Barton Fink
Jake Goldstein-Street

Review by Jake Goldstein-Street

Barton Fink

1991
★★★½

Watched 06 Jan 2025

Look upon me! I'll show you the life of the mind!

Man.

This starts so excitingly, with John Turturro's antic playwright sent to Hollywood to write for the pictures. Surely, hijinks must follow! And they do, but this specific brand of Coen Brothers abstraction (peeling wallpaper, mosquito buzzing, repeated identical hallway shots), never quite reaches the heights of their 90s classics.

Though, right when you start to feel that sense creeping in, they take this movie in such a shocking direction. This threatens to make the picture exciting again, but again, the way this resolves itself is so outlandish in a perfectly Coen way, but not something that's satisfying at all. Though I do love a movie audacious enough to upend expectations, the ending fails to continue that streak, only challenging us on the fringes.

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