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John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner, John Mahoney ... see more see more... , Tony Shalhoub , Jon Polito , Steve Buscemi , David Warrilow , Richard Portnow , Christopher Murney , Robert Beecher , Harry Bugin , Lance Davis , Jack Denbo , Gordon Anthony Davis , Max Grodénchik , I.M. Hobson , Jana Marie Hupp , Johnny Judkins , William Preston Robertson , Darwyn Swalve , Isabelle Townsend , Gayle Vance , John Lyons , Donna Isaacson , Meagen Fay

The title character, played by John Turturro, is a Broadway playwright, based on Clifford Odets, lured to Hollywood with the promise of untold riches by a boorish studio chieftain (played by Michael L... read more read more...erner as a combination of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn). Despising the film capital and everything it stands for, Barton Fink comes down with an acute case of writer's block. He is looked after by a secretary (Judy Davis) who has been acting as a ghost writer for an alcoholic screenwriter (John Mahoney, playing a character based on William Faulkner). Also keeping tabs on Fink is a garrulous traveling salesman (John Goodman), the most likeable, stable character in the picture. And then comes the plot twist to end all plot twists, plunging Barton Fink into a surreal nightmare that would make Hieronymus Bosch look like a house painter. Once more, Ethan and Joel Coen serve up a smorgasbord of quirkiness and kinkiness, where nothing is what it seems and nothing turns out as planned. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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87% liked it

40,183 ratings

Critics

91% liked it

53 critics

R, 1 hr. 56 min.

Directed by: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Release Date: August 21, 1991

Keywords: wrestling

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DVD Release Date: May 20, 2003

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Stats: 2,646 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (2,646)

  • fb100002359227440
    January 18, 2012
    fb100002359227440
    In the beginning, Barton Fink is a nice drama film that don't look like a Coen Brothers' picture. But, suddenly, the film give an upheaval and become a surreal and dark comedy with influences of others great movies. With terrific performances of the cast and clever screenplay and... read more direction: Barton Fink is an unforgettable work of Joel and Ethan Coen. Fresh.
  • garyX
    July 13, 2011
    garyX
    A Broadway playwright relocates to Hollywood and suffers writer's block while enduring the attentions of an affable but mysterious insurance salesman who lives next door. Barton Fink is an odd fish, even by the off beat standards of the Coen brothers. It's actually quite difficul... read moret to differentiate the "real" from the surreal and the seedy motel in which he finds himself creates a deeply eerie atmosphere. Loaded with symbolism, the story doesn't really have a "beginning", "middle" or "end", the Coens even mocking both the base formula of low brow culture as well as the pretentiousness and self importance of men like Fink who fancy themselves as champions of the people but are in fact egoists with little respect for the "common man" they condescendingly claim to represent. Turturro puts in probably his finest performance as the deluded wordsmith and Goodman is as brilliant as always as the foil for his self absorbed rants. Darkly comic, bleak and surreal, Barton Fink blurs the line between fantasy and reality making for a bizarre but fascinating character study and comment on popular culture that's more about the evocative than the narrative.
  • stevenecarrier
    June 14, 2011
    stevenecarrier
    "Barton Fink" lays in a space where noir sensibilities and metafiction collide. This is a film first and foremost about the creative process of writing a screenplay but it quickly deepens from there. The character of Barton Fink (an excellent John Turturro) is an anxiety ridden, ... read moreisolated character adrift from home confronting the unknown. The hotel he is staying in acts as a sort of worm-hole between the reality of New York City and the fantasy of Hollywood (an obvious reference to David Lynch). The Coen Brothers's idea of Hollywood acts as both noirish an extremely Altman-esque. Robert Altman treated California as a surreal, dangerous, confusing, parallel universe and that is what the Coen's are doing here. Hollywood is transient, foreign and self referencing and so is "Barton Fink." Like "Blood Simple" before it, "Barton Fink" is about movies. The Coen Brothers's, among other things, are commenting on the sate of cinema during the time of the films release by combining preexisting cinematic troupes to create something that does not warrant categorization, only an analysis that folds back in onto itself.
  • fb100001048934982
    March 27, 2011
    fb100001048934982
    A brilliant dive into the psych of a man recently consumed by confusion, seclusion, and helplessness. This kind of movie only comes around every few years or so. It cannot be defined! You cannot give a genre to this film, it's so versatile. Coen Brothers know what their doing, an... read mored the film is led by more-than-terrific performances. You haven't seen any movie quite like this. Except for A Serious Man.
  • 76Majikat
    March 12, 2011
    76Majikat
    I feel like I have watched the full movie, but didn't actually get it. Quite truthfully it bored me throughout and whilst there were a few enjoyable dark moments, I've obviously missed something that so many love about this film.
  • paulkoh110
    January 6, 2011
    paulkoh110
    Having symbolism as its main way to convey the plot, Barton Fink is possibly one of the best Coen Brother films. John Turturro and John Goodman do a fantastic job playing stressed americans in hollywood while paranoia strikes all the characters. Definitely worth watching for any ... read moreCoen Brothers fan!
  • FrizzDrop
    December 27, 2010
    FrizzDrop
    The Coen Brothers flavoring of yet another film with their favorite actors was just as conspicuously bittersweet as ever before. With the solid cast made up of regulars Turturro, Goodman, and Buscemi, leading the way, it's hard to cast a disparaging word on this tale of artistry ... read moreand flagrant aggression, though it was full of metaphors and problematic scenes of murder and mayhem, making it different than their usual tales of woe. Altogether it was another solid Coen collaboration.
  • imrealgod
    December 24, 2010
    imrealgod
    Damn Coen Brothers!!! This was one hell of a movie. A writer gets invited to Hollywood after the success of his playwright. He signs a contract to write a script in Hollywood related to wrestling. Unfortunately, he hardly knows anything about wrestling, and hence suffers from wri... read moreter's block. Feeling lonely in LA, he finds a friend in his neighboring room of his hotel. Telling what happens further would be spoiling the movie for those who haven't seen it as yet.

    To be honest, the movie didn't entertain me per se, but I wasn't bored even for a minute. It succeeded to keep me attentive throughout the movie. I gotta admit that I don't like Coen Brothers' movie generally (at least the ones I've seen thus far), but this was a different experience. While not one of the greatest flicks ever, it was an amazing one for sure (at least for me).
  • fb619846742
    September 22, 2010
    fb619846742
    An atmospheric, well-directed noir concerning a shy, socially troubled writer (John Turturro) suffering from writer's block, and how his relationship with his next door neighbor (John Goodman) in a seedy hotel changes his life. This movie is pure Coen Bros. stuff, with a good sen... read morese of humor, an ambiguous ending, and being able to draw out not one, not two, but three terrific performances (Turturro, Goodman, and Michael Lerner) thanks to how they construct their characters. The ending is all kinds of absurdity, but this actually helps the movie become something more than I originally perceived it to be. Some complain the finale gets too bizarre, but I found it to be bold as well as memorable. Although the film definitely suffers due to its slow pace and inability to get its audience to really care what happens to the rest of its characters outside of its two leads - this is still a worthwhile film that once again shows the twisted minds of the Coen Bros.
  • ceWEBrity
    September 8, 2010
    ceWEBrity
    A gnarled Faustian riddle of a film with an astonishing wealth of subtext. Barton Fink is an absolutely fantastic character, host to some of the Coens' most insightful sociological observation, and John Turturro is 100% on board with the person they're trying to create. I love th... read moree delicious narcissism he projects when he purports interest in the "common man," but ultimately that interest is self-serving, a means to an end for his own intellectual fulfillment. When meeting a true paragon of the aesthetic he's trying to capture (John Goodman, who is excitingly awesome here), Fink is utterly unconcerned with his attempts to actually teach him or tell him stories of his life, gleaning only what he needs from their few conversations. It's a full-bodied, riveting characterization, and it's truly a shame that Turturro didn't pick up an Oscar nomination for his incisive work. (Michael Lerner getting a nomination for his one-volume-fits-all shoutfest, on the other hand, almost feels like a slap in the face.)

    The rest of the movie, a visually arresting cautionary tale about reconciling the "life of the mind" with Hollywood's pernicious capitalism, is almost too cruel to put into words. Along with their typical emotional abuse of their characters, the Coens here subject Barton Fink to an immense amount of mental duress; the challenge in watching this movie is that Fink kvetches so much about every little thing that goes wrong for him that it's difficult to truly empathize with him. Sure, we understand that he's not a very good person and there's really no incentive for getting behind him, but it's that perspective that makes the movie's view of haughty intellectualism that much more cogent. Plus, the last half hour of the movie is a complete mindfuck, if you're into that sort of thing (which I definitely am). It's sometimes a tricky balance depicting a character's dissolving mental state on film and keeping it representational versus presentational, but what we see in Barton Fink is assumed to be no less than the truth, and the Coens play it totally seriously, in their darkly humorous way. They've never really warped reality in any of their films as they have here - some of their characters may act completely beyond human comprehension, sure, but here we're invited along for a ride through Barton Fink's personal hell. And it is great.

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Critic Reviews

Richard Schickel
October 13, 2009
Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine

Gnomic, claustrophobic, hallucinatory, just plain weird, it is the kind of movie critics can soak up thousands of words analyzing and cinephiles can soak up at least three espressos arguing their way ... Full Review

David Ansen
October 18, 2008
David Ansen, Newsweek

Again the Coens take familiar movie tropes and twist them into something new. This may be their most haunting movie. Full Review

Variety Staff
November 6, 2007
Variety Staff, Variety

Scene after scene is filled with a ferocious strength and humor. Full Review

Jonathan Rosenbaum
November 6, 2007
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

This creepy satire is full of laughs and flaky twists, but by the end you may still be scratching your head. Full Review

Vincent Canby
May 20, 2003
Vincent Canby, New York Times

It's an exhilarating original. Full Review

Peter Travers
May 12, 2001
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Partly hilarious, partly horrific, totally mesmerizing.

Desson Thomson
January 1, 2000
Desson Thomson, Washington Post

If Fink lacks cumulative punch, its fighting power is a technical knockout. Full Review

Rita Kempley
January 1, 2000
Rita Kempley, Washington Post

A triumph for the offbeat, grimly funny brothers, it reveals in its mythic fashion the vagaries of the creative process that plague every artist. Full Review

Roger Ebert
January 1, 2000
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

It's an assured piece of comic filmmaking. Full Review

Dennis Schwartz
April 4, 2011
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

Goes off the deep end. Full Review

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

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  • Which of the following was the first film in history to sweep all the major catagories( Golden Palm, best actor, best director) at the Canne film festival?  Answer »
  • Which movie stars John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman and a mysterious box?  Answer »
  • Which actor starred in all of the following:- - The Flinstones - The Big Lebowski - Raising Arizona - O Brother, Where Art Thou? - Barton Fink  Answer »
  • In the movie Barton Fink, what does Chet, the bellboy, give Barton to fix the peeling wallpaper?  Answer »
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