It is no surprise that with a Coen Brothers’ film that many idea ideas are turned on their head, and I’m not just talking about how some scenes are shot.
We, the audience are introduced to Barton Fink as a playwright, whose latest play is great success in New York City. He writes for the poor man, the hard working man, and also for his heart. So, does not think he is all that successful. He then gets an offer to write for the movies all the way over in Los Angeles. It this travel to this strange land, where are the typical conventions of the writer are turned on their head.
The first is that of writing as the triumph from the heart, this dramatic outpouring of the soul. The studio chief, Jack Lipnick even milks this trope so the Barton Fink will get writing. However, both Barton and the audience are quickly shown how much of a machine it can be to write for a movie studio. Of course, how it is represented is an exaggeration that is played up for some dark humor. Previous films we have watched have shown that less euphoric parts of writing with varied success, but here the writing takes over for him. Part of me just wanted him to B.S. something, because it seems the karmic laws of the movie’s world would have let him trip his way to success.
Also, despite the hard parts of being a writer in the other movies, there is not much respect to being a writer, or at least one in Hollywood, (at that time and I guess now too where the joke is that they are a dime-a-dozen and usually serving you food). The scene where he is dancing at the USO show shows a more contemporary albeit cynical view of writers. However, Barton is also stuck in his mind, and seemingly unaware of the upcoming World War.
This also leads to another exaggeration the movie makes. Most writers, though they occasionally have to seclude themselves to work, as least have ability to socialize even if only an eccentric crowd. Barton is trapped inside his own head, and his room as well with certain ideas of what it means to be a writer banging around. It is important to note that the people that are close to him show him that these ideals are often compromise. Audrey, who he begins to care a lot for is revealed to be a ghost writer for his hero, W.P. “Bill” Mayhew. Mayhew, who is supposedly based off of writers William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a hero who has fallen into alcoholism. Charlie, who is the common man who supposedly his inspiration, is someone he ignores with disastrous results.
One of the lines Charlie says, stuck out to me:
You think I made your life hell? Take a look around this dump. You’re just a tourist with a typewriter, Barton, I live here.
While it works on a literal level, if you think of Charlie as Barton’s muse/inspiration it says a lot more. Barton holds the common man to a romantic level that is not realistic. If Barton paid attention to the people he was writing about he would have known they are people like everyone else, or they can sometimes quite crazy. The movie seems to serve to slam down a lot of romantic notions of art, especially writing and have us laugh along the way. (This is of course what I expect from a movie full of slightly dark humor, which tends operate with rules opposite to romantic notions.) That isn’t to say that we shouldn’t not have ideals for art, but a lot of things could have been better for Barton if he played in the grey areas somewhat and compromised a little.
