An Analysis of Barton Fink
If you haven't yet watched Barton Fink, go watch it. If you haven't watched it in a while - go rewatch it.
I apologize for the schizophrenic structure of this analysis, I found it difficult to write in an organized manner without jumping around events in the movie. Moreover, I find it poetic that an analysis about a movie about a schizo losing his shit is itself schizophrenic in nature.
"The life of the mind, there's no roadmap for that territory, exploring it can be painful"
The movie follows Barton Fink, an acclaimed (by the critics) playwright from Broadway, NYC. The movie starts with him overseeing the ending of one of his plays from backstage. We see Fink revel in his own creation, making orgasmic facial expressions. We then see him discussing the reviews of the play, with NYC socialites - Fink refuses to accept the praise, and lies about not having read the Herald review being discussed, when in fact he lives and dies by what the critics write. Fink desires to become one of the "greats", to produce works that will be remembered and talked about for generations to come. This is the first sin we witness - Pride. While at the end of the film we come to understand that Fink isn't completely governed by his pride, by how others perceive him, for he says that he "wanted to show you something beautiful, something that is true about all of us" in a manner that cannot be mistaken for anything but honest, his life is completely controlled by the need to be validated by others. Ironically, the others, as represented by his dinner company in the beginning of the movie, care nothing for his plays - they only care for what the critics say. They are interested solely in the appearance of success, not in evaluating and savoring the very essence of the art they talk of so often.
Fink's ostensible expertise is in writing plays about the "common man", but Fink doesn't know the first thing about the common man. He doesn't even attempt to establish human contact with anyone but people he admires (the writer W. P. Mayhew), or those he has to talk to as part of his job (producers et al), despite given numerous occasions to do just that. Fink ignores all suggestions by Charlie Meadows, his neighbour at the hotel, to tell him stories about the working man (Charlie is an insurance door-to-door salesman) - Fink even ignores Charlie's proposal to teach him wrestling when Charlie hears that Fink is writing a movie about a wrestler. In short, Fink cares nothing about the actual subjects of his work - he only cares about himself, about writing something others will admire him for. This solipsism and complete withdrawal into oneself is culminated at the end of the movie, when Fink completely loses his shit and becomes a full blown schizo, literally living inside his own head.
As a side note, you can claim that Fink's reluctance to study the subjects about whom he writes is another sin - Sloth. Although Fink is anything but lazy. In fact, when Charlie Meadow, his neighbour at the hotel, comes over and offers him drinks, on multiple occasions, Fink doesn't partake in the revelry. He wants to write. If Fink has one virtue it is his dedication to his work. But this blind dedication is not enough, not when it comes on account of ignoring the rest of reality. So Sloth is perhaps a sin committed by Fink, but only indirectly. It is a sin by omission, not one committed directly.
Coming back to the beginning of the movie, during the dinner with the degenerate NYC socialites, Fink is offered by Garland (a producer) to move to Hollywood to write scripts for movies. Garland is the representation of the Antichrist. He fits perfectly the conception of the Antichrist as he is often characterized by David Foster Wallace: the Antichrist is never overtly malicious or means you any harm. He's often the friend you trust. What the Antichrist does is present you with tempting opportunities which eventually lead to your demise. The Antichrist creates an almost imperceptible slippage of standards. He provides reasons, rationalizations and excuses for you to abuse substances, to commit sins, to commit crimes against yourself. The Antichrist is whoever enables and advocates degeneracy. Garland, in the scene, does just that - he proclaims that Fink will be able to pay for a number of plays after he writes only a couple of scripts for Hollywood. Fink capitulates almost immediately - he really does want to go to Hollywood, and all of his excuses - that he needs to focus on his work, that he needs to not lose touch with the common man (complete nonsense, he doesn't even know how the common man speaks as evident from the little excerpt of dialogue from his play at the beginning of the movie) - are just shadows of the notions he's "supposed" to have as a serious writer. What Fink wants is to go to Hollywood, to fuck some bitches, get rich, and revel in his fame. Lust, Greed, Pride - Hollywood's helluva place. He only needs Garland, serving in the role of the Antichrist, to provide him with the excuse.
Fink is a complete hack. His reluctance to study the subject of whatever he writes about, and the few indications we get of what he actually writes, several of the verbal proclamations he makes - it's all corny, cliche, just plain bad. Fink is a walking Dunning Kruger victim, and compensates for his lack of talent with relentless desire to "make it" (ironically, he wishes the adolation of the crowds, while he spends most of his time subsumed in his own solipsistic existence). That the critics think him to be a good playwright is a low-key criticism of the critics by the Coen brothers: the critics are complete morons, and have no idea what actually good art looks like. It's all fake and bullshit, full of pretense and self-service.
Hollywood represents hell. When Fink arrives there, he first arrives at his own "personal" hell - the hotel. When asked if he's there to stay forever or is just passing by he doesn't know what to say, which means he's there to stay. True - people who don't know, who have no purpose and definitive idea of where they are going with their lives, are there (in hell) to stay. At the hotel he meets one the more powerful demons in the movie: Charlie Meadow. Charlie arguably represents the devil, although Jack Lipnick, the studio head, represents a no lesser evil than Charlie. So perhaps there are two devils - I'm not up on my religious studies, but I guess it makes sense that God is singular while the Devil is multi-faceted. In any case, Fink complains about Charlie making noises through the wall, while Fink is trying to concentrate on writing a script. At the end of the movie, Charlie recalls this by saying with a grimace to Fink: "you come to my home... and complain that I make too much noise?" - indeed Fink is so self-involved that he doesn't even notice he's arrived at hell, and absurdly complains to the devil himself to keep quiet.
As the devil, Charlie wants to bring Fink down. Charlie wants to hook Fink above a fire and boil him in his (Finks) own misery. And so Charlie offers Fink a drink - the fastest way to bring someone down is to get them hooked on mind altering substances. Had Fink been less obsessed with his work he'd probably drink every time Charlie came to visit him unexpectedly, which was often, and so Charlie would have Fink down in the pit by the hook of alcohol in no time. But that doesn't work. Then Charlie tries to hook Fink by telling him stories - which are supposedly the stories of a working man (complete lie, as it turns out Charlie is only an alias, and the man is a notorious murderer), to help Fink with his job.
When Charlie finally manages to almost tell a story to Fink - who keeps ignoring him in a way because Fink is so in-bent that he can't establish real connection with others, not even listen to them - at the only point Charlie does manage to get through the initial stages of a story, which seems to be some racy sexual tale about how Charlie diddled with the wife of one of his insurees (not doubt an attempt to hook Fink by the sin of Lust), at that point Fink ignores him and says something literary that is supposed to be banal but really is cliche as fuck. Charlie mentions this at the end - Fink just does NOT listen.
And so Charlie, the devil, has to resort to extreme measures. He bides his time, as the devil does, and when opportunity presents itself he strikes. Fink, pressured to provide some form of outline of the script he's working on to the head of the studio (Lipnick), calls in desperation to the girlfriend/secretary of Mayhew. She comes over to this hotel room and helps him, and then fucks him. We'll talk about her more, because she's really a piece of work, but essentially two things happen here - one is that the sins of lust and adultery are committed, and two - Charlie now has an opportunity to hook Fink: Charlie kills the secretary while Fink and she are asleep. When Fink wakes up with the body he screams and naturally Charlie is there to help him. Just like the Antichrist, he presents himself as a friend, as someone who can make things alright. Charlie promises Fink that everything is going to be ok, and removes the body from the room - calling the cops is out of question because it supposedly looks like Fink killed her, but more importantly Charlie is a wanted man and we can't have no cops snooping around. All Fink has to do is to mentally block out the ordeal. This is the deal: the devil will make everything comfortable, will take care of everything, the only thing you need to do is to turn a blind eye to everything you know to be wrong. If you can, the premise goes, all will be well. But of course you can't, and you're only fooling yourself that you can. From this point onwards Fink is hooked, Charlie has him boiling in his own misery. Charlie even gives Fink a box for safekeeping, contents of which are never revealed but possibly contain the head of one of Charlies victims, most likely the secretary's. Charlie tells Fink that the box contains his (Charlie’s) personal belongings, and wouldn't Fink please take care of them for him until Charlie returns - a very Antichrist thing to do: to have his victim carry the very horrors the Antichrist has committed on the victim’s behalf.
Charlie being an insurance salesman is no coincidence. Insurance is supposed to protect from things that might go wrong, from possible horrors, disasters, unwanted potentialities. These fears, fantasies of losing something, something of potentially infinite size, are hell. And (insurance) salesman are there to capitalize on this primordial fear. They are the Antichrists, providing you a piece of mind, as long as you provide them with a percentage of your hard earned money. They don't want you scared so much that you'll get paralyzed, they want you scared just enough so they can control you.
Charlie couldn't get to Fink initially - not through substance abuse, not through stories. Dominating another through telling them stories is a very Wittgensteinian thing to do: when you tell a story, if you tell it well enough, you construct a reality for the person, in a manner of speaking. Have the devil long enough in your ear, whispering you stories - the devil usually presents some good reason for him doing so, like for example in Fink's case the stories could've helped his work - and your reality will become dictated entirely by the devil. Charlie had to resort to arranging circumstance such that he had Fink run to him for help. But even then Fink had hope - people always have hope - Fink could do the honest thing of calling the cops. Had he done so, they would've probably picked up Charlie. At the very least, Charlie wouldn't have any hold over Fink. Rotting in prison for being mistaken for a murderer is better than rotting in a hell (inside your own mind). You always have a choice, don't let the devil dictate the terms of your reality through his language, as Charlie did, by saying that "they fry people for this", and "this doesn't look good, they'll think you're the one who did this". This is Fink wrestling with the devil, but as in the scene where Charlie literally wrestles Fink, and pins him down in a microsecond, with Fink offering no resistance whatsoever - so it is in reality, where Fink just crumbles, completely oblivious of what's actually going on.
At the end of the movie Charlie tells Fink that the box isn't actually his (Charlie's), and we see Fink waddle with it along a beach, afraid to open it, for if he does he might find something so horrible therein that would make him completely lose his mind. He is completely fucked - not only the end of the movie is entirely in Fink’s own head (Fink experiences the painting he's been starting at for the whole duration of his stay at the hotel as actual reality), but he is also wholly incapable of dealing or facing what he's done - i.e. covering up the murder of the secretary. To make matters even worse, Lipnick, the studio head, has Fink in a contractual hold, and tells him that he'll use nothing of what Fink writes, no until Fink capitulates and writes some generic shit that twenty other writers can write. If Fink insists to keep his own "voice" and write what he sees as good work, it will not be seen by anyone - a fate worse than death for Fink since he desires external validation for his own genius so badly. If Fink surrenders and writes what Lipnick wants him to write, some derivative CCP-approved bullshit along the lines of Avengers Endgame that can be mass-marketed to the Chinese market, he'll die as a creator, will never be recognized for his actual work - again losing all hope for external validation of his genius.
Fink says: "The life of the mind, there's no roadmap for that territory, exploring it can be painful". He says this from a prideful place, as he thinks he's a genius writer that "explores the mind". Well, at the end he has the chance to literally explore his mind, as he's trapped inside it. To truly experience the pain of having no roadmap, no exit signs out of your own hell/head. If being stuck in your own head is representation of hell, then heaven - the divine - is paying attention to the world. Being present. Making contact with people, participating in life, without any hangups or complexes that involve your own ego.
"A mosquito? like hell its a mosquito - mosquitos breed in swamps, this is a desert"
The painting with the woman. Fink stares at it, a lot. He's staring at someone looking at something in the horizon. Never caring for what the woman sees, he's hypnotized by her. It's another form of ignoring reality, another kind of hangup. Maybe the possibility to look at what she's looking at doesn't even exist - per his limitations as an individual, perhaps he's too sick to be able to recognize reality, forever doomed to live a solipsistic existence.
Both devils, Charlie and Lipnick, are fat. Sin: Gluttony.
Fink calls his friend in the middle of the night, in order to tell him he's writing something great. When the friend isn't excited for him, on account of having been woken up in the middle of the night to hear some nonsense from a delusional hack, Fink curses him. Sin: Wrath.
Fink meets a writer he admires, Mayhew. Fink is gushing, because he wants to be what Mayhew is - a literary star. Later on in their relationship, when the initially star-struck Fink relaxes and sees Mayhew for the degenerate he is, Envy ensues. He envies Mayhew his woman, Audrey Taylor, and his success and fame.
Mayhew is a man who is obsessed with detaching himself from reality. Unlike Fink, who detaches from reality in order to be inside his own head, Mayhew wants to inhibit a different reality. He either creates one through his writing ("I just like to make stuff up"), and when that fails, Mayhew drinks himself to a stupor.
Mayhew's secretary and lover is Audrey Taylor, and that bitch is a piece of work. What Mayhew says about her is true - she doesn't love him, she pities him. Due to her own psychological complexes or nature she's compelled to tend to the needy, to pity and to nurse them, like a mother. She's similar in character to an Antichrist because she enables degeneracy - Mayhew doesn't stop drinking because she puts up with all of his shit, nursing him all the while. She’s his Honey. She even takes up writing his stories for him, as she reveals to Fink, and then proceeds to do the same exact thing for Fink. She clings to needy writers, seducing them with sex, and then enables their darkest tendencies, and then uses the writers as the outlet for her own creative needs: a woman in those times wouldn't be accepted as a writer in Hollywood, she'd need a man figurehead to write through. She is the Evil Mother. She employs all the compassion and love of a mother, but with sinister motivations. When we see her get in bed with Fink, Fink slips his shoes off, slowly.
The shoes are symbolic in this movie - the represent what separates us from the filth of the world - the hard outer shell that protects us. Different shoes, different shapes and sizes - different personalities, beliefs, ways of being in the world. When you take off your shoes you’re vulnerable, naked. When Fink takes his shoes to be with Audrey he lets her in, into his soul.
Fink also exchanges his shoes with Charlies at one point, supposedly by mistake on account of hotel shoe shining services. Charlie’s shoes are much bigger than Fink’s, although they seem to be exactly the same kind. Which is curious, as Charlie is the devil. If we take Fink’s shoes, i.e. his protectice mechanism from the dirt of the world, to be Solipsism, which fits well, then the Devil is Solipsism. This rings true.