Product Details

• Actors: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner, John Mahoney
• Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
• Writers: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
• Producers: Ethan Coen, Ben Barenholtz, Bill Durkin, Graham Place
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo), French (Dolby Digital 1.0), Spanish (Dolby Digital 1.0)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: May 20, 2003
• Run Time: 116 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (136 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00008RH3J
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,715 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Barton Fink" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

A darkly comic ride, this intense and original 1991 offering from the Coen brothers (Fargo, Blood Simple) gleefully attacks the Hollywood system and those who seek to sell out to it, portraying the writer's suffering as a loony vision of hell. John Turturro (Miller's Crossing, Jungle Fever) plays the title character, a pretentious left-wing writer from New York City who is brought to 1930s Hollywood to write a script for a wrestling movie for palooka actor Wallace Beery. Fink thinks the job is beneath him, but his desire for acceptance gets the better of him, and he suddenly finds himself holed up in a fleabag hotel in Los Angeles, where he is almost immediately afflicted with writer's block. Various distractions begin to enter his life, first in the form of a famous southern writer (John Mahoney) whom Fink idolizes, and then his neighbor in the hotel, a seemingly amiable salesman played by John Goodman (Sea of Love, Raising Arizona). The writer turns out to be a self-loathing drunk whose secretary (Judy Davis) is the one actually doing the writing. And the neighbor, the working-class hero who Fink made his reputation writing about, may have a horrifying secret of his own. Equal parts social commentary and hilarious farce, and winner of the Best Picture, Actor, and Director prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, Barton Fink is a visionary and original comic masterpiece not to be missed. --Robert Lane

Product Description

Set in Hollywood during the 1940's, "Barton Fink" is a comic satire about creative egos, flashy moguls, a travelling salesman and a nasty case of writer's block. Barton Fink (John Turturro) is a New York playwright lured to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter. It doesn't take long for Barton's life to erupt in complete chaos. His studio boss orders the serious-minded Barton to write a low budget wrestling movie. Deeply disappointed, Barton returns to his seedy hotel, types one sentence and then¿ nothing. To make matters worse, he is continually interrupted by Charlie (John Goodman), a chatty travelling insurance salesman who lives next door. Eventually they become friends and Charlie tries to help Barton by teaching him the finer points of wrestling. As the clock ticks away and the temperature climbs, Barton becomes more desperate as his life spins out of control.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars GO WEST, YOUNG MAN..., September 20, 2003

By 

Lawyeraau (Balmoral Castle) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Barton Fink [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Welcome to the wonderfully wacky world of the Coen brothers. Joel and Ethan Coen are two of the most brilliant filmmakers in America today. Every film they turn out is a cinematic gem, and "Barton Fink" is no exception.

The film centers around a slightly pompous, idealistic, left wing playwright, Barton Fink (John Turturro), who in 1941, after becoming the toast of Broadway as the pretentious voice of the common man, goes west to Hollywood at the invitation of a major studio in order to try his hand at writing screenplays.

There, he meets studio head, Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner), and his yes man and whipping boy, Lou Breeze (Jon Polito). Asked to write a screenplay for a Wallace Beery vehicle about wrestling, a subject about which the bookish Fink knows nothing about, causes Fink to go into a professional tailspin.

Ensconced in a decaying old hotel, seemingly run by its slightly creepy and unctuous bell hop, Chet (Steve Buscemi), who bizarrely appears on the scene out of a trapdoor behind the hotel's front desk, Fink begins his ordeal . The elevator is run by a cadaverous, pock marked, elderly man. The corridors of the hotel seem endless. The wallpaper in Fink's room is peeling away from the wall, leaving a viscous, damp ooze in its wake. His bed creaks and groans with a life of its own. It is also hot, oppressively hot.

No residents of the hotel are apparent, except for the appearance of shoes outside the doors in expectation of the free shoe shine the hotel offers its denizens and for the noise made by his neighbors. Finks meets one of his neighbors, the portly Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), a gregarious Everyman, possessed of an abundance of bonhomie. A self-styled insurance salesman, Charlie cajoles Fink out of his shell, befriending him in the process. Little does Fink know that beneath Charlie's congenial exterior lies a horrific secret that will spillover onto him in the not so distant future.

At a luncheon with studio under boss, Ben Geisler (Tony Shalhoub), Fink meets a famous writer that he reveres, W. P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), a southern sot so steeped in drink that his companion/secretary, Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis), has to do his writing for him. Fink falls for Audrey but finds his overtures rebuffed. Still, she is willing to try and help him overcome his profound writer's block. In a classic Coen twist, it is this single act of kindness that acts as the catalyst for the nightmare that makes Fink's life become a living hell on earth. He goes from living a life of self-imposed isolation and angst to one that appears to have been created by a Hollywood hack, filled as it is with the most incredible situations, a real studio head's dream.

John Turturro is terrific as the introverted, tightly wound, pretentious, and neurotic Fink, who in Hollywood, away from the womb of the Great White Way, is like a lamb led to the slaughter. With his sculpted afro, horn rimmed glasses, nerdy clothes, Fink is the stereotypic Hollywood notion of the commie writer. John Turturro makes the role his with a purposeful intensity.

John Goodman is sensational as the garrulous Charlie Meadow, the epitome of the working class man about whom Fink likes to write. Unfortunately, all is not as it seems, as Charlie has a dark side to him, a very dark side. John Mahoney is excellent as the Faulknerian-like writer, and Judy Davis outdoes herself, as the self-sacrificing Audrey Taylor.

Michael Lerner will razzle-dazzle the viewer with his over the top portrayal of a fast talking studio head who is willing to pay big bucks for the cache of having a top Broadway playwright turn out screenplay swill for the masses. Jon Polito is very good as the Uriah Heepish, quintessential yes man he portrays. Tony Shalhoub is excellent in his role, underscoring the absurdity of the old Hollywood studio system.

Steve Buscemi, looking surprisingly small in his bell hop uniform, resembles an organ grinder's monkey, at times. The viewer may also expect him to bellow, "Call for Phillip Morris", as in the old cigarette campaign, though he speaks in a controlled, respectful monotone, at all times. Still, his very presence adds a slightly sinister quality to the film, though he does nothing remotely sinister, other than the way he makes his screen appearance. His entrance onto the screen in this fashion foreshadows what is to come.

This film is not for everyone, as it does not have a neatly wrapped ending. Instead, it goes beyond the standard expected ending into an absurdist foray. Still, those who love films by the Coen Brothers will not be disappointed by this satiric look at Hollywood. It is little wonder that this film became the darling of the Cannes Film Festival.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I've been waiting YEARS for this DVD..., February 12, 2004

By 

Wing J. Flanagan (Orlando, Florida United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Barton Fink (DVD)

For a long time, the absurdist masterpiece Barton Fink was only available in a dingy VHS release. It was better than nothing, but this film deserved better. Thankfully, it's here - in all its stupefying glory.

I won't recount the story. Plenty of other reviews do that. Not long ago I was tempted to interpret it. That still seems a valid course, as there is a genuine sense that, beneath its comic, surreal surface, Barton Fink is trying to tell us something urgent and important. Perhaps, but the primal forces in a writer's mind as s/he shapes a great story do that, anyway - often without the writer's specific knowledge.

Rather than a simple allegory, Barton Fink is a collection of surfaces, styles, textures, and mannerisms. That they seem to add up to more than the sum of their parts is the great trick, akin to the way a painter can suggest the dappled depths of a forest with a few deft pats of a fan brush. Which isn't to say the film is shallow. No; there is a lot going on here. But to suggest that this film has a specific meaning is also to suggest it has an answer. Only mediocre films (by the likes of, say, Stanley Kramer or Oliver Stone) provide answers in a attempt to make themselves more important. The Coens (writer Ethan, director Joel), like most of us, haven't a clue about the Mysteries of Life. So they don't try to "...tell us something about all of us, something beautiful..." as Fink himself professes. Instead, they enjoy "...making things up...", like the other writer in the film, the Faulkneresque W.P. Mayhew (played to perfection by John Mahoney).

Somewhere in here, though, the sleight-of-hand, the postmodern flourishes (wherein genres clash and surfaces spill over one another in unexpected ways), cracks appear. Through them we glimpse something else...something truly terrifying.

Barton Fink's resonances with the Holocaust are well-known (the sinister and Fascistic German and Italian cops, the Jewish Fink, the burning hallway, the story's year - 1941, the nice guy next door - also with a German name - who turns out to be a madman; on and on). These touches cannot be accidental. Yet, the Coens seem to have deliberately avoided any obvious throughline, any markers which would provide for a clear interpretation.

Perhaps this is the point - that there is no way to make sense of the madness. Barton Fink, the character, is a writer who tries to celebrate the "common man" - to write about "real life". Yet, real life is incomprehensible to him. Nice Guy Charlie Meadows (the excellent John Goodman) is a twisted murderer. His idol is a raving drunk. His muse is a purveyor of formula hackery. The authorities are openly anti-semitic. And his bosses - Lipnick (Michael Lerner) and Geisler (Tony Shalhoub) - are utterly indifferent to his craft. The events that unfold around him are too horrifying and strange to make sense of. Simply put, they cannot be explained by any rational interpretation. Which, if this film is really a parable of the Holocaust, is as it should be, since there is no rationale in genocide.

When it comes to "making things up", no one does it better than the Coens. Their skill in marshalling symbols is sublime: Mayhew's latest book is called "Nebuchadnezzar"; Lipnick, like king Nebuchadnezzar, has a dream he wants Fink to interpret (the wrestling film he's writing for Wallace Beery). At a critical point in the film, a dazed, sleepless Fink opens the Gideon bible to the page where Nebuchadnezzar threatens to reduce the Chaldeans' tents to a dung-heap if someone cannot interpret his dream. He flips to Genesis, and there, on the page, is the opening of his screenplay - the only part of it he's been able to write. It's a brilliant sequence, that truly adds up. Lipnick is Nebuchadnezzar; Fink is trying to be Daniel. There is (literally) Hell to pay if he cannot do the job.

Beyond a few moments like these, though, trying to impose a specific meaning on Barton Fink is folly - like trying to impose a specific meaning on any of Luis Bunuel's better films. There is something about it that, like Lynch's best work, goes right past the rational self and nestles more deeply in the unconscious. I get something from every viewing of this film, and part of its beauty is that I cannot articulate exactly what that is.

This DVD is nicely produced, with Roger Deakins' glowing cinematography looking better than ever, and Dolby Surround sound track well reproduced. A 5.1 re-mix would have been welcome, as would a serious commentary track, should the Coens ever be able to bring themselves around to doing one that doesn't poke fun of commentary tracks.

John Turturro is excellent as the title character. Judy Davis acquits herself nicely as Mayhew's secretary/lover/ghost-writer.

This is one of those films that's worth really thinking about, and watching again and again. Don't expect answers; expect an experience - and a powerful one at that.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The movie's a five, but a poor DVD release, May 24, 2003

By 

Alan "ubackward" (CA, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Barton Fink (DVD)

I won't retread what's already been covered well about the new DVD release of Barton Fink. But I did want to expand on it. First, this is a great looking, well-acted, well-written movie. All my negative comments below mustn't be taken with the film itself in mind; only the lack of quality of the DVD release of said movie.

Second, while the sound is good, I was surprised we are only given a stereo Dolby track. When the location of audio events is so key as in a film like Barton Fink, I would think 20th Century Fox would take advantage of the later surround technology and do a 5.1 or 6.1 remix.

But the most disturbing issue I had with the DVD is for first time viewers of the film. If there's any way on your player that you can skip the opening segment leading into the menu, and the menu itself, do so by all means. This gives away a key scene late in the picture and is a spoiler all by itself. Just play the movie. I won't elaborate for those who haven't seen the movie, just do not look at the menu until afterwards! I can't imagine what the folks at Fox responsible for this DVD were thinking and I was completely annoyed by this solution to a menu subject. Hint for special edition menu: How about the picture of the girl on the beach, folks? That's a strong thread that gives NOTHING away. I guess this comes from the same thinking that gives us a two minute movie trailer with all the key plot twists, which leaves the viewer feeling that they've already seen the movie.

On the whole, it seemed to me that this release of the picture was flippant, without any real thought about quality. Not even a commentary is included! This film festival award-winner, with one of John Goodman's most involving performances, deserves a special edition with a proper film transfer and sound remix - not to mention a more appropriate menu subject. So five stars for a brilliant Coen bros. film, but the disappointing DVD quality reduces it to a two. Write Fox for a special edition.