio. Barton Fink raised their game to a new level, I think, and paved the way for their apex, which was Fargo, five years later. Since then they'd show a steady falling off, as there last two pictures, Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, I didn't like at all.

Barton Fink tells the story of the title character, an intense young playwright, played as a Harold Lloyd doppelganger by John Turturro. He is seduced by Hollywood, and upon arrival meets the vulgar studio boss, Michael Lerner. He is then assigned to write a Wallace Beery wrestling picture, and attempts to work on it in a moldy old hotel staffed, it seems, by one person, the obsequious Chet, played by Steve Buscemi. His next-door neighbor, a garrulous salesman played by John Goodman, soon becomes a friend. He also meets one of his idols, a writer clearly modeled on William Faulkner, who is also toiling in Hollywood, but is now a hopeless drunk.

But Fink has no idea what to write. He writes plays about the human condition, and the studio wants generic swill. He labors in the creepy hotel (a hotel that seems to spring from the imagination of David Lynch), and soon becomes involved in a nightmare when a dead body shows up in his room. Soon he learns that Goodman's character has undiscovered depths.

Roger Ebert's review suggests that this film, which is set in 1941, is about the coming holocaust. I'm not sure the metaphor can be stretched that far. It certainly is about how Hollywood, or institutions like it, can crush the spirit. But Fink is not the ideal hero. He has pretensions about representing the common man, but has no interest in associating with them. He is uncomfortable, it seems, everywhere, including his own skin.

Of course, this film is full of the rich details that make the Coen Brothers films a treat, such as the patter emanating from Lerner and Tony Shalhoub as a producer, or the way Chet signs his name with an exclamation point, to the way the wallpaper sweats off the wall of Fink's hotel. It is a fine film, and I'm glad I reacquainted myself with it.