Seen Miller’s Crossing yet?
A relatively untalked about part of the Coen’s career is the immediately post Blood Simple phase of Raising Arizona , Miller’s Crossing , and Barton’s Fink . This is when their movies were indeed a lot rawer, as they were most certainly making a wonderful engaging project of working through their own creative processes. Barton Fink is the most self-aware of those ones, but nevertheless, most people jump from Blood Simple to Fargo , and then beyond, without really taking time to see the long road the Coens took to get from from Texas to Minnesota.
—PolarisDiB
I haven’t seen Miller’s Crossing, but I’m definitely about to. Raising Arizona is fantastic, but I never really saw it as much more than a well-written, well-acted comedy. I’m probably missing something, though.
Well not really, but the point is seeing it in relationship to the well written, well acted thriller of Blood Simple and then the strange metaland they entered with their subsequent Miller’s Crossing and Barton Fink pairing, it’s like they worked out proving to themselves that their idea to create character-driven genre benders was going to be more than just a device but real storytelling. Afterwards they feel a lot more comfortable with what they’re doing, and it just progresses from there.
—PolarisDiB
Ahh, that makes sense. I really need to see Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing, then. The sheer complexity of Barton Fink was what really got me, that film has so many layers you can prod around, and its influences are so apparent, they seem to add to the film itself.
I agree!
—DiB
My favorite Coen Brothers film, which is probably their most overlooked, is The Man Who Wasn’t There .
Very fun film noir.
This is also true. The Man Who Wasn’t There was very underpromoted and yet was amazing, hilarious, and bizarre.
—PolarisDiB
Barton Fink is a good film, but a little too contrived for my taste. I love how he rants indignantly about how he writes films for the common man even though he clearly has contempt for the common man, while the film gives us the subtext that what the common man really wants is predictable escapism such as the wrestling picture.
But any time writers get into such self-conscious territory about filmmaking, they have to be very careful not to hit the nail right on the head the way I feel Barton Fink does, else it may come off as self righteous self-unrighteousness.
Forgive my tone-deafness in this matter but,
is that latter paragraph a joke?
—PolarisDiB
I think the writer’s stance in Barton Fink is not unlike that of the neorealists of a similar time elsewhere in the world, so I don’t think you’re quite getting the entire context of the times and of the writer’s perspective. Maybe in fact the audience he thinks he’s writing for won’t appreciate his films, but there’s little reason to suspect that he would think otherwise at that time or at any other time. After all, Shawshank Redemption is the most popular film in the history of the common man world.
It is the duality in Barton Fink that makes it, for me, such a great film. His desire to show the common man what he believes they must see, yet he alienates his target audience through his arrogance. The attitude of “I have something to show you.” The internal struggle of the artist to show his audience what he wants them to see, to feel, and take away.
My reaction the first time I saw Barton Fink was much like Xtian Depken’s. I didn’t know anything about the Coens at the time, and was unprepared for where the film was going. Watching it again years later, I still thought it was good, but it was diminished both because I knew the arc of the film and because I had developed a mental category of “A Coen Film”. But in the last year, I rewatched both “Blood Simple” and “Miller’s Crossing”, and I’m even more impressed with those two than the first time I saw them. Seeing them as instances of “Coen Films” perhaps adds rather than detracts.
Oh, the second time I saw Fink I knew more about Nathanael West, Fitzgerald, and the like. That was a plus.
Barton Fink has a thousand times the energy of Miller’s Crossing, and is in my view one of their best & most rewatchable films alongside A Serious Man, Fargo, Big Lebowski, etc. All of the Coen’s films are display incredible craft, but not all of them have that spark. I can’t help but view No Country, Miller’s Crossing, Ladykillers as being somewhat dull by comparison. Barton fink is great because of its balanced blend of the serious with the spontaneous and absurdly comic.
Just finished Miller’s Crossing. It was great, but lacked the energy and complexity of Barton Fink, I agree with Dave on that.
Christian Depken
I’m speechless. I’ve always heard Fargo lauded as the Coens’ best, and I’ve generally agreed with that, but WOW. This film is absolutely incredible, so multi-faceted, and with much more complexity, metaphors, allusions, etc. I’m surprised it’s not in “1001 Movies you Must See Before you Die,” but there’s quite a few things missing from that book.
How is this film so often overlooked in the Coens’ catalog? I’d not even heard of it beyond descriptions of their films as a whole…or maybe I’m just not as educated on the Coens?