Barton Fink

A few weeks ago I sat down and watched Barton Fink and I found it not only a great film but it also got me thinking about symbolism.

Barton Fink is a film by the wonderful Coen Brothers about a writer who experience trouble writing after moving to Hollywood. The movie criticizes Hollywood and the studio system at the like, but ultimately the film is really about anything, there is no deeper meaning or message, which is very interesting to me. It's a great film and uses a lot symbolism in relation to some reoccurring themes including Fascism, Broadway and Hollywood, Writing, Slavery, "the common man" and Religion.

Ultimately the film is a tease for film nerds like me who enjoy reading a little too deeply into films, as I was watching it I was sure that there was a message that they were trying to express but there isn't and I actually like it for that. It's like a friendly trick they played on you, but you don't mind cause you see the funny side and ultimately you had fun. For example two characters, a pair of film noir style detectives question Barton about a murder, they are aggressive and clearly anti-Semitic and interestingly one has a German name and the other an Italian one. However, when question in an interview about the meaning behind this clearly intentional symbolism they responded "we just wanted them to be representative of the Axis world powers at the time. It just seemed kind of amusing. It's a tease. All that stuff with Charlie – the "Heil Hitler!" business – sure, it's all there, but it's kind of a tease."  ( Allen, W. R., 2006, The Coen Brothers Interviews,  Jackson: University press of Mississippi. p94 )  "That's how they've been trained to watch movies. In Barton Fink, we may have encouraged it – like teasing animals at the zoo. The movie is intentionally ambiguous in ways they may not be used to seeing."  ( Allen, W. R., 2006, The Coen Brothers Interviews,  Jackson: University press of Mississippi. p181 )

The reason I find this film so interesting, besides it being yet another simply brilliant Coen Brothers film, is that it uses Symbolism in very interesting ways without a deeper meaning or message, yet it is still a great film.