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Barton Fink [1991]


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

A darkly comic ride, this intense and original 1991 offering from the Coen brothers (Fargo, Blood Simple) gleefully attacks the Hollywood system and those who seek to sell out to it, portraying the writer's suffering as a loony vision of hell. John Turturro (Miller's Crossing, Jungle Fever) plays the title character, a pretentious left-wing writer from New York City who is brought to 1930s Hollywood to write a script for a wrestling movie for palooka actor Wallace Beery. Fink thinks the job is beneath him, but his desire for acceptance gets the better of him, and he suddenly finds himself holed up in a fleabag hotel in Los Angeles, where he is almost immediately afflicted with writer's block. Various distractions begin to enter his life, first in the form of a famous southern writer (John Mahoney) whom Fink idolises, and then his neighbour in the hotel, a seemingly amiable salesman played by John Goodman (Sea of Love, Raising Arizona). The writer turns out to be a self-loathing drunk whose secretary (Judy Davis) is the one actually doing the writing. And the neighbour, the working-class hero who Fink made his reputation writing about, may have a horrifying secret of his own. Equal parts social commentary and hilarious farce, and winner of the Best Picture, Actor, and Director prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, Barton Fink is a visionary and original comic masterpiece not to be missed. --Robert Lane


Amusing but slow and no logic
Review date: 2008-02-09 Rating: 6 out of 10

This is a movie with no logic and no coherent story. It has some very amusing angles and scenes but also a lot of dark, annoying and strange scenes. Overall there is no real story. Borrow it from a friend. I bought it but I am not sure I will keep it. It's a trash can potentiel.

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Reviews


So disappointing
Review date: 2007-11-22 Rating: 4 out of 10

I am a real Coen Brothers fan with Lebowski and Oh Brother in my Top 10 (Fargo only just missed the cut) but this was poor. If you follow a career of Genius then you can be forgiven the odd miss fire and this is one of those. All the usual ingredients but it just didn't work.

A wrestling picture...
Review date: 2007-08-22 Rating: 10 out of 10

This marvellous surreal movie from the Coen brothers centers around Barton Fink (John Turturro), a successful New York playwright who is lured to Hollywood with the prospect of big money and stardom. On arrival though he gets writers block and is unable to produce the screenplay for the wrestling picture that Jack Lipnick requires.

Lipnick as played by Michael Lerber is the classic studio boss taken to the extreme. Both terrifying in his power and very funny. A truly mesmerising performance by Lerner. However the cast are all excellent. John Mahoney is also great as W.P. Mayhew a famous Hollywood writer that Barton looks to for help. As it turns out he is a roaring drunk and his wife actually does most of the writing. The scenes involving Mayhew are hilarious. A lot of the time he is not even in shot but you can hear him screaming in the background (for example "Honey! Where's my honey?") as Barton tries to arrange a meeting with him through his wife.

And then there is John Goodman. He plays Charlie Meadows ostensibly an insurance salesman staying in a room near Barton in the same hotel. However Meadows is not what he seems, but I'll leave it up to you to decide what he really is..... Goodman as he was in The Big Lebowski is in scene stealing form.

So this is a typical Coen brothers movie, very funny in places, very weird in places, and overall superb.


excellent... gets better with each viewing.
Review date: 2007-08-08 Rating: 10 out of 10

Watching "Barton Fink" will be a torture if you don't like Coen Bros and their unique style of filmmaking: ironic, surrealistic and allegorical. Winner of 3 prizes at Cannes including the Palme D'or in 1991, Barton Fink is no exception at all, even it is the most eccentric and enigmatic work in their filmography. Here, don't expect "Big Lebowski" or "O' Brother Where Art Thou" type of dark comedy or "Blood Simple" or "Fargo" type of thriller. This is PROFOUND and UNUSUAL kinda movie. Challenging all available genres and defying a simple categorization, it is almost a comedy, almost a thriller, almost a horror, almost nothing...

Writing a script about a screenwriter by taking a satiric look at Hollywood seems a great Coenistic idea, just like their other brilliance, "Hudsucker Proxy". Set in early 1940s, the story centers around a commie writer's living Hell on Earth after being paralyzed by writer's block in a bizarre hotel room in California. He's a sinner and must be punished, because he let down the "common man". Instead of staying in NY and assisting the Theatre, he moved to Hollywood in order to make a buck by writing clichéd screenplays for B-grade wrestling flicks for greedy and blustery Hollywood hotshots. Yes, he's a sinner and must be condemned to Hell, Hotel Earle.

The film tries to find its own answer to this question: does any creative, non-commercial art like literature or drama provide individual and/or societal enlightenment, or does it produce entanglement ultimately leading to solipsism, egocentricity and self-absorption?

By doing this, the movie does a creative and unique study of human psyche, utilizing a rich array of symbols and metaphors we see nearly all Coen films: Oppressively hot atmosphere all along; Hotel Earle itself, wallpaper sweating off the wall, leaving a viscous ooze in its wake; endless, cavernous hallways; ventilators; cadaverous and pock-marked elevator man; mosquito bites; never opened mysterious box; hundreds of shoes put outside the doors in expectation of free shine offered by hotel; lots of oddballs, perfect dialogue and subtle humor. Highly recommended...

Enjoyable Early Coen Brothers
Review date: 2006-10-08 Rating: 8 out of 10

Barton Fink, the Coen Brothers' fourth film, won the Best Director and Golden Palm awards at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, as well as the Best Actor award for John Turturro. With an engaging script, great character performances by, among others, Turturro and Goodman, Barton Fink is funny and gripping in equal measure. Ethan Coen mused in an interview that this was "a buddy movie for the 1990s" [see www.coenbrothers.net/interviewbarton.html] but, like other films made by the Coen Brothers, Barton Fink cannot be neatly categorised and is a film of stark contrasts. Violent, yet humorous, this is a psycho-drama with a host of amusing and intriguing characters.

Barton Fink (Turturro) is a serious and critically-acclaimed playwright in 1940s New York. Having come to the attention of a Hollywood movie mogul, he is lured to Los Angeles to write for the movies. Finding himself contracted to write a "wrestling" film, Fink is tormented by writer's block and seeks help from another writer's secretary (Judy Davis). Lodged in the eerie Hotel Earle, with its dim lighting, peeling wallpaper and eccentric plumbing system, Fink also encounters his neighbour, insurance-seller Charlie Meadows (Goodman). Despite passionately espousing the virtues of theatre for and about "the common man", Fink's lack of interest in his neighbour's own stories about working life has disturbing consequences. It is the heightened drama in Fink's own life that finally gives him the impetus he needs to write again.

It is the Coen Brothers' characteristic wry, ironic sense of humour and quirky style, together with Turturro's intense brooding performance as Fink often captured in long takes and periods of silence, which makes watching this film a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
John Turturro
Judy Davis
John Goodman
Michael Lerner
John Mahoney

Creators:
John Goodman (Primary Contributor)
John Turturro (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Universal Pictures UK
Manufacturer: Universal Pictures UK
EAN: 5050582261219
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2005-10-31
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 112 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1991
Language: English (Original Language)

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