Bartin Fink is a 1991 film by Joel and Ethan Coen. Arguably the brothers' most enigmatic film to date, it tells the story of the eponymous Barton (John Tutturo), a young, intense, and rather unlikeable writer of Social Realist plays in the early 1940s; his raison d'etre is to 'create a theatre of the common man'. Relocating from his native New York to Los Angeles to earn a quick buck as a contracted writer for a Hollywood studio, Fink is put to work scripting a B-picture about wrestling and, trapped twenty-four hours a day in his sweltering, claustrophobic hotel room, suffers a serious bout of writer's block.
As in many of the Coen Brothers' films, Barton Fink contains a menagerie of grotesque supporting characters, the polar opposites of the simple but noble common men about whom Barton writes. Chief amongst these is Charly (a wonderful John Goodman), Barton's jovial and loyal next-door neighbour at the hotel. Charly is later revealed to be the alter-ego of 'Madman' Munz, a serial killer with a penchant for decapitating his victims. Also featured is Bill Mayhew, a drunken novelist now working for the studio system, whose great works of the past turn out to have been ghostwritten by his mistress, Audrey.
It is hard to tell exactly what the Coens were trying to achieve in Barton Fink. It is an oddly-structured film with many sudden shifts in dramatic tone and nods to many genres, from film-noir to pschycological thriller to farce. The denoument, in which Charly/Munz sets fire to the hotel and guns down a pair of feds, is particularly (perhaps purposefully) jarring. The film has many saving graces, however. The performances are universally excellent, it is beautifully staged and shot, and one could never accuse the Coens of being boring.
Barton Fink won the Palmes D'Or at Cannes.