Barton Fink's Jubilee
On May 18, 1991, exactly 30 years ago, the film "Barton Fink", directed by the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival.
The Cannes Film Festival jury, chaired by Roman Polanski, awarded the Coen brothers' film with three leading awards at once: Palme d'Or, Best Director Award and Best Actor (John Turturro). Lars von Trier, whose film "Europa" was also nominated for the festival's main prize, said that his film was still better and, showing the jury his middle finger, left the awards ceremony, slamming the door.
But at home, in the USA, "Barton Fink" did not receive not only awards - Oscars or Golden Globes - in the most prestigious nominations, but also such nominations themselves. Only three minor Oscar nominations and one Golden Globe nominations have obtained a film by the Coen brothers.
And from film critics, the Coen brothers' film received almost entirely rave reviews. Rita Kempley, a film columnist for the influential The Washington Post, has attempted to explain the Academy's and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's low-key perception of "Barton Fink". In her review of the picture, she noted: "A deco-period film by Ethan and Joel Coen, "Barton Fink" is in fact their own creative solution to the writer's block that plagued them during the making of "Miller's Crossing." A triumph for the offbeat, grimly funny brothers, it reveals in its mythic fashion the vagaries of the creative process that plague every artist."Barton Fink" is certainly one of the year's best and most intriguing films. Though it defies genre, it seems to work best as a tart self-portrait, a screwball film noir that expresses the Coens' own alienation from Hollywood. A cineaste's landmark on a par with "Blue Velvet," this is an experience to savor over and over."
Roger Ebert gave the Coen brothers film 3.5 stars out of 4 possible and wrote in the review: "“Barton Fink” won this year’s Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and an unprecedented two more prizes as well, for director and actor. Since Cannes juries traditionally limit themselves to one award per film, their ecstasy would seem to indicate “Barton Fink” is one of the greatest films ever made. It is not. But it’s an assured piece of comic filmmaking, and perhaps a warning by the Coens to themselves about what can happen when brilliant young talents from the East make that trek out to the land of the guys behind the desks."
The authoritative Russian film critic Sergei Kudryavtsev, who gave the film a score of 9.5 on a 10-point system, described the phenomenon of "Barton Fink" as follows: "Having scattered false symbols and guesses as bait throughout the action, the authors only make fun of the gullible, eager to deceive, meticulous seekers of hidden meanings, who did not want to join in the whimsical game of imagination, to evaluate the “artistic spillikins” of the Coen brothers. For them, biblical quotes, Kafkaesque situations, surreal and black-humorous images, satirical exercises about the mores and people of Hollywood, a variety of cinematic delights and tricks - only a great opportunity to demonstrate their own undoubted film talent. For what? And who knows?!"
Sergey Feofanov, editor-in-chief of the online publication Postcriticism, gave his assessment of the film by the Coen brothers: ""Barton Fink" is not for nothing considered a cult film. Mixing genres into an absurdist and somewhere even Kafkaesque porridge from an axe, the Coens are damn well juggling images, archetypes and myths. ... We should not, however, perceive the fifth film of the Coen brothers as a postmodern thing in itself... This is a very caustic satire on Hollywood, presented here in the form of a marracot abyss, into which the life of a talented Jewish playwright from New York flies with a hollow cry. This is an ironic depiction of the writer's crisis and creative torment in general. This is, finally, the story of a living dead man who fell into hell and can not get out of there." So, maybe the cool attitude towards the film by the Coen brothers from the American Film Academy and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is explained precisely by the fact that they, like Sergei Feofanov, smelled this caustic satire about Hollywood?
Or maybe the subtext of the film "Barton Fink" is even deeper than just a caustic satire against Hollywood? And the same Roger Ebert gives his own vision of this subtext: "And there is a horror lurking underneath the affluent surface. Goodman, as the ordinary man in the next room, is revealed to have inhuman secrets, and the movie leads up to an apocalyptic vision of blood, flames and ruin, with Barton Fink unable to influence events with either his art or his strength.The Coens mean this aspect of the film, I think, to be read as an emblem of the rise of Nazism. They paint Fink as an ineffectual and impotent left-wing intellectual, who sells out while telling himself he is doing the right thing, who thinks he understands the “common man” but does not understand that, for many common men, fascism had a seductive appeal. Fink tries to write a wrestling picture and sleeps with the great writer’s mistress, while the Holocaust approaches and the nice guy in the next room turns out to be a monster."
As for the ratings of ordinary moviegoers, 60% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave it ratings from 8 to 10. Based on this indicator and the above, the rating of the film "Barton Fink" by the Coen brothers according to FilmGourmand was 8.9, which allowed it to take 190th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
