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Rating:
A young, radical chic writer, slightly utopian, endowed with talent and airheaded, is in search of true success. Completely different from the vain, insipid success most people yearn for: made of loud applause, honeyed praise/criticism, and money galore. A writer, now universally acclaimed and revered on Broadway, is close to reaching his goal: to disdainfully reject earthly glory in an attempt to reveal to the entire theater world the fundamental importance of common stories, made by common people. And so Barton logically finds himself...
...in Hollywood!??
Writing an intense and profound film about wrestling. But not the usual B-movie. Never that. This masterpiece must have that Barton Fink touch, damn it. The producer reminds him affably, tossing him some ideas. Even better if this work ends with a sparkling fight of our hero born from a miserable childhood to redeem or a woman's love to conquer. Yes, basically, an orphan. A woman's love, maybe both: why not?
If we base it on the mere plot at ¾ of the film, one loses the compass, and in the convoluted finale, the viewer will furrow their brow and tilt their head like a dog watching its pondering owner. Two dimensions, dream/reality, seem to progressively mix and almost merge until the final leap into our Barton’s muse. A poorly painted piece of canvas. Despite the enigmatic, unsettling, and not at all resolving finale, the beauty of the shots will remain in the viewer's eyes. And then that editing so precise and satisfying, the scenography at the edge of maniacal in recreating 40's USA, the meticulous quality of the dialogues alternating with long silences and zooms, the contrast between the characters so antithetical and wonderfully played by John Turturro and John Goodman, the precious supporting cast and music in symbiosis with the film’s wavy rhythm.
Upon a second and then third viewing, the smoke cleared, and it seemed to me a partly autobiographical parody. The Coen brothers in '91 felt at the peak of their prowess after their first commendable works ("Blood Simple" for example) and very likely, much like Fink, would not have had trouble signing a nice contract with some major studios to sell out to the easier and more profitable cinema. Barton decides to stay in a once-known and respectable hotel. The ambiguous and sinister doorman (Steve Buscemi) emerging from a deep hatch, the perpetual heat that grips the rooms of the building, the elevator operator (much like a ferryman for lost souls in various circles) and the screams, the moans of the tenants all add up to make the hovel more a place to expiate sins rather than a hotel. Yes, hell. Because that’s how, with hints of black humor, we are painted the great chaotic, drunken, whoring, undulating, and unpredictable Hollywood like a rollercoaster. The furthest place possible from meritocracy: incapable of judging a masterpiece without the green tickets.
The situation Barton has gotten himself into is summarized with extraordinary mastery in a minute. We find him, the hatted protagonist, trying to write, looking to escape the deep hole he had incredibly sunk into; desperately/paradoxically seeking inspiration for an obscene B-movie whose plot could be written by a school kid. The frame widens and the wallpaper, placed above his bed, slowly unrolls with phlegmatic slowness. He watches it, almost puzzled and dazed, with mouth agape. He understands, or perhaps intuits, that it is nothing but his life. He jumps on the bed and with all the precision possible reattaches it. A palliative. He will prop it up. But it will fall again, as for all the damned tenants of the hotel.
Not their best work but, as often happens, gratifying and with brilliant insights. Not immediate, superbly performed by the two soloists and deserving of more viewings to fully appreciate and assimilate every single detail.
ilfreddo
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