Filmography Friday is back, and I am continuing with watching the films of the Coen brothers. I did consider whether to start back up with a different director entirely as a kind of reboot, but I had been enjoying watching the Coen’s films that I hadn’t seen before so much that it would have been dumb of me to do so. And seeing as the next film up was another one that I hadn’t seen, ‘Barton Fink’ (1991), it was only right that I saw the filmography out until the end. And am I glad that I did because the Coens know how to make bloody good films. ‘Barton Fink’ follows the titular character, played by John Turturro, who is a playwright in New York. Off the back of a critically successful play on Broadway, he is hired by Capitol Pictures in Hollywood to write films, starting with a wrestling picture. Barton, suffering from writer’s block, has his life turned upside down as LA life starts to weigh on him.
We are getting to a stage with these reviews where I feel like I could probably copy-paste my praise for the filmmaking and acting, and it is no different for this film. The cinematography is especially memorable throughout this film compared to the prior films, so shoutout to the cinematographer. Perhaps unsurprisingly that cinematographer was the legend that is Roger Deakins, so it is no surprise that the film looks as good as it does. The use of lighting, set design, mise en scene, and shot choice throughout work brilliantly together to create a film that looks beautiful as well as capturing a period of Hollywood that I am always a fan of. All the performances are also superb. Turturro is fantastic as Barton Fink, making him more nuanced than a classic protagonist. He is a flawed character who is hugely self-centred, but who you do also relate to and feel for a lot of what he is going through. John Goodman is also brilliant which is no surprise. I always like his work, and, in this film, he gets to play an interesting and layered character that really hooks your interest from the start and he is wildly entertaining in the role. And the rest of the characters are also performed really well and are memorable characters in their own right, which is down to the Coen’s fantastic writing.
Now, this isn’t exactly a spoiler warning as I won’t be getting into any specific plot details of the film, but in talking about the writing I will be kind of spoiling an aspect of the film that I feel is well worth not knowing going in. So, if you are interested in seeing the film go give it a watch and then come back, but if not, I will crack on. When the film started and throughout the first half, I felt like this was a bit o departure for the Coen’s in terms of the story. It still has the style of dark comedy that you have come to expect from the duo, but the basic story felt much more like a character study than any of the prior films. And while the three prior films all had a basis of crime built into their story whereas this didn’t. Well, at least until about the hour mark where this films completely flips on its head and in a beneficial way. I was really enjoying the film up until this point anyway. I was enjoying the character study of Barton and the focus on old school Hollywood, and I was even more invested and intrigued when the film does a complete 180 and becomes an entirely different entity which felt much more classic Coen brothers. It also takes on a much different tone becoming really bizarre in the process and there were several times where I questioned whether what we saw happening was actually happening at all or if it were all in Barton’s head. And this is almost exacerbated by the aforementioned cinematography which makes the film feel almost dreamlike at times. It is the first time in a pretty long time that I was genuinely shocked by a ‘plot twist’ in a film and I was super intrigued where it was going, and I bloody loved that about the film, and I wish it happened more.
The fourth Coen brother’s film is in the bag and it is currently up in the higher tiers for me. By that I mean it is my second favourite of the four after ‘Miller’s Crossing’ (1991). Having no idea what this film was about going in was a great way of seeing it as it allowed me to be completely bought in as I had no idea where it was going, and it is a really engaging story both before and after the plot decides to blindside you. It is also filled with brilliant performances, which are elevated by the great writing that we have come to expect from the Coens. Mix that with brilliant set design, costuming, and the cinematography of Roger Deakins and you are on to a winner. It is a definite recommendation on my end, but maybe not as an entry point to the Coens work. It does feel a bit more like a deep cut film of theirs.
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