Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Movie of the Month - Barton Fink

You have to love films that make you think and films that you can watch once, yet, will stay with you forever. The Coen Brothers are notorious for these films, but before Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country For Old Men, and so on, there was 1991's Barton Fink. The film is set in 1941 and stars John Turturro as Fink as a young hotshot New York City playwright who is hired to write scripts for a massive movie studio in Hollywood. He is put up at a dive hotel and has Charlie (John Goodman), an insurance salesman who living next door and escorting Fink into a world unknown, a world, of Hell. As Fink struggles to write a picture for the screen, he encounters all twists and turns in dealing with the Hollywood system and living in the gross hotel. The film is a very dark comedy and drama of a struggling writer but done in a way that only the Coen brothers could make. After it premiered at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, it swept every away it was nominated in and even winning the Palm d'Or award for best picture. While we wait for what the Coen Brothers have up their sleeve for their next project, the magic and wonderment of Barton Fink should never be forgotten.