The movie's abundant with dark (and disgusting!) Coen-isms: the curling wallpaper with a life of its own the infected pus that suddenly seeps from Goodman's ear the hotel service bell with a ring that never seems to die out. "Fink" is drawn with expert menace, as Turturro's deadline pressure mounts and Goodman's more disturbing side becomes apparent. He's exactly the kind of struggling common man Turturro pretentiously addresses his art to. But Turturro's most significant relationship is with hotel neighbor John Goodman, a bulky insurance salesman with boorish but endearing ways. He also encounters John Mahoney, a boozy, Faulknerian writer whose literary reputation is propped up by concubine and secretary Judy Davis. Mayer), his flunky Jon Polito and jaded producer Tony Shalhoub. Turturro's Hollywood experience includes amusing, ego-bruising conferences with Lerner (a dead ringer for Louis B. Turturro holes up in a seedy hotel only to find acute writer's block, his muse taunted by wallpaper that oozes gloop and a kitschy beach painting of a woman looking out to sea. But blustery studio head Michael Lerner commissions him to do a "wrestling picture" starring Wallace Beery. On the wave of a big Broadway success, the self-absorbed, socialistic writer thinks he can bring integrity to Babylon. What is it about, exactly? Set in 1941, it's a gradual descent into hell for Jewish playwright Barton Fink (Turturro), who answers the Mephistophelean call to write for Hollywood. Which may explain why it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, as well as best director and actor prizes for Joel Coen and John Turturro, respectively. Loaded with ominousness and allegorical attitude, it feels like a European vision of the ugly New World. The film displays the superb atmospheric abilities brotherly team Joel and Ethan Coen also brought to "Blood Simple," "Raising Arizona" and "Miller's Crossing." Did you miss something, you wonder, or is this movie really just about writer's block, Hollywood's philistine industry and the unfathomable menace of a certain Los Angeles hotel?īut if "Fink" lacks cumulative punch, its fighting power is a technical knockout. When it's over, "Barton Fink" feels like a sophisticated joke you didn't get but laughed at anyway for fear of looking stupid.
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