Review:
Barton Fink just has a major hit on Broadway and taking his agent’s advice to cash in on that, he moves to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter. But he wants to write about the common man and not be caught up in the artificial world of Tinseltown, so he stays at a common hotel and turns to his neighbour, who claims to sell insurance, for inspiration. The film, written by the Coen Brothers while struggling to finish the screenplay for Miller’s Crossing, is the darkest comedy imaginable about Hollywood, writing, the desire of an intellectual elite to not lose touch with reality, and especially the blindness for inspiration writers and other creative types can often suffer from. If you can connect to any of that, you will enjoy this film, if you cannot, you’d probably consider it boring.
Random Observations:
The film is set in 1941, but unlike in other Coen Brothers films, the specific setting doesn’t really feel necessary. It could really take place any time, even though Fink’s desire for stories about normal people instead of Kings and the like certainly has been fulfilled in the last six decades.
The funniest characters in the film are the bit players - studio mogul Michael Lerner, big-shot producer Tony Shalhoub and hotel page Steve Buscemi.
The film is also a quite gripping thriller, although that part didn’t really fit in with the overall tone for me.
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