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Summary: A word of warning for a few.
Review: Thinking of buying the Japanese region 2 DVD? Don't!--odds are you'll be disappointed. The picture is the worst I have seen in a DVD (topping the feculent [video quality of] Highlander: 10th Anniversary Director's Cut), so bad it makes the VHS seem reference-quality. Therefore buy the VHS and watch it over and over till the region 1 DVD is released (whenever that might be).
Rating: 
Summary: A helluva good movie
Review: There's a moment early on, in which the movie lays its cards firmly on the table. Barton Fink (Turturro) arrives at a Hollywood hotel, and rings the bell to summon the bellhop. The bell 's ring slowly fades, only it never stops. It seems like it's been ringing forever, and that it will continue on ad infinitum. The bellboy, Chet (Buscemi) arrives (through a trap door in the floor) several moments later, and casually gets the register ready. He then gently puts one finger on the bell, finally stopping the ring. I always found this to be a poetic, beautiful, and slightly unsettling sequence. It's the first click up the hill, in the rollercoaster of surrealism that this movie embodies.Turturro -- in the title role -- actually has the least showy part in the movie. Yes, he is a bundle of repressed energy (watch him go off, in his best Gene Wilder-style, during the USO Dance Hall scene), but he is also the normal man off whom the rest of the wacky cast gets to bounce. We've got John Goodman, who is a great common man, all pudge and sweat and plain-spokenness. My favourite of his lines, after a lengthy description by Barton of the boring state of contemporary theatre, he replies: "I can feel my butt getting sore already!" John Mahoney pulls of a great magic act, with his dual personality southern gentlemen writer/barfing drunk. Michael Lerner is frenetic as the manic studio boss, chomping all the scenery and generally having a grand old time. Also great are Richard Portnow and Christopher Murney as the cops who come to question Barton. They deliver their hard-boiled patter effortlessly. Judy Davis is also great here, but her character is actually more of a device than a role, for it is her relationship with Barton (and its shocking aftermath) that propels the film down an even weirder path. As for that weird path, well, I'm not going to try to understand it. It's just too weird. There are the obvious connotations (i.e., writer's block = hell on earth), but I assume the Coen's are giving us much more. Whatever it is, it is certainly beautiful and entertaining.
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Summary: The Coens' take on writer's block
Review: As challenging as the Coens are, their films all address basically the same central question: how does the individual choose his or her actions in a universe devoid of any intrinsic moral order? Having made that statement, I must admit Barton Fink is a little different. In one sense, it's a reflection on writers block, and how to get over it. But that's only the starting point. The most "introspective" of their movies, Barton Fink satirizes the Coen's own experiences as the most idiosyncratic moviemakers in Hollywood today and reveals what I assume to be a central conflict in their professional lives, between intellectual, democratic, high-mindedness and the amorality of actual experience (not to mention "taste"). Egoist Fink remains loyal to his intellectual principles, but can do nothing. Id-ist Muntz gives vent to every emotion and is capable of incredible violence. These two opposite aspects of a single personality are housed in the Hotel Earl, whose heat and decay reflect Barton's own. In the end, Barton is left with the detritus of his inability to listen to the other half of his being--in a box--while he sits at the beach unable to comprehend the advancing tide. PS In every Coen movie, you'll see at least one thing you've never seen in a film before: in this one, you and the camera will descend into a bathroom drainpipe.
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Summary: Genius Filmmaking
Review: The Cohen brothers are truly remarkable. I have loved all of their films(in particular Miller's Crossing)but Barton Fink just took first place. I watched this film years before but due to numerous distractions, I missed the majority of it. Recently, I had a chance to view it again. My god! This flick is one of the best films Ive ever seen, and I dont say that lightly. Turturro is particularly impressive as the title character, a playright turned screenwriter. John Goodman is sooooo freaking great, though. That guy is beyond anything I can sum up in under a hundred words. Many people whose opinions I respect, felt that this film was boring and "too silly." Well, it is a satire people, if you cant get that Im sorry! Check this flick out, or better yet, buy it from the good people at amazon. You wont be dissapointed.
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Summary: Fine Ensemble Cast
Review: Every now and the you see an old movie on TV--Hud--Hang Em High-etc. that stands up on its own through the sheer greatness of the actors. Barton Fink's story line is a bit too convoluted in allegory/symbolism. The cast, however, as in all Coen films, is top notch. John Mahoney, of "Fraiser" fame, as William Faulkner-incognito is worth the price of admission alone.
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Summary: If I close my eyes, I can still smell the wild oak
Review: This dark, symbolic and very funny movie brings to life the glory and grotesquerie of Hollywood's "Golden Era". It explores the way in which the formulaic demands of the Hollywood production line drained writers of their creativity, leaving them alienated from their roots and haunted by their own demons. The deep, passionate, violent Southerner Mayhew and the idealistic, impassioned, neurotic, self-righteous New York Jewish intellectual, Barton Fink may be cultural and literary opposites but each demonstrates the solipsistic tendencies of "serious" writers. In Barton's case, his inability to relate to real human beings rather than idealistic abstractions. In Mayhew's, his drunken brooding over lost youth and lost innocence. Both character demonstrate how, in their search for the meaning of life, artists can cut themselves off from life and lose the ability to communicate with their fellow man. Barton's self-imposed isolation in a seedy, claustrophobic hotel room mirrors Mayhew's imprisonment in alcohol and nostalgia. It is so easy to get trapped within oneself, to believe that by venturing out from the "life of the mind" into real life, we will be distracted from the Big Truth we seek. While Barton is paralyzed by writer's block, he is oblivious to the rich source of material offered by salesman Charlie Meadows ("Oh, I could tell you some stories"). Two of the delights of the movie are Tony Shalhoub as the dyspeptic producer Ben Geizler ("Writers come and go; we always need Indians.") and Michael Lerner as the grotesque studio mogul Jack Lipnick. These egomanical philistines care for nothing but profit but give the "common man" what he actually wants (Wallace Beery in tights. Jesse Ventura's recent political success shows not much has changed since 1940 in terms of popular taste) Barton Fink makes the same point as Preston Sturges' "Sullivan's Travels" in which the idealistic movie scriptwriter tries to make a film about social struggle for the "common man" but finds out that what the "common man" really wants is a Disney cartoon to take his mind off his own troubles. The Coens's forthcoming film, "Brother Where Art Thou?", is their homage to Sturges' movie. Barton Fink is a very funny, very dark film about the meaning of art. Do we seek enlightenment or escape through film, drama and literature? Does non-commercial art provide enlightenment, or does it ultimately lead down the road to solipsism and self-absorption?
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Summary: TALK ABOUT WRITER'S BLOCK!
Review: Nobody stares at a wall trying to ride out a bad case of "writer's block" better than John Turturro's character in "BARTON FINK." In what may be the most cerebral of the Coen pictures, "BARTON FINK" takes you inside the mind of the writer paralyzed by pressure to deliver a quality product on deadline. Like each Coen offering, this film also has a certain "feel" to it; we can enter at any point and know we are in Barton's world. His environment is one of pseudo- isolation. His sequestered hotel room is certainly no source of inspiration. Nor is his "appearances-can-be-deceiving" neighbor (John Goodman, in a superlative performance). Any venture outside this ensconcement is pure distraction and further separates Barton from his writing. Turturro is awesome in this picture, vacillating between indifference and concern for the people around him and authentically conveying the anguish of the idea-starved scribe. John Mahoney and Michael Lerner are splendid in their supporting roles. And there's the obligatory Steve Buscemi inclusion--this time, as a chatty clerk without much character enhancement. Through it all, we're rooting for this Fink guy to just get his act together and write something! How hard can it be? I liked the film's macabre ending, a fitting exclamation point on the page that, although blank, says a lot!
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Summary: the best coen brothers movie
Review: this movie starts out like a normal struggling-writer-goes-to-hollywood movie, but quickly gets bizarre. the whole time, the photography is great. the subtle dark comedy is hilarious. the ending is strange and fascinating. i'm still working on the film's theme, if it has one. i think the point is that the studio owner doesn't care about the common man but he gives him what he wants. whereas barton tries to figure out what the common man wants, but never gets it right. john goodman represents the common man who does things that may seem evil, but we can't judge him because we don't know what he's been through. is the woman's head in the box?
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Summary: An unseen side of the Coens
Review: Although this movie maybe a little slow to some, it is a surreal and symbolic masterpiece. Symbolism abounds and almost nothing is spared to present to deprsssion and dark undertones of the film. Truly beautiful. The brilliant aqspect of this film is that it is very enigmatic. By the end of the film, you are involved instead of being a passive consumer of the final product. In a day immersed in "sit and absorb" films, this is a precious rarity.
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Summary: A Possible Explanation?
Review: My interpretation of the symbolism within Barton Fink hinges on two key scenes. The first is when Mayhew hands Barton a copy of his book, "Nebuchadnezzar" with the inscription "May this little entertainment divert you in your sojourn amongst the Philistines". (The little entertainment refers to the film itself!). The second is the scene where Barton reads from the Book of Daniel in the Gideon Bible in his hotel room - the passage reads: "And the king, Nebuchadnezzar, answered and said to the Chaldeans, I recall not my dream,; if you will make known unto me my dream, and its interpretation, ye shall be cut in pieces, and of your tents shall be made a dunghill" I believe the story of Nebuchadnezzar explains the film: In 604 bc King Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, is said to have had a disturbing dream. So he called on his astrologers to interpret the dream. If they couldn't tell him the dream and its interpretation, they were to be killed. One of them Daniel, asks God for an interpretation and he goes back to Nebuchadnezzar to explain what God told him. He says that in Nebuchad's dream, God revealed the future of the nation of Israel, represented by a metal man. Five different parts of the metal man were made of five different metals, each representing a different Kingdom that would rule over Israel. Two of the component body parts described by Daniel are significant in terms of the symbolism within Barton Fink, the head and the feet. The head was said to represent Babylon which was the first nation to rule over Israel and the feet were said to represent the antichrist which would be the last to rule over Israel, a period that - significantly - would last for seven years ..... So here's my interpretation ........ The film is set in 1941, seven more years before the birth of the nation of the Israel, and the beginning of aggression between the US and Germany (or the rule of the antichrist according to the ancient scriptures and God's interpretation of Nebuchad's dream to Daniel). The Hotel does indeed represent Hell and the shoes in the corridor represent the feet of the metal man, i.e. the devil. Babylon is represented by Hollywood and Nebuchad is represented by the studio boss, Lipnik (the king of Babylon). He asks Barton (Daniel) to write a screenplay (interpret his dreams). Barton struggles to do so, whilst at the same time making a pact with the Antichrist (Charlie Meadows). Barton's typewriter is an Underwood (Underworld) model. He even wears the devil's shoes. Therefore, the film is a highly sophisticated allegory of the rise of the nation state of Israel, according to the prophecy given to Nebuchadnezzar by God. Barton is the prophet storyteller, representing the Jewish people and their struggle for truth, Audrey knows the truth of Babylon but she is murdered before she can tell Barton, Goodman represents the devil yet at the same time he is Barton's saviour (he releases him from being chained to the bed), the young woman looking out to sea on the beach at the end of the film represents hope and the future, and the eventual exodus to Israel. There is a stack of additional symbolism in this movie - I still haven't worked it all out. It is a superb film, but I get the feeling that the Coen brothers are having a bloody good laugh at our expense.
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