It’s a bit hard to imagine a time when the Coens were not living legends and instead were precocious young filmmakers imagining any film they could. “Barton Fink” was their fourth film, and it’s tough to say which film really put them on the map.
This one won the Palme D’Or at Cannes. But it didn’t just win; it was selected unanimously. Seems like it would be a big stepping stone, but their debut “Blood Simple” was so riveting and classically good in its Americana thriller way that they already captured the attention of critics, and “Raising Arizona” became a cult comedy long before “The Big Lebowski” did. Then of course they made “Fargo” in ’96 and struck Oscar gold, and ever since they won their Oscar for “No Country for Old Men,” they’ve had the freedom to do whatever they want as bona-fide auteurs.
But “Barton Fink” is a pivotal film for them. It pairs them with legacy character actors of theirs, including John Turturro, John Goodman and Steve Buscemi. It depicts one of the best films about writing a screenplay since “Sunset Boulevard” by following the neurotic Jewish writer Barton Fink (Turturro) after the massive success of his first play on Broadway. He thinks he can radically change Broadway to be a place for the common man, and from these humble beginnings it evolves into a psychological thriller/dark comedy of sorts.
Leave it to the Coens to fiddle with genres, expectations and their own literary gift. The whole film seems to create an aura of unease around Barton. In shots just as simple as the aerial swivel over the hotel registry we feel nauseated, and it doesn’t help when we then step into the endless row of identical hotel rooms where apparently no one lives but somehow gets their shoes cleaned nightly.
They then use simple symbols to convey more of Fink’s downward spiral, first showing him trying to “fill the giant shoes” of his neighbor Charlie Meadows (Goodman), then following the camera directly down the sink drain, his career presumably going with it. It ends up being about how this character knows nothing, has no talent, has no ability to change anything and is simply left to admire the scenery.
There are some hilariously weird parts in the first half the film, one including the hotel clerk who makes very clear his name is Chet (there’s a scene where the clerk is coming up from an underground hatch to the front desk, and as he prepared to show his face, I was certain it could be none other than Buscemi and was pleased to be absolutely correct), then a quick-witted riot with Oscar nominee Michael Lerner as the studio executive and all topped off with Goodman’s too-good-to-be-true demeanor.
Then the film takes a surprisingly welcome left turn in the last 45 minutes or so, seemingly turning into a mind-bender without even trying. But it all ends wonderfully and is an excellent, if perhaps lesser known treasure in the Coens’s already rich canon.