When I saw "Barton Fink" back in 1992, I knew I was not a capable writer, let alone a writer at all. Who makes the assessment of who can actually write if not other writers? Thirty years later, I realize I write not with conviction but with purpose - writing film reviews is for leisure and not for any other reason. It is self-fulfilling. That is something that I think Barton Fink, a playwright, realizes. He is happy to make a buck and garner some applause but he does it because he wants his audience to see themselves in his characters; the common man as it were. If it makes him some money, great, and if not, that is fine too.
"Barton Fink" has World War II on the brink, set in the days of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Only Barton (a phenomenally strange and memorable performance by John Turturro) is not concerned with the war or politics. He has been recruited to work for Capitol Pictures and its studio chief, Lipnick (the boisterous, Oscar-nominated Michael Lerner), who wants him to write a wrestling picture with Wallace Beery and inject it with that Fink feeling. What is that Fink feeling? I am not sure even Lipnick knows ("the poetry of the street") - he wants a studio picture with the requisite expectations of any wrestling picture "with a little of the character wrestling with his soul for the critics." Except Barton is unable to write in his standard issue typewriter and can only muster an opening reference to the East Side tenements of New York. He may think that a run-down hotel with thin walls and wallpaper that doesn't stick, not to mention a seemingly creepy hotel bellboy named Chet (Steve Buscemi), will do the trick. The claustrophobic nature of the single room with a spring bed and mosquitos is not conducive to writing, only to some form of madness. Then there's Barton's next-door neighbor, Charlie (John Goodman), a traveling salesman, who may not know much but he "has plenty of stories" presumably about the common man.
"Barton Fink" has two worlds to explore - the unkempt fictitious L.A. hotel known as the Earle and the glamorous side of L.A. with bright swimming pools and sunlit offices where writers spend their time churning out scripts. What is fascinating about "Barton Fink" is that it makes casual mention of holding up writers in L.A. who want to share personal stories or make "personal" genre pieces yet they will never get made unless "they grow up." Barton could've stayed at a more expensive hotel but he prefers a place where the "common man" might stay. There is a hell of a demonic B-movie thriller he could write about based on what he endures in the last third of the movie but, instead, he figures out how to write this wrestling picture and give the studio "something beautiful." It doesn't work and he finds himself sitting in the beach with a box holding unknown contents and sees a beautiful girl in a bikini who could be in pictures. And there's Charlie, who is not at all what you might think he is - another creepily memorable character delivered with sting by John Goodman.
"Barton Fink" is my absolute favorite Coen Brothers film because it is about the writing process and how life experiences itself can shape a writer. Other than brief passages heard at the beginning and towards the end, we don't know if Barton is a good writer, a decent original playwright (despite being lauded as one in Broadway) or merely a serviceable writer who can't do much with mediocre material. Does he require the help of Audrey, the "secretary" of a famous writer who might be writing his stories (played by Judy Davis in another odd performance and her second one in the same year with "The Naked Lunch" which is also about a writer). Barton may be writing for the common man but he himself is anything but common. By the end of the film, I hope he decides to talk to that bikini girl. It is the only hope Barton has left out of his "common" existence.
