Barton Fink (1991)
Country: US
Technical: col 116m
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cast: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Steve Buscemi
Synopsis:
A bleeding heart people's playwright with one Broadway success goes to work for a Hollywood studio to write a Wallace Beery wrestling picture, but his intellectual arrogance and self-absorption are unsuited to the people's medium.
Review:
Man with extravagant afro-quiff checks into deserted hotel and, suffering from writer's block, succumbs to a mental breakdown… In many ways the Coens' essay in horror resembles a cross between Eraserhead and The Shining, what with the oozing walls, drain shots and Goodman's phantom guest. However, this is also a gleeful portrait of early forties Hollywood, with its washed-up, soused-up writers (W. P. Mayhew - who else but William Faulkner?) and motor-mouthed, profane Kike moguls. That the two halves of this concoction, like Fink's wrestling script, never quite gel is both the point of the character's growing alienation, and the film's dramatic undoing (if Audrey is not a figment, then what of her murder?) It remains an entertaining exploration of the writer's experience, or even, in this case, the brothers' own very personal four-handed M.O.
Country: US
Technical: col 116m
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cast: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Steve Buscemi
Synopsis:
A bleeding heart people's playwright with one Broadway success goes to work for a Hollywood studio to write a Wallace Beery wrestling picture, but his intellectual arrogance and self-absorption are unsuited to the people's medium.
Review:
Man with extravagant afro-quiff checks into deserted hotel and, suffering from writer's block, succumbs to a mental breakdown… In many ways the Coens' essay in horror resembles a cross between Eraserhead and The Shining, what with the oozing walls, drain shots and Goodman's phantom guest. However, this is also a gleeful portrait of early forties Hollywood, with its washed-up, soused-up writers (W. P. Mayhew - who else but William Faulkner?) and motor-mouthed, profane Kike moguls. That the two halves of this concoction, like Fink's wrestling script, never quite gel is both the point of the character's growing alienation, and the film's dramatic undoing (if Audrey is not a figment, then what of her murder?) It remains an entertaining exploration of the writer's experience, or even, in this case, the brothers' own very personal four-handed M.O.
Country: US
Technical: col 116m
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cast: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Steve Buscemi
Synopsis:
A bleeding heart people's playwright with one Broadway success goes to work for a Hollywood studio to write a Wallace Beery wrestling picture, but his intellectual arrogance and self-absorption are unsuited to the people's medium.
Review:
Man with extravagant afro-quiff checks into deserted hotel and, suffering from writer's block, succumbs to a mental breakdown… In many ways the Coens' essay in horror resembles a cross between Eraserhead and The Shining, what with the oozing walls, drain shots and Goodman's phantom guest. However, this is also a gleeful portrait of early forties Hollywood, with its washed-up, soused-up writers (W. P. Mayhew - who else but William Faulkner?) and motor-mouthed, profane Kike moguls. That the two halves of this concoction, like Fink's wrestling script, never quite gel is both the point of the character's growing alienation, and the film's dramatic undoing (if Audrey is not a figment, then what of her murder?) It remains an entertaining exploration of the writer's experience, or even, in this case, the brothers' own very personal four-handed M.O.