That Barton Fink Feeling Turns 20

Michael checking in.

My first introduction to the brothers Coen was viewing Fargo on VHS at age 16 and nothing since that memorable night has been able to dislodge it as my favorite of their films, although a college-aged love affair with Milller’s Crossing came closest. But even as Marge and Jerry have remained secure on their pedestal, I have returned to none of the Coen brothers films more often than 1991's Barton Fink. Not even the compulsively rewatchable Big Lebowski has kept me coming back more consistently.

So as Barton Fink turns twenty years old (tomorrow), I wonder what it is about the Coen's Cannes-winning, surreal, showbiz fever dream keeps me so fascinated?

I certainly don’t return compulsively to solve mysteries of the story, that’s for sure. The Coens may plot their stories with a Swiss watch precision that suggests all the answers are there if you look hard enough, but the ambiguity the brothers place in their movies is deliberate, and not meant to be puzzled out to a solution. The Coens often feature unanswerable questions prominently in their stories. What did, after all, happen in the hotel room in No Country for Old Men where Javier Bardem seemed to vanish into thin air? What motivated Gabriel Byrne’s character in Miller’s Crossing? What was the meaning of the prologue in Serious Man? Or the epilogue in True Grit?

Written, the brothers say, as they struggled to untangle the plot of Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink is the story of a lefty playwright in the early forties who has one hit on Broadway and promptly goes to Hollywood to sell out only to find himself facing an epic case of writer’s block. Taken simply Fink would earn a place in the canon as one of the most wicked Hollywood satires ever put to film. But, as most everybody knows, Barton Fink cannot be taken simply. At the three quarters mark Fink takes one of the all time most jawdropping plunges into surreality, and audiences to this day are still trying to make sense of it all, from the contents of Barton's mystery box to the beach painting on his wall.

Barton Fink theories are numerous and fun and I could fill a book debating them all. The most obvious of course is that Barton is in Hell. The clues for supporting this range from obvious like the omnipresent heat to subtle like the repetition of the number six in the elevator. Once you start looking for clues you can find them everywhere. On my most recent viewing I just picked up on the suggestive names of wrestling pictures  - “Hell Ten Feet Squared” and “Devil on a Canvas”.

Do you see what happens Larry?"

Then there are the theories about Barton Fink being about the rise of fascism represented by Charlie Meadows with Barton as the intellectual too feeble to notice or stop it. The most glaring red flag in the movie is Goodman’s pronouncement of “Heil Hitler” before he kills one of the detectives which is certainly no accident. But if Goodman represents evil why does he kill the detectives who, with their noticeably German and Italian names, clearly represent the Axis powers? I for one have always read his delivery of "Heil Hitler" as sarcasm before killing the anti-semitic detective, but what does it matter? We should take a cue from the character in Serious Man and “embrace the mystery” or it will lead you in circles like walking an MC Escher staircase.

Once you give up trying to solve what needn’t be solved you can settle in and get the full Barton Fink experience. The film is genuinely hilarious and every word out of Michael Lerner’s mouth as the vulgar studio boss is solid gold. Fink also contains what I consider to be John Goodman’s all time best performance (I know that is saying a lot). Lerner got the nominatio but Goodman would have been my choice to win the trophy that year. And speaking of Oscars, when everyone was bemoaning that Roger Deakins lost an absurd ninth time this year for the cinematography of True Grit they might just as well added that it should have been his tenth, because he was royally screwed out of nod for Fink.

Or maybe you can just forget all that and just groove on all the endless supply of haunting, weird touches the Coens place in every scene of Fink, my favorite being the endlessly humming bell that Barton rings to summon Buscemi’s Chet from the Underworld. There is also the strange dying bird at the film’s end, which is supposedly  just a moment of happenstance caught on film, or the bizarre fact that it is clearly John Turtorro’s voice as one of the actors in the play that opens the film. What are we to make of that?

Slate magazine recently did a retrospective of the Coen’s body of work complete with a poll ranking the films. I was chagrinned but not surprised to see Barton Fink languishing in the lower half of the poll. This is always the way with the connoisseur’s choice. Barton Fink is the Coen’s in their purest most undiluted form, and film’s like that never win the popularity contest. They do however win the test of time as they draw audiences back over and over again to explore their depths.  

Complete the Sentences (Favorite Scenes)

My fav' scene in The Help is the one where ______. Best-in-show is totes  _________ .  

My fav' scene in Rise of the Planet of the Apes is _____________ .

The best scene in [insert favorite movie of 2011 thus far] is when _____________ . I want it to be nominated for ___ Oscars.

The best scene in [insert last movie you watched] is when _____________ .  

 Complete these sentences in the comments.
You know you want to!

Review: "Fright Night"

Colin Farrell has something of a wolf's reputation as a celebrity and it serves him well in Fright Night, a remake of the 1985 vampire comedy, while playing a shameless monster. Yet, for all his rabid dog violence as vampire Jerry -- "a terrible name for a vampire!" --  the most adorable moment in his performance is positively kittenish. While stepping around a beam of sunlight during one action setpiece he hisses at it with instinctual annoyance. You can't scare sunlight away, dumb Jerry! It's a silly bit of actorly business but the new Fright Night soars whenever the cast or director are having a bloody good time.  Good times at the movies are as infectious as vampirism, though thankfully more common.

READ THE REST AT TOWLEROAD

I'm eager to see the original now that I've seen this. (Yes, it's true. I never have)

Cinema de Gym: 'Minority Report'

Kurt here. (Surely many of you recall that Michael C. just recently offered an Unsung Heroes post on the Minority Report think tank, so allow me to pre-arrest myself and apologize in advance for the déjà vu.) Minority Report turned out to be a perfect movie to watch in my gym's cardio theater, each of us exercisers piloting our own personal machines like hovercraft-riding Spielbergian cops. Like most, I adore this film in all its blue-filtered beauty, and I'm happy to report that I was lucky enough to walk in for one of my favorite scenes: Tom Cruise's eye transplant surgery.

Surely the dirtiest segment of this very sterile sci-fi noir, the scene, which sees Peter Stormare's ex-con play doctor with Cruise's fugitive, John Anderton, is squirmingly tactile and visceral, greatly conveying the nightmarish ickiness of its atmosphere. Within the apartment unit, a setting of uglified modernity most evocative of Ridley Scott, the great Stormare enhances the dread tenfold with his mad-scientist line readings, which reveal that he was once arrested by John...for burning his patients. With that stirring revelation, we're invited to sit back and relax in the operating chair, seeing Stormare and his nurse – if I remember correctly – through John's eyes, which, y'know, are about to leave their sockets.

When John awakes, the nightmare continues, as the good doctor has playfully misled him as a means of mild, yet nonetheless grotesque, revenge. Blindfolded, and forbidden to remove his bandages lest he actually go blind, John has a string tied to each arm to lead him to the kitchen and bathroom, which – again, if memory serves – have been intentionally mixed-up. The new scene conjures a sort of schoolyard-bully terror, never greater than when John finally heads for the refrigerator. Reaching for the sandwich and milk his caretakers promised him, John instead grabs a brick of mold-covered grossness, and after spatting it out, attempts to wash out the taste with a big swig of green god-knows-what. Gaaahhh, I can feel the shivers now. It's such a repulsive moment, for which, of course, I tip my hat to Mr. Spielberg.

Minority Report supports one of my favorite Tom Cruise talking points, a theme that can be traced through much of his '00s filmography. To help boost John's post-op anonymity, Stormare's doc gives him an emergencies-only, taser-like device that, if zapped under the chin, will turn his face into an unrecognizable glob of Quasimodo skin-putty. If it hadn't been already, vanity was surely the Tom Cruise motif of the new millenium. Everything from the Mission: Impossible franchise to Valkyrie involved some degree of covering up or disfiguring Cruise's million-dollar mug, as if to say there was no greater sin or provocation in mainstream movies. Certainly, Cruise used it as a way to both be self-indulgent and shallowly work against his icon status, superficially striving for character-actordom by obstructing – or, god forbid, destructing – his pretty face. Minority Report came on the heels of Vanilla Sky, wherein this theory is surely most apparent, with Cruise Vanity essentially serving as its own subplot. What does it all mean? Ultimately, I prefer to think of it as eerie foreshadowing, an inundation of Cruise defacement amidst a career climax, after which his face would never be the same.

Conclusions?

1. Though not exactly one for always putting a distinct stamp on his work, Spielberg sure can draw you into the moment.
2. Though not exactly one for pushing the boundaries of foulness, Spielberg sure can gross you out good.
3. Though often reduced to a negative Russian stereotype, Stormare can bring a whole lot with very little.
4. Though his need to remind us did indeed grow tiresome, Cruise does have one killer face to deface.

If the '00s marked the era of Cruise vanity, which Cruise era are we in now?