Avis des critiques

Although Barton Fink fuses together these and a range of other influences and historical touchstones, including the mercurial fate of celebrated writers like William Faulkner and Clifford Odets in Hollywood (and with whose stories the Coens take supreme, even libellous liberties), it is also a singular and nightmarish fusion of character and environment: a man in a room battling against his inner demons and the oppressive mise en scène of his terrifyingly expressive surroundings.

With hindsight, we can now appreciate BARTON FINK as the first of many Coen films that lean on a deeply-researched milieu, only to turn around and gleefully tarnish that fastidiousness by presenting heavily fictionalized, perhaps libelous, renditions of the real people that inhabited that world. The consistency of this Coen formula should vitiate the usual charge of mere clumsiness or adolescent flippery.

Some of these competing tones work better than others: As Barton's dead-end hotel becomes a kind of metaphor for his mind, and his relationship with Goodman's average-guy working stiff feeds his attempts at screenwriting, the film becomes an offbeat portrait of the creative act. But a lot of the ribbing of Hollywood falls flat, and the out-of-left-field finale — while notable for its sheer, hellish WTF-ery — is so odd that it reduces the rest of the film's power.

Barton Fink is an unusually audacious movie for a major studio to release — not only because of its bizarre form and content, but also because the Coens had complete creative control... In terms of overall meaning, Barton Fink qualifies as a genuine puzzler. Considering how transparent most commercial movies are, Barton Fink at least deserves credit for stimulating a healthy amount of discussion.