Review of Barton Fink (1991) by Garrett C — 25 May 2013

Barton Fink is truly a great film, and the Coen Brothers have yet again added another movie to my all time favorite list. There are so many interesting things to say about this film. Instead of saying all of them I'll focus specifically on the analysis I concocted so that I might not be a repetitive reviewer.

My opinion is that this film is essentially a Flannery O'Connor short story, set in California rather than the South. 95% (no that was not scientifically proven) of O'Connor's short stories are essentially the same thing, and this follows it to a tee. To start, in O'Connor's work there must be always a intellectual, self righteous person that possesses enormous amounts of prejudice (Barton). This pompous character comes into contact someway with another character (Goodman) who appears to be more simple than our MC (main character). The MC mistreats this other character. The MC then discovers the truth about this other character, and is shocked to find out how wrong they were. In doing this, Character #2 offers redemption to the MC. This was most clearly shown in "Good Country People" and most famously "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Also, as previously pointed out the girl on the beach was influenced by "The Enduring Chill.".