Barton Fink | | Cast : | John Turturro, John Goodman | | Director : | Joel Coen, Ethan Coen | | Studio : | Twentieth Century Fox Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | January 01, 1991 | | DVD Released Date : | February 01, 2005 | | Language : | French (Dubbed), English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 09, 2005 | | Summary | A Bunch of Intersting characters Does Not Equal a Good Movie | Content
 | Do not be fooled by this movie. It pretends to be Deep, but it is far from having any depth whatsoever. The movie progresses well until halfway through the movie when suddenly a plot twist comes out of nowhere, and instead of developing some of the characters further, they get bumped off. How convenient. The writers obviously did not know how to end the movie and the audience is left with no resolution and no plot. It sets a bad precedent for future movies. It's not enough to be able to come up with a bunch of interesting, and bizarre, characters. There needs to be a plot, character development, and redemption or resolution, as well as foreshadowing if there is going to be a complete 180 degree turn in the plot. Otherwise, you are left with a movie with no meat on its bones, and no real point to watch. And I certainly do not enjoy being manipulated - I like a little "hmmmm, I wonder what's really going on..." and not something completely off the wall just because the writers have reached a stone wall and are throwing something in to pick up the plot..... Character develpoment is always much more better than a twist that makes no sense whatsoever.
Don't waste your time on this one. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 09, 2005 | | Summary | Ooh the Irony | Content
| This is a movie with a weak plot about a screenwriter who can't think of a plot. He thinks he's brilliant, but is reprimanded by a the owner of the film company for writing a screenplay so intellectual it will go over most people's heads. Such irony. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 28, 2005 | | Summary | More like a lifetime- and no wrestling movie! | Content
| Barton Fink is a newly successful Broadway playwright suckered into signing on as a Hollywood studio writer. His Louis B. Meyer/Sam Goldwyn composite executive orders him to produce the script for a "wrestling movie" with "that Barton Fink touch." The hapless playwright becomes a victim of writer's block and a huge old pile of a hotel which suggests you can stay "a day or a lifetime."
Therein lies the problem of this rather dry and dull film. It may only be a few hours long but it seems like a lifetime. In the lead, John Turturro is more annoying than sympathetic. Great small roles for John Goodman, Steve Bucemi, and Tony Shalhoub still fail to bring the dusty edifice to life. In fact, probably deliberately, the film has the oppressive darkness of that death's-antechamber-as-hotel in Bergman's 'Silence'.
Throughout this enigmatic and glacially-paced opus, we are never quite sure where reality lies. Great cinema or just pretentious and dull?
On the whole, Fink has moments. Michael Lerner is superb as the studio executive. The studio's boozy, wenching great-author-in-residence is a wonderful Faulkner send-up. But, the Coen brothers run hot and cold with their films and this one is not at the top of their list.
Other reviewers apparently disagree. They see genius where I saw only oppressive, ponderous plot. Maybe you need to decide for yourself. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 17, 2005 | | Summary | I'll Show You The Life of the Mind! | Content
| BF is my favorite Coen brothers movie, eclipsing their other classics - The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where art Thou, and Miller's Crossing. It is surrealism at its best, featuring stellar performances from Turturro, Goodman, and especially Michael Lerner, who plays Mr. Lipnick. BF is in many ways an indictment of the artist: the pompous screenwriter Barton romanticizes the idea of the "common man" but actually has very little in common with him; in fact, he is more or less trapped in his own mind, ultimately requiring horrific acts by a madman to finally break him out of his stupor. This is by far the most analyzed of the Coen's films, precisely because it is the most surreal and metaphorical. For complete enjoyment, it definitely requires a "mindful" viewer. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 06, 2005 | | Summary | Shrewd Moral Fable | Content
| An effete self-absorbed writer, Barton Fink, has a hedge-bush hairdo that recalls the nebbish protagonist from Eraserhead. Indeed, like Lynch's cult masterpiece, Barton Fink is a nightmare that studies the consequences of having no empathy. The dramatist turned screenwriter leaves New York for Los Angeles. He is hardly a sympathetic character. He spends his time pontificating about his mission to save the masses and to write about the "common man," but he is too full of himself to connect with anyone or produce any art that would touch the human condition. As a man who can not empathize or listen to others, he must pay the price, which is nothing short of descending into a partly self-created hell. In a shrewd touch, the film sets clues upon clues to amass a symbol dream narrative about the costs of not being able to listen to others. For example, we see Barton accidentally trading shoes with the gargantuan John Goodman who plays his neighbor Charlie at the hotel. The shoes, of course, represent the adage walking in a pair of someone's shoes to understand their condition.
Charlie is a mysterious character, unctuous, larger than life, earnest, in need of being loved, of telling his stories to anyone who will lend an ear, but his hotel neighbor Barton, too pompous to listen, insults Charlie with consequences that you'll have to see in the film.
Without giving away the plot, let me just say this film is a fable about the need to listen to the common man. It is also a film that skewers the quest for fame and money. The film has spiritual cousins, one being Mulholland Drive, another film about the tragedy that results from blind ambition and deals people make with the devil. |
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