#Barton fink girl on beach movie#

The character of Charlie represents, for Fink, much more than surface-level feelings of fraudulence. You’re just a tourist with a typewriter, Barton. It is later revealed that Charlie’s preferred method of murder is decapitation, and one of his final insults, hurled at Fink during a burst of violence, is “you think you know about pain? You think I made your life hell? Take a look around this dump. What is it they say? Where there’s a head, there’s a hope?” This theme of fraudulence comes to a head - pardon the relevant pun - when Fink faces off against the movie’s primary villain: the sensitive, loudmouthed insurance salesman Charlie Meadows, who compliments Fink early on in their relationship by saying, They reflect the deep doubt that percolates to the surface when a writer feels like they have nothing to say, and that no one would actually understand and fully appreciate it even if they thought that they did. There’s a bit of nihilism to the worldview represented in these characters and their conversations. Later, when he invites Barton over to his mansion to hear him pitch a story that Fink hasn’t even thought about, he accepts without question Fink’s lie about secrecy being part of his creative process. “The point is, I run this dump and I don’t know the technical mumbo-jumbo,” he proudly proclaims when he first meets Barton.

Mayhew is seen ragingly drunk in almost all of his scenes “when he can’t write, he drinks,” Audrey confides in Fink.įraudulence in the entertainment industry at large is a fear explored heavily in Barton Fink, too the character of Hollywood studio chief Jack Lipnick represents it. Mayhew - a writer idolized by Fink, who turns out to be a total fraud whose screenplays have all been ghostwritten by Mayhew’s girlfriend, Audrey. This fear seems to be embodied by the character of acclaimed, alcoholic author W.P. It’s a creative approach to a character study.Īt one point, Barton tells another character, “I feel like a fraud, sitting here staring at this paper.” He fears that maybe he only had one good idea in him, and that he’ll never write anything good again. By witnessing Barton engaged in interpersonal conflict with characters that reflect these ideas, we come to understand his inner turmoil in greater depth than we ever could’ve otherwise. Many of the primary supporting characters seem to be born from one of the many conflicting neurotic monologues of Barton Fink’s inner voice. Writer’s block is a curious thing to write about as a source of conflict for a character, because it’s a silent, internal enemy Barton Fink solves for that by externalizing this internal struggle in characters that express many of its nuances in their worldviews. And, the script crafts characters that seem as if they are the physical embodiment of various facets of the protagonist’s inner struggle, rather than stock characters that simply would make sense to exist in his world. First, the film subverts expectations - Barton Fink decidedly does not create something great in the end. They processed their own conflicting feelings about writing by writing a separate film about them in it, the protagonist struggles with many of the same issues that they were grappling with.īut, in two key ways, Barton Fink isn’t just a traditional art-imitates-life story about a struggling artist who overcomes his hang-ups to create something great, as written by struggling artists.

#Barton fink girl on beach movie#

I live here.”īarton Fink is a movie born out of the writer’s block - or, at the very least, burnout - that Joel and Ethan Coen experienced while writing Miller’s Crossing. “You’re just a tourist with a typewriter, Barton.