Joel & Ethan Coen
Barton Fink - E' Successo a Hollywood

1990. Los Angeles. The Coen brothers are grappling with the plot of Miller's Crossing but find themselves in a dramatic deadlock. The page remains completely blank for days and days, with neither able to come up with an idea to continue the story. Hence the decision to move to New York to take a break, and in the span of three weeks, almost like a catharsis, the script for another film, Barton Fink, is completed. Returning to Los Angeles, having completed and shot the film on hold, the Coens immediately begin working on the new script, which will come to light in 1991.

The peculiar genesis of the film is closely linked with its content. We are in the early ’40s, Barton Fink (John Turturro) is a young playwright who speaks for the common man and writes for the people, whose latest work has received excellent reviews. He moves from New York to Los Angeles to work as a screenwriter for the film industry. The first job he is commissioned is a simple B-movie about wrestling, but in the hotel room of the shabby hotel where Barton stays, he is stuck and cannot start the plot. The only people he interacts with are Audrey (Judy Davis), the secretary-lover of a writer much admired by Barton but now an alcoholic, and Charley (John Goodman), a robust and good-natured insurance salesman who lives in the room next to his. The only solace and mental escape in his gray life is the image of a woman on a beach hanging in front of his desk. As alienation and paranoia eat away at the writer's soul, a series of increasingly dramatic and unsettling events unfold: the heat literally melts the glue on the wallpaper, Audrey is mysteriously found dead after a night of love with Barton, and Charlie is not the man of the people Barton writes for but a dangerous serial killer, Karl Mundt.

In previous films, the Coens had accustomed us to bizarre plots, often very grotesque, but with this film, they take it to a higher level: the plot does not have a true conclusion, many events go unexplained (like Audrey’s death), many objects or environments are completely symbolic, and the final part of the film has a very Lynchian surreal tone (it's no coincidence that Barton’s hair resembles Henry Spencer from Eraserhead). With this film, the Coens offer us a reflection on the process of writing and the movie industry. At its base is the autobiographical theme: not only because Barton, like the Coens, is experiencing a block, but also because he transitions from "independent" art, the fruit of his genius, to the crushing logic and gears of the major studios, of which he becomes a prisoner. The brothers' satire is expressed in the image of Capitol boss Jack Lipnick, who lowers himself to kissing Barton's feet when he sees a profit, even for a poor film, but yells in his face for being just a scribbler when instead of a wrestling script he presents a masterpiece plot different from what was hoped for; another satirical figure is W.P. Mayhew, an alcoholic writer whose latest works are actually the work of his secretary.

In contrast to the lavish surroundings of Hollywood, we have the decaying hotel, shown as a sort of Hell right from the first images: the bellman Chet (another small cameo for Steve Buscemi) emerges from a trapdoor on the floor and is dressed entirely in red, not to mention the flames (symbolic because they do not burn or scare anyone) that envelop the hallway in the finale. The environment is almost an externalization of Charlie/Karl "Madman" Mundt's personality, infected like his ear (the choice of predominant colors of yellow and green is not accidental, but gives the viewer a tangible sensation of decay), moreover, as Barton notes, it always overheats in his presence. And so, if Barton is a God who creates masterpieces, Charlie/Karl is his antagonist, with whom he must confront and thanks to whom he can write his masterpiece. In the confrontation with Karl, however, Barton will emerge defeated because his desire to speak about common people clashes with his arrogance:

"I suffer from other people’s pain, I understand them, I know what happens when the mind goes up in smoke and chaos breaks out, you go through hell, I help people get out of it. You don’t listen! You think you understand pain, you think I’ve turned your life into a hell, take a look at this dump, you’re just a tourist with a typewriter, I live here."

But Hollywood's gears have already crushed the writer, who will find himself trapped in his fantasies, in a surreal ending that truly leaves one astounded.

Besides the astonishing performances of the two main actors, the direction is noteworthy, as it always alternates between solidity, meticulous attention to detail and virtuosic shots. Despite the slow pace and lack of fundamental events, the two-hour film captivates the viewer, entangling them in the story.

Although it won 3 awards at the Cannes Festival (best film, best director, and best actor), Coen fans are quite divided over the film's value, with some considering it the duo's masterpiece, while others dismiss it for excessive rhetoric and mannerist intellectualism. Personally, I consider it objectively a great film, but it's one of those that I appreciate less from the two directors. Moreover, the brothers themselves have hinted several times at the desire to film a sequel set in the '60s in the future; they are just waiting for John Turturro to age just right.

RATING = 7