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Barton Fink is the Coen Brothers' fourth feature film. After filming three excellent films, "Blood Labyrinth", "Raising Arizona", and "Miller's Crossroads", the film was a great success, and won three awards at the Cannes Film Festival that year, including the Palme d'Or, Best Director and Best Actor, which was a sensation. This also makes "Barton Fink" a representative work of the Coen brothers to the international film world.
But, like the Coen brothers' previous work Labyrinth of Blood, Barton Fink is full of absurd metaphors, seemingly hiding a philosophical core under its calm exterior, and the audiovisual language is plain and full of tension. When you first watch this film, it is inevitable that people will feel obscure. This also led to the film's box office failure.
This article will interpret this film from three aspects: film metaphor, character analysis, and practical significance, and unveil the amazing appearance under the mystery of this great work step by step.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > a metaphor for the film: weird and foggy</h1>
The film tells the story of a young writer, Barton Fink, who was invited to Hollywood to write a screenplay for a new play. Barton Fink was invited to write a film about wrestling, but he knew nothing about it and fell into a panic of having nothing to write about. After he checked into the hotel, a series of incomprehensible absurdities followed.
The film is filled with a large number of strange and strange images, strange hotels, crazy neighbors, and dropped wallpaper, which often make the audience feel a strange discomfort but do not know what its meaning is, affecting the judgment of the true value of the film.
In the film, the Il Hotel, where Barton Fink stays, is strange at the beginning. At the front desk of the hotel, the receptionist even mispronounced the local place name. The person in charge of the keys in the elevator also appeared numb and indifferent. This chilling environment contrasts with the fiery neighbors that will soon emerge, and it also indicates that Barton Fink is doomed to write a decent script in such a strange hotel.
Temperature in the movie is another metaphor. Constantly falling wallpaper, dripping sweat, and neighboring noises seriously affected Barton Fink's creation. The audience doesn't seem to be able to realize the connection between these points at the beginning of the film. However, as the film progresses, we can find that where there is a neighbor Charlie, there is an inexplicable high temperature. And after he disappeared, Patton Fink wrote in a fountain of thought. When he returned, it even caused a fire. This temperature anomaly allows the audience to understand the significance of Charlie, and begins to treat Patton and Charlie as two sides of the same coin in character analysis.
In a series of film reviews about the film, the hotel is also seen as Barton's own body, the corridor as an artery, the plumbing system as a system of excretion, and the sound of stomach peristalsis from the elevator as Charlie's interior. This is also evidence of Charlie's second self as Barton.
Another brooding metaphor in the film is Audrey's identity. Audrey, as the screenwriter Maysho's assistant, is also Mayhue's ghostwriter. When Audrey's identity is known to Patton, she embarks on a path of death. Audrey's death is also a turning point in Barton's screenwriting life, which was difficult to write before, and then it is like flying.
Viewers may see Audrey as the embodiment of inspiration that previously belonged to Maysho but was violently snatched by Patton. It was precisely because of this talent that Patton was able to write the script day and night.
This metaphor can also be proved by the mosquito in the movie poster, after Patton shoots audrey's mosquito, only to find audrey dead. Producers had previously thought that "this is the desert, so there are no mosquitoes in Los Angeles." This sentence mocks that Hollywood is actually a "cultural desert" and foreshadows Audrey's enlightening effect on Barton.
This change in the speed of the play began when Barton got the box that couldn't be opened. Although the box was never opened, we can guess that it was supposed to be Audrey's body. From the time he got the box to the end, Patton always kept it by his side, which is also a symbol of holding the "talent" tightly and not letting go.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > character profile: Barton Fink, one man with two sides</h1>
"Barton Fink" is a film that is virtual and real, and there are many scenes and characters that are imagined, but to understand this movie, it is also necessary to understand the absolute protagonist and "creator" of this movie, Barton Fink.
The film is dominated by fixed shots with fewer moving shots. Most of the activities also involved Barton's conversations with others. In addition, the film uses depth of field shots in the hotel, creating a deep and dim feeling in the long corridor, and the overall tone is also a sleepy and oppressive warm color. So the whole movie feels like Patton's personality: introverted, ineffable, ineffable and boring.
To understand Patton, you have to understand Charlie's appearance. Charlie is actually the other side of the two sides of Barton's unity. It is not uncommon for subconscious characters to appear in film history, and this method is commonly used in other suspense films such as Fight Club to reflect the state of consciousness of the protagonist.
We can find evidence of "subconsciousism" in many places in the film. For example, the introverted Patton was able to freely pour out his creative ideas after meeting Charlie; for example, in the submission, the producer mentioned that Patton's plays are all soul wrestling, and Patton and Charlie also have a "wrestling" in the movie. These echoing details all reflect the fictionality of Charlie as a person.
The immediate cause of Charlie's appearance is Patton's embarrassment, and when Patton is in the pain of not being able to deliver the manuscript, Charlie appears to soothe his body and mind and help him find a way to write. Charlie's first appearance is at the moment when Patton stares at the paintings for inspiration, and although Charlie and Patton are almost two people who are completely opposites, they get along very well, even wrestling intimately.
Through the tearing of Charlie and Patton, we can feel the pain and disapproval of Patton's own heart: he was originally just an unknown playwright, but he came to Hollywood because of an accident to create something he was not good at. Patton maintains a dull and calm image in the film, and the entanglement in his heart is manifested through Charlie.
In this film, John Tetoro's performance is also impressive. In previous films, she has tended to be Jewish or Italian in American cities. In this film, the excitement of a successful play, the pain of not being able to write a play, and the final relief are perfectly presented in an actor. This performance also earned him the Palme d'Or for Best Actor.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > realistic significance: film noir, mockery of reality</h1>
In the Coen brothers' films, there is no shortage of absurdity and mystery of film noir. His black style is not ostentatious and wild, nor bloody and violent, but has a unique charm in silence. In their first work, The Labyrinth of Blood, there is this elusive cinematic style. In this film, a hint of mockery of reality is added. Among them, the mockery of the obstruction of creation and the disappearance of inspiration is the most obvious.
The screenplay for Barton Fink took only three weeks to conceive, and before they could create the film, they had difficulty working on the screenplay Miller's Crossroads. The portrayal of the trapped screenwriter in the film is undoubtedly vivid: the pain of being urged by the producer, the depression of the script when the script is slow, are all presented in this film. I have to say that "Barton Fink" also looks like the Coen brothers' helpless self-deprecation about their current situation at that time. As Barton descended into pain, there seemed to be a burst of laughter coming from the next door of the room, and this laughter was also like the Coen brothers' ridicule of themselves.
On a deeper level, this film is a reflection and mockery of the film industry at that time. In the background of the film, Hollywood is in the stage of industrialization and needs to be able to make stereotyped films in large quantities. It was against this backdrop that Barton, despite being discovered by the producers, was still able to create some wrestling films without nutrition.
This was further verified by Audrey, whose job as a screenwriter was nothing more than an ordinary part of film industrialization. In the production of commercial films, it is impossible for screenwriters to create artistic scripts. At the end of the film, Patton's screenplay is also reprimanded by the producers and has to be swept away.
Therefore, the mockery of Hollywood's assembly-line industrial system is the core idea under the cloak of "Barton Fink". The painting hanging on the wall of the hotel is the creative environment that Barton most hopes to achieve. The scene is also presented in real form to Barton at the end of the film, which also shows that he has been freed from the Hollywood environment. Away from the noise and impetuosity of industrialization, and making art on the beach at the end of the film, this is also the true ideal of the Coen brothers.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks:</h1>
"Barton Fink" is undoubtedly a very magical film noir, especially at the end of the film, where Charlie runs through the fire, which is undoubtedly strange and inexplicable.
Although this obscurity led to the failure of the box office, this film is undoubtedly a very artistic masterpiece. The film depicts the ups and downs of a screenwriter's life, alludes to the chaos of industrialized films in a metaphorical way, and even contains his own life situation in the two-sidedness of the characters.
The film is a prophecy for the film itself, and although "Barton Fink" was a huge success at the film festival, it was pre-cooled at the North American box office, which is simply a realistic version of the film. It's a slap in the face to every worker in it — it's not a creative paradise.