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Barton Fink
Stars:
John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis,
Michael Lerner, John Mahoney, Jon Polito, and Steve Buscemi
Writers:
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Director:
Joel Coen
Feature
length: 116 minutes
Extras:
Deleted Scenes, Still Gallery, and Trailers
Languages:
English Stereo Sound and French and Spanish Language Monaural Sound
Subtitles:
English Captions and Closed Captions and Spanish Language Subtitles
Packaging:
Amaray Keep Case
Chapter
Stops: 28
Sound:
Stereo and Monaural Sound
Year
of Theatrical Release: 1991/DVD Release: 2003
Theatrical
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox
Home
Video Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
MPAA
Rating: R
Reviewer:
Mark A. Rivera
Brilliant
and enigmatic, “Barton Fink” swept the 1991 Cannes Film Festival with the
coveted Palme d’Or, Best Director for Joel Coen, and Best Actor John Turturro.
The film is a metaphor and a half for the various levels of hell with Dante’s
Inferno being personified as the Hotel Earle, John Goodman as the Devil, and
John Turturro’s character of Barton Fink is the tourist who ends up being
trapped or as they say in the film, “On Contract.”
Barton
Fink is a successful NYC playwright who sees himself as a tool to communicate
the plight of the everyman, but the reality is that Barton would rather hear
himself talk, but tell you he’s a great listener so it is no surprised that he
allows himself to be lured by money and maybe even fame for serving as a
contract screenwriter for Capital Pictures with Michael Lerner in an Academy
Award® nominated performance doing a satirical impression of Louis B. Mayer,
the one-time king of MGM. Insisting on being put up in a crumbling hotel to stay
in touch with the proletariat, Barton finds himself in his own personal hell.
Within minutes of starting to write a screenplay about wrestling, Fink gets
writer’s block because he is a fraud. Not in the sense that he is an
untalented writer, but rather Barton is an embroiderer that is able to mimic
what he thinks is an altruistic ideal, but he is too self absorbed to truly feel
anything other than how it relates to his own ego.
The
Devil next door is John Goodman, who sells insurance and slowly strings Barton
along at first providing him with a companion, who Barton can observe and look
down on, but it is Goodman’s character who is the listener and picks his prey
out perfectly. Roping him in with a meager, but good-hearted demonstration of
wrestling, then when Barton gets into trouble, he is the one who appears to get
rid of the problem for him. Shortly thereafter Barton is able to knock out his
screenplay, but not until he becomes stuck in a hell where under contract, he
can write and is expected to write for his studio boss, but not one will ever be
produced, which for Barton is perhaps the ultimate damnation. He can create, but
no one will ever see it and contrary to whatever humility he has even fooled
himself into believing he has, Barton craves the spotlight otherwise he would
not have gone to Hollywood to begin with.
Other
dark places or levels in the inferno include the Writer’s Bungalow where one
of Barton idols, played by John Mahoney doing a character based loosely on
William Faulkner, is in a sense already damned and has long crawled inside a
bottle in a futile attempt at self medication and Judy Davis is the muse who
shares fates that appear intertwined with Barton’s and the true puppet master
of the film embodied in the that unassuming, but ultimately frightening
performance Goodman delivers. Like some personifications of the Devil in other
films, he bares certain resentment for being a misunderstood being in a Gnostic
sense, but ultimately never fails to collect his debts as one will see by the
film’s close. In fact with repeated viewing, the descent into the various
levels of hell including madness become quite apparent and if you disagree with
my analysis then explain the film’s last shot for yourself and watch that bird
flying over the shore suddenly takes a dive.
“Barton
Fink” is presented with a very nice anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) transfer
and a surprisingly discrete English Stereo Soundtrack. French and Spanish
Language Monaural Soundtracks are also encoded onto the DVD along with English
Captions and Closed Captions for the hearing impaired and Spanish Language
Subtitles as options.
Eight
deleted scenes are included and are presented in a manner where they are book
marked with black and white footage that appears in the film with the
color-deleted material sandwiched in between. These scenes can only be viewed
individually and are noted as “Richard and Poppy” (: 41), “ Garland’s
pitch on Hollywood” (3:25), “Desk Clerk Calls Barton” (1:17), “Barton
bonds with Charlie” (1:05), “Barton meets Mayhew” (: 43), “Sink
overflowing” (1:10), “Detectives are downstairs” (2:28), and “A note
under the door” (: 55).
A
still gallery of production photos and trailers for “Barton Fink,”
“Miller’s Crossing,” and “Raising Arizona” wraps up the extra features
on this DVD. The menus are well rendered and easy to navigate as well. “Barton
Fink” will debut on DVD-Video on Tuesday, May 20, 2003 from Twentieth Century
Fox Home Entertainment.
©
Copyright 2003 By Mark A. Rivera
All Rights Reserved.
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Barton Fink