Barton Fink is a challenging movie in general, but in particular to me in the Coen filmography. Their previous film, Miller’s Crossing, is one of my favorites because it can be analyzed or simply enjoyed. Barton Fink, on the other hand, has to be analyzed. Once you get to the flaming hallway, there’s no way you can say, “I enjoy Barton Fink because I can just turn my brain off and enjoy it.” And that’s fine, but it also makes it one of their least rewatchable movies for me.
I know Barton Fink is great, but I just don’t enjoy it all that much. Perhaps that’s the point, but I’ve always found the Coen Brothers to be particularly adept at showing awful things while injecting humor into it. There’s a little bit of humor in Fink (the aggressive detectives come to mind as well as Michael Lerner’s insane studio exec), but nowhere near as much as in A Serious Man, another film largely about suffering, but much funnier.
Of course, humor is subjective, so others may find this perfectly enjoyable on a surface level. But I feel the need to develop a theory each time I watch it. I usually land in the “John Goodman is the devil” territory, but I’ve always found that a bit too simplistic and obvious, what with the flames and the Hitler line. Also, the guys on Blank Check with Griffin and David made me feel like a basic bitch for having this theory on their episode about the film. So this time I wanted to hammer down a slightly more specific theory.
The Hotel Earle as a metaphor for hell is obvious, but that doesn’t make it wrong. But I don’t find it to mean literal hell for Barton, and I don’t find it to be purgatory, either. Instead, I see it as a hell of the mind. Dante’s famous line from Paradise Lost encapsulates my thoughts on this film: “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
I think that Barton Fink has created this hell of the mind due to his writer’s block and insecurities as a writer and champion of the “common man.” In this self-made hell, the common man, Charlie Meadows, comes across as a jovial friend, but underneath that façade is suffering and violence. Barton, despite his constant claims otherwise, doesn’t know anything about the common man and finds him inferior and an object of pity. Because of this, his subconscious has created Charlie to show how little he truly knows, or perhaps fears he doesn’t know.
This common man that Barton thinks he is championing lives in a hell Barton cannot understand. As Charlie tells him, “”You’re just a tourist with a typewriter.” Barton is no savior for the common man; he’s just using them as exploitation in his writing. This conflict slowly builds up over the course of the film until the true Charlie is unleashed with his fiery vengeance, shouting, “I’ll show you the life of the mind!” It’s a taunting callback to Barton’s earlier tone-deaf complaint about the suffering he withstands exploring the life of the mind.
It takes multiple murders and literal hellfire for Barton to finally understand that he actually doesn’t understand anything. This revelation isn’t glorious; it’s more simple acceptance. Now that he knows that he’s a bit of a fraud and is trapped in a contract with the studio, he can try to find some kind of peace within the misery, as exemplified in the final shot in which he is now in the picture that previously represented serenity. So he’s not the voice of the people he thought he was and working for the pictures was an artistic mistake (though not a financial one), but he’s no longer in a hell of the mind.
In that way, I don’t find Barton Fink to be about writer’s block (even though it was famously written while the Coens faced writer’s block while writing Miller’s Crossing). It’s about finding peace as an artist in the face of capitalism. Barton taking the job in Hollywood in the first place is accepting defeat, but it took the manic episode in the hotel to come to terms with it. And in the end, he gets to experience a little bit of the life of a common man by doing a job he hates and simply existing, though he’s certainly making a lot more money than the common man.
In the end, he isn’t in heaven or hell; he’s just a working writer. And perhaps his work won’t ever be important (or even produced, if Michael Lerner can help it), but he’ll get by. It’s a fairly dark message about the creative process in an industry driven by money, but it’s true. You’re not going to change the world by writing wrestling pictures, and no one wants you to, anyway. So pull your head out of your ass and do your job.
That’s not to say this film is about how Hollywood is completely devoid of creativity and humanity. It’s just that you shouldn’t expect to change the world, and instead you have to navigate it properly and fight the battles you can win. For a movie that is largely surreal, the message (at least for me) is one of reality: you can make life hell for yourself by fighting against its very nature, or you can accept defeat and just get by, and perhaps find a piece of heaven every now and then, even if you find it while holding a box with a severed head inside. Those wacky Coens…
Random Thoughts / Favorite Quotes
I’m sorry for using “common man” so many times, but so does Fink, so it couldn’t be helped.
By no means do I find my interpretation legitimate or definitive. It’s just how I felt with this recent rewatch. In that way, I’ve learned to enjoy this movie a bit more, but it’s still a bit of work, and my favorite Coen movies can be enjoyed through interpretation or on the surface.
There’s a lot of anti-Semitism and World War II stuff in the film. As far as the inclusion of that stuff in the hotel, I chalk it up to Barton’s subconscious fears. That also explains why the detectives (one Italian named and one German named) are so aggressive. These are base fears manifesting themselves in these characters in the life of the mind.
“Chet!”
On the elevator trip when Barton first arrives, the word “six” is spoken three times. Get it? Get it?!
“A day or a lifetime!”
Getting some strong Lynch vibes. I was not as well-versed the last time I watched this. The sound design, set decoration, the framing, etc. All of it is very Lynchian.
“Sex? He's a man! We wrestled!”
“You're a sick fuck, Fink.”
“You read the Bible, Pete?”
“The Holy Bible?”
“Do you see what happens, Barton Fink, when you won't shut up about the common man?!”