John Torturro as Barton Fink
John Torturro as Barton Fink
"Barton Fink"
Director: Joel Coen
Released 1991
Screenplay: Joel and Ethan Coen
With John Torturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, and others
The story takes place in 1941. It begins in New York City, where the playwright
Barton Fink (John Torturro) attends the successful opening of his play “Bare
Ruined Choirs.” The audience is enthusiastic, and the author is called
on the stage to warm applause. The reviews turn out to be good; among connoisseurs
of contemporary drama Barton Fink has become a rising star, "the toast
of Broadway."
Later that night Barton Fink sees his agent, Garland Stanford (David Warrilow),
who informs him that Capitol Pictures, a major studio in Hollywood, wishes to
hire the newly famous author to write screenplays for $1000 a week. Garland
strongly recommends that Barton accept the position for a while, as that would
solve the writer’s financial problems, and allow him later on to write
plays for the theatre without having to worry about making a living all the
time.
Barton does not like the idea. He knows that writing for Hollywood would almost
certainly mean writing “pap,” and Barton would much rather continue
his present collaboration with the theatre group that is dedicated to creating
a serious and socially progressive theatre. Improving the lot of “the
common man” is high on Barton’s agenda; he is "trying to make
a difference" as a socially committed writer. Going to Hollywood would
be nothing short of selling out to commercial entertainment for easy money.
“It just doesn’t seem to me that Los Angeles is the place to lead
the life of the mind,” he tells his agent. “The common man will
still be here when you get back,” Garland replies. “Hell, they might
even have one or two of ‘em out in Hollywood.” “That’s
a rationalization, Garland,” Barton replies, being the high-minded moralist
that he wants to be. His agent smiles indulgently: “Barton, it was a joke.”
There is a shot of the sunny California coast; surf is crashing against a big
rock. Then we see Barton as he arrives at the somewhat seedy Hotel Earle in
Los Angeles. The desk clerk (Steve Buscemi), who also collects and cleans the
shoes of the guests, signs him in as a resident. “A Day or a Lifetime”
is the slogan of the establishment. Barton moves his few things into a room
on the sixth floor. (The number six and hell will be emphasized several times.)
It is uncomfortably hot in the hotel. Mosquitoes give the writer a hard time,
and the wallpaper tends to peel off because the glue is melting in the stifling
heat.
There is no view from the double window; all one can see is the brick wall of
an airshaft. The whole place has a stuffy and sinister atmosphere. The only
cheerful note is provided by a small print that hangs above Barton's desk. It
shows a bathing beauty sitting on the beach under a blue sky. One hand shields
her eyes from the sun as she looks out at the crashing surf. Barton will frequently
gaze at the picture. It presents a vision of space and light that contrasts
sharply with the claustrophobic narrowness and darkness of Barton's room.
Next morning Barton presents himself to Jack Lipnik (Michael Lerner), the overbearing
president of Capitol Pictures. Lipnik expresses what seems to be deep respect
and great appreciation for writers: “The writer is king here at Capitol
Pictures.” After unleashing a flood of platitudes about Hollywood and
movies on the confused playwright, he assigns Barton to write a scenario for
a wrestling picture, an action film starring Wallace Beery. Lipnik wants to
see a first draft by the end of the week. “We‘re all expecting great
things,” he tells the dumbfounded writer.
Back at his dingy hotel room Barton tries to work on the script. He is disturbed
by muffled noises that sound like troubled laughter, and at times like weeping
or sobbing. The noises seem to be coming from the neighboring room. Barton calls
the desk clerk downstairs to complain. The noise stops, but a little later there
is a forceful knock on Barton’s door. Barton, apprehensive, opens the
door and faces the burly figure of Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), his troublesome
neighbor. In spite of his threatening stare and appearance, however, Charlie
turns out to be jovial, and intent on getting along with the writer. He apologizes
profusely for the noise, and, making himself at home in Barton's room, offers
the new resident a drink from his flask.
Barton resents the intrusion, as he is rather anxious to return to his work,
but he accepts the drink and takes the time for a little chat. Charlie tells
him that he is an insurance salesman, and that he takes pride in providing peace
of mind for his clients. When Barton tells him that he is working in pictures,
Charlie is genuinely impressed, and he indicates several times that he could
tell the writer some amazing stories. Barton, however, shows no interest in
what Charlie might tell him. He is absorbed in his own idea of himself as a
champion of the “common man.” Repeatedly interrupting his visitor,
he tells Charlie about the importance of a new kind of theatre that is an alternative
to the upper-class comedy of manners and the formalistic aestheticism that has
dominated the theatre of the past. The two men do not communicate, but they
enjoy their little chat and part on cordial terms.
Barton makes no headway with his assignment. For one thing, he knows next to
nothing about wrestling, and he has not the slightest interest in either spectator
sports or the sort of movie that he is supposed to work on. He goes to the studio
lot to see Ben Geisler (Tony Shalhoub), the producer of the planned picture,
in order to get some advice. They have lunch at the commissary. The impatient
producer does not know what to tell Barton, and he recommends that he talk to
one of the more experienced writers at the studio. Barton says that he does
not know any writers. “Jesus," Geisler tells him, "throw a rock
in here, and you’ll hit one.” And taking his abrupt leave he adds:
“And do me a favor, Fink: Throw it hard.”
Eventually Barton runs into the alcoholic William Mayhew (John Mahoney), a famous
Southern writer whom Barton has always admired. Mayhew, too, is in Hollywood
for the money, and he has worked on wrestling pictures. He is not happy with
his mercenary work, and that is one of the reasons why he drinks very hard.
He agrees to see Barton in his office in the afternoon. When Barton shows up
at his door, however, only Mayhew’s secretary and lover Audrey Taylor
(Judy Davis) receives him. She apologizes that the famous writer is "indisposed"
to talk to him just now. Mayhew, in fact, is rip-roaring drunk; Barton can hear
him rant and scream in the background.
Back at the hotel Barton broods over an almost blank page in his Underwood typewriter.
He cannot get beyond the first words of his story: “Fade in on a tenement
building on Manhattan’s Lower Eastside. Faint traffic noises are audible.”
Charlie walks into his room and tries to cheer him up. Barton explains that
he does not know enough about wrestling. Charlie gets down on the floor and
invites Barton to do likewise. Charlie used to wrestle, and he wants to show
the writer a few practical things. Barton resists, but eventually joins him
in a wrestling position on the floor and is expertly thrown on his back. He
is hurting a little, and Charlie leaves, apologizing for showing off in such
a way. Barton, deeply discouraged, is left with his blank page and his worsening
writer’s block.
Next day he has a picnic lunch with Mayhew and Audrey. Mayhew presents him with
an autographed copy of his novel Nebuchadnezzar. While they are eating
and chatting, the great novelist gets increasingly drunk. Audrey remarks that
imbibing is not doing him any good, and Barton somewhat pompously adds: “You’re
cutting yourself off from your gift, and from Audrey, and from your fellow man,
and from everything your art is about.” Mayhew is contemptuous of that
sort of talk, and he staggers away, drinking and singing cacophonously “Old
Black Joe” at the top of his voice. When Audrey tries to calm him down,
he does not listen and drunkenly knocks her in the head. Barton gets very angry
at "that sonofabitch," and he tries to comfort the crying woman. Audrey
appreciates that, but in the end only tries to find excuses for her unhappy
lover.
At night Barton is still pondering over the first few words of his scenario
when Charlie comes into the room. The salesman has had a rough day: "People
can be goddamn cruel. Especially some of their housewives. Okey, so I have a
weight problem..." Eventually Charlie announces that he will soon be leaving
for New York City. “Things are all balled up at the head office,”
he explains. Barton is genuinely unhappy about the news, as he feels utterly
alone and adrift in Hollywood. But Charlie promises to be back in a few days,
and he expresses his confidence in Barton’s ability to overcome his writer’s
block soon, and to finish the scenario to everyone's satisfaction.
Barton sees Geisler again and is told that Lipnik wants a description of the
complete scenario by tomorrow morning. The producer is worried, and he threateningly
tells Barton not to "cross" him. Barton is to appear at Lipnik’s
poolside home to deliver the pitch in person. When Barton tells the producer
that he has still not written anything, Geisler arranges for Barton to see footage
of other wrestling films. The ludicrously histrionic and violent scenes fail
to inspire the clueless writer, however. In his helplessness Barton finally
calls Audrey in the middle of the night and implores her to come to his room
to help him with his project. He hopes to profit from her experience as the
typist of Mayhew’s scripts.
Since the novelist is dead drunk, Audrey manages to slip away and join Barton
in his room. In their conversation it becomes clear that Audrey is more than
just a typist: she seems to have written a great deal of what was published
under Mayhew’s name. Barton works up a moral outrage about “William
Goddamn Phony Mayhew’s” lack of professional integrity. Audrey calms
him down: “Don’t judge him… We all need understanding, Barton.
Even you, tonight, understanding is all you really need…” Audrey
is soothing and seductive, and the two end up in bed making love.
When Barton wakes up in the morning, Audrey is dead and awash in her own blood.
Barton screams in terror, and then runs over to Charlie’s door to get
help. He tells his neighbor that he is sure that he "did not do it."
Charlie calms him down, and after surveying the situation he promises to get
rid of the body and straighten things out. He convinces the writer not to call
the police. Barton, haggard and in need of a shave, hurries to his meeting with
Lipnik. The moment of truth has arrived: Barton has no idea what he is going
to tell the studio boss. When, after some pleasantries, the mighty mogul finally
asks him to describe the plot of the movie, all Barton can do is mutter something
about not feeling comfortable with talking about work in progress.
For a moment Lipnik’s face does not show what he is thinking. His underling
Lou Breeze (John Polito) insolently tries to call Barton’s bluff. Quite
unexpectedly, however, Lipnik comes to Barton’s defense. Instead of turning
on the writer he yells at his subordinate: “This man creates for a living!
He puts the food on your table and on mine. Thank him for it! Thank him, you
ungrateful sonofabitch! Thank him or you’re fired!” He demands that
Breeze get on his knees and kiss Barton’s feet as an apology. Barton is
horrified. “Mr. Lipnik, I really would feel much better if you could reconsider,”
he timidly suggests. But the mogul insists. When Breeze does not comply with
his boss’s demand, Lipnik himself gets on his knees and kisses the sole
of Barton’s shoe. “On behalf of Capitol Pictures, the administration,
and all the stockholders," he tells the flabbergasted writer, "please
accept this as a symbol of our apology and respect.”
At the hotel Charlie gets ready to leave for New York City. Barton’s room
has been cleaned, except for a large brown stain on the mattress. Audrey’s
corpse is gone and "taken care of." Charlie gives Barton a neatly
wrapped parcel that contains, as Charlie says, some of his personal effects.
Barton promises to keep it for him until the salesman’s return. “Maybe
it’ll bring you good luck,” Charlie suggests. “Yeah, it’ll
help you to finish your script. You’ll think about me.” And as an
afterthought he adds: “Make me your wrestler. Then you’ll lick that
story of yours.”
Barton feels utterly miserable when Charlie leaves; he fears he is "going
crazy." He sits down on his bloodstained bed and cries, long and without
restraint. There is a shot of the empty hallway. Behind Barton's door we can
hear the sobbing and moaning. The sounds are as eerie as the ones that Barton
heard at his first night at the hotel.
Later on Barton sits at his desk in a daze. His eyes fall on a Gideon Bible.
He opens it and looks at a passage from the Book of Daniel: “And the king,
Nebuchadnezzar, answered and said to the Chaldeans, I recall not my dream, if
ye will not make known onto me my dream, and its interpretation, ye shall be
cut in pieces, and of your tents shall be made a dung heap.” Barton flips
to Genesis. Instead of finding the usual biblical text, however, he sees the
beginning of his own script—printed in the type of the Bible: “Fade
in on a tenement building on Manhattan’s Lower Eastside. Faint traffic
noise is audible.”
The telephone rings, and Barton is called downstairs to the lobby to be interviewed
by two homicide detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department. The two rude
cops, Mastrionotti (Richard Portnow) and Deutsch (Christopher Murney), tell
the writer that Charlie’s real name is Karl “Madman” Mundt,
that he is a serial killer, and that he routinely decapitates his victims. They
have just found the body of a woman who fits Audrey’s description—without
a head. The detectives ask Barton whether he has ever seen such a woman in the
company of Charlie, and whether he knows anything else about the killer. Barton
assures them that he knows next to nothing about his absconded neighbor.
When Barton returns to his room he wonderingly picks up Charlie's package and
looks it over. He shakes it, and then holds it to his ear. After placing it
back on his desk and looking at the picture of the bathing beauty for a while,
Barton begins to type. Gradually the speed of his typing picks up. By the time
of the fade-out the pace of his typing is furious.
From now on Barton writes day and night. He ignores the ringing of his telephone
and the knocks on his door. Repeatedly we see the package beside the typewriter
and the picture above the desk. Mixed in with the clacking of the Underwood
we hear pieces of dialogue that the writer seems to hear from the package. In
a short time Barton completes the whole wrestling scenario, and he entitles
it “The Burlyman.”
After typing the last words and straightening the pile of completed pages, Barton
takes a shower, dresses up, and goes to a United Service Organizations dance
hall. He is a lone civilian male among a crowd of uniformed men and invited
women. He dances ecstatically with one of the women to the sounds of a lively
swing band. When a sailor tries to cut into his dance, explaining that he is
going to ship out in the morning, Barton excitedly shouts at the puzzled seaman
that he is celebrating the completion of an important work of art, and that
his head is "his uniform." The writer is in a crazed mood, and he
ends up yelling at the crowd: "I am a creator, you monsters! I am a creator..."
A sailor takes a swing at him and knocks him to the ground. Some nearby Army
men see the opportunity to beat up guys from the Navy, and a brawl ensues. Barton
lies on the floor, trying to hold on to his glasses, while the music and the
battle rage all around him.
Back in his room he finds the two homicide detectives reading his manuscript.
They tell him that they have found Mayhew’s body—without a head.
They have also seen the stain on Barton’s mattress. “Sixth floor
too high for you, Fink?” Mastrionotti sneers. “Give you nose bleeds?”
Deutsch adds. The cops want to know where Barton has hidden Mayhew’s head,
and whether Mundt is "the idea man” who taught Barton how to do this
sort of killing. “Tell us where the heads are, maybe they’ll go
easy on you,” they suggest. “Only fry you once.”
While Mastrionotti and Deutsch try to get information out of Barton, the elevator
bell rings. “Charlie’s back,” Barton murmurs as if in a trance.
“It’s hot…He’s back.” The two detectives tense
up; they know that Barton is right. Deutsch handcuffs the writer to the bed,
and the two policemen go out into the hallway. Smoke appears; some flames are
shooting through the crack between the elevator and the floor. The increasing
heat makes everyone sweat.
Charlie steps out of the elevator. Mastrionotti, drawing his revolver, tells
him to put down his case and raise his hands. Charlie seems to comply, but then
grabs a sawed-off shotgun from his case and kills Mastrionotti with a roaring
blast. “Look upon me!” he bellows. “Look upon me! I’ll
show you the life of the mind!” Deutsch tries to run, but Charlie mows
him down with a shot in his legs. After quietly reloading his gun he holds the
double barrel to Deutsch’s head and says “Heil Hitler.” Deutsch
screams in terror, and Charlie pulls the trigger. More and more flames are shooting
up in the hallway: the entire sixth floor is on fire.
Perspiring and exhausted, Charlie comes into Barton’s room. Barton accuses
him of being Mundt. “Jesus, people can be cruel,” Charlie replies.
“If it’s not my build, it’s my personality.” Barton
wants to know “Why me?" “Because you don’t listen,”
Charlie roars. "You think you know pain? You think I made your life hell?
Take a look around this dump. You are just a tourist with a typewriter, Barton.
I live here. Don't you understand that...? Barton finally understands something,
and in a humble voice he says: "I'm sorry." "Don't be,"
a calmer Charlie replies, and he helps the writer to get free of the bed. Wearily
retiring to his own room he says: “I’m getting off this merry-go-round.”
Dressed in the coat and hat that he was wearing when he arrived at the Earle,
and carrying the package and his typescript, Barton walks down the burning hall
way. He is moving out. In Lipnik’s office he faces the studio boss and
Lou Breeze. Lipnik wears an Army uniform with decorations, and he demands to
be addressed as “Colonel,” even though his commission is “not
yet official,” and the uniform is from the studio’s wardrobe department.
"It' s all-out warfare against the Japs," Lipnik brags. "Little
yellow bastards!" Breeze has read Barton’s script, and Lipnik declares
that it “stinks.” There is too little action in the story, and too
much “wrestling with the soul.” When Barton mutters that he is sorry
for letting him down, the mogul roars: “You didn’t let me down.
Or even Lou. We don’t live or die by what you scribble, Fink. You let
Ben Geisler down. … He tried to convince me to fire you too, but that
would be too easy. No, you’re under contract and you’re gonna stay
that way. Anything you write will be the property of Capitol Pictures. And Capitol
Pictures will not produce anything you write. Not until you grow up a little.
You ain’t no writer, Fink—you’re a goddamn write-off.”
Barton is dismissed, but told to stay in town.
As earlier in the film, we see the surf crashing against the rock on the beach.
Barton slowly walks through the sand, Charlie’s package still dangling
from his hand. He sits down to watch the ocean and the sunshine. A bathing beauty
(Isabelle Townsend), who looks like the woman of the print in Barton’s
room, comes from the opposite direction and sits down nearby. "It's a nice
day," she says, and the writer agrees. "What's in the package?"
the woman wants to know. "I don't know," Barton replies. "Isn't
it yours?" the woman asks. "I don't know," Barton says. "You
are beautiful," he adds. "Are you in pictures?" “Don’t
be silly,” she replies laughing. She then turns away and looks at the
ocean, shielding her eyes from the sun in the way the woman did in the print.
Apollo and Dionysus
The story is about a writer at a crucial point of his development as an artist.
We find Barton Fink in a situation where he encounters most of the problems
that define a writer's existence: The pressure to achieve success, the conflicting
demands of making money and preserving his artistic integrity, the question
of the political responsibility of a writer, and, most of all, the need to find
the true source of his artistic creativity.
Joel and Ethan Coen can use the Writer-in-Hollywood theme as the setting of
their story because in this situation all these questions come up as a matter
of course. Their description of the Hollywood of 1941 is based on a plethora
of documented facts: The portrait of Jack Lipnik includes prominent features
of such studio chieftains as Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayers, and Harry Cohn. The
writer William P. Mayhew shares obvious similarities with William Faulkner,
who spent lengthy periods of time in Hollywood to shore up his precarious finances.
Barton Fink is physically modeled after the playwright and screenwriter George
S. Kaufman, and his play at the beginning of the film is a pastiche of the sort
of social drama that Clifford Odets wrote for the Group Theatre in New York--before
moving to Los Angeles to work for the movies. Barton's "Bare Ruined Choirs"
is reminiscent of Odets' 1935 play "Awake and Sing.”
In spite of such connecting points with the real Hollywood, however, “Barton
Fink" does not dwell much on historical details. The film presents an inner
struggle, a story that for the most part needs no more space than Barton's lonesome
room in the marginal Hotel Earle. As far as its central theme is concerned,
"Barton Fink" is not about Hollywood, but about the soul of an artist.
The film is a comedy of sorts, although it is built from dark material, and
its point is of serious philosophical import. The plot of the story revolves
around Barton's writer's block. The more general theme of the story, however,
is the question of what makes a writer an artist, or what makes art in any form
a significant matter at all. "Barton Fink," in fact, embodies a whole
theory of art, and it will become clear that this theory is essentially identical
with the theory of art that Friedrich Nietzsche presented in his early philosophical
work, The Birth of Tragedy. This is not to say that Joel and Ethan Coen intended
to use or illustrate Nietzsche's theory in their film. Although Ethan Coen had
been a philosophy student at Princeton, Nietzsche's thoughts may not ever have
crossed the minds of the film makers when they were working on "Barton
Fink." What the following discussion tries to show is that the power of
the mysterious parcel in the film, together with the magic of the bathing beauty
in the print, can best be made sense of by remembering what Nietzsche wrote
about artistic inspiration in his book about tragedy.
The Birth of Tragedy was published in 1872. At first sight it is just
an analysis of classical Greek drama, combined with a somewhat provocative re-interpretation
of Hellenic culture. Nietzsche was a professor of classical philology, and the
civilization of ancient Greece was his area of expertise. The very first sentence
of his book makes it clear, however, that Nietzsche meant to say something about
the nature of art in general, about the essential conditions of creativity in
the arts at all times and in any culture. The addition of a lengthy discussion
of the music drama of Richard Wagner, furthermore, emphasizes that Nietzsche's
definition of art was meant to cover the modern age as well as classical Antiquity.
Thus the book opens with the generalizing contention: “We will have achieved
much for the study of aesthetics when we come, not merely to a logical understanding,
but also to the immediately certain apprehension of the fact that the further
development of art is bound up with the duality of the Apollonian and the Dionysian
...” (This and the following quotations are taken from the translation
of Nietzsche's book by Ian C. Johnston, available at www.mala.bc.ca.)
The presence of what Nietzsche calls "the Apollinian" and "the
Dionysian," in other words, is the necessary condition for the flourishing
of all art, and the understanding of these two "drives" is a presupposition
for grasping the inner nature of every artistic creations. What, then, are the
Apollinian and the Dionysian?
The two "drives" are obviously named after the Greek deities Apollo
and Dionysus, the sun god and the god of wine respectively. The drives are essentially
identical with what these two deities stand for--dreaming and intoxication:
“In order to get closer to these two instinctual drives let us think of
them next as the separate artistic worlds of dreams and of intoxication, physiological
phenomena between which we can observe an opposition corresponding to the one
between the Apollonian and the Dionysian” (Section 1).
What Nietzsche maintains is that artists find their inspiration by either experiencing
powerful dream visions, or by falling into a state of intoxicated frenzy in
which they have intuitions and feelings that emerge from the darkest and remotest
depths of nature and the human soul.
This identification of the sources of artistic inspiration as dream and intoxication
implies a rejection of reason and the conscious mind as significant contributors
to artistic production. Great art, according to Nietzsche, is never the product
of self-conscious calculation, logical reasoning, or intellectual endeavors.
The significant works of art in all cultures have always been the result of
non-rational impulses and unplanned intuitions, not of ratiocination or premeditated
construction. In artistic production reason can at best have a secondary function,
a function that amounts to the modification and re-arrangement of the primary
artistic material. The greater the non-rational powers are in an artist's soul,
the more substantial and deeper will be the works of art that he or she creates.
The more an artist relies on conscious reasoning and rational calculation, the
more shallow the resulting works are bound to be.
In Sections 13 and 14 of The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche argues that
it was the emerging rationalism of the 5th century BCE (represented primarily
by the analytic reasoning of Socrates and his followers) that resulted in the
decay and eventual demise of classical Greek tragedy. While the plays of Aeschylus
and Sophocles were still based on the non-rational drives of dream and intoxication,
Euripides began to rely on the clever dialectic of protagonists who try to make
their points by way of logical argument. Nietzsche debunks theatre that is based
on reason as intellectually weak and emotionally superficial, and he considers
the sort of rational enlightenment pursued by Socrates and his friends as a
manifestation of an inner decadence rather than healthy progress. Nietzsche
was, in fact, to continue his attacks on Socrates and Plato throughout his later
writings; in his eyes these two philosophical teachers of Europe represent not
a high point of culture, but the beginning of what he considered the general
decline of the West. The Birth of Tragedy, in other words, is one of
the prominent works of modern philosophy in which the author’s reason
is used to debunk reason. It is a primary document of the philosophical anti-intellectualism
for which Nietzsche was to become notorious.
To return to Nietzsche's theory of art: The most obvious embodiments of the
Apollinian are the classical statues of the Olympian gods. The idea of these
illustrious beings came to the Greeks, according to the Roman poet Lucretius,
by way of visionary dreams, dreams in which the gods appeared in the form of
highly idealized humans. The images of these gods excel by their measured proportions,
physical beauty, graceful movements, noble restraint, and an inner calm and
serenity that put them far beyond the bodily imperfections, grinding worries,
and violent entanglements that shape the lives of most ordinary mortals. Although
the Olympian gods are by no means spiritual beings, but rather glorified representations
of human and natural powers, they embody a superior form of existence that the
Greeks before Socrates generally considered and praised as divine.
The most poignant manifestation of the Dionysian are the exuberant festivals
in honor of the god of wine, festivals during which the devotees of the god
roamed the countryside or stirred up the cities as bands of wildly drinking
and dancing revelers. (The celebration of Mardi Gras is a faint memory
and modern version of these ancient festivals.) During the time of these bacchanals
established social distinctions were generally ignored, conventions and ordinary
rules of behavior suspended, and all personal restraints forgotten in an orgiastic
expression of wild desires and raw vitality. Women, customarily kept down by
male rules and supervision, were allowed to take extraordinary liberties. It
was, in fact, the maenads, the female devotees of Dionysus, who perpetrated
the most notorious excesses that made these tumultuous festivals so noteworthy
to their historians. As Nietzsche remarks (The Birth of Tragedy, Section
2):
Almost everywhere, the central point of these celebrations consisted of an exuberant
sexual promiscuity, whose waves flooded over all established family practices
and traditional laws. The wildest bestiality of nature was here unleashed, creating
an abominable mixture of lust and cruelty, which has always seemed to me the
real witches' potion.
In very ancient times maenads seem to have caught fawns during their sojourns
in the woods. They ripped them to pieces and devoured their raw flesh--a practice
inspired by the mythical dismemberment of Dionysus by the Titans. Clearly, the
intoxicated frenzy that is at the heart of the Dionysian reveals aspects of
reality and the human psyche that are alien and deeply opposed to the Apollinian
vision of the serene Olympian gods.
The Apollinian and the Dionysian do not only inform certain art forms, but also
convey two different sorts of wisdom. They stand for two different interpretations
of the world, and for sharply contrasting ways of living life. The Apollinian
worldview emphasizes order, hierarchy, restraint, and the careful balancing
of forces. It aims at a harmony that keeps everything dark and disturbing at
bay or out of sight. The Dionysian, by contrast, acknowledges and even embraces
the wild, the chaotic, and all those aspects of reality that may be unsavory,
disturbing, or painful. It rejects the harmony of the Apollinian as illusory
or as unduly restrictive. According to the Dionysian vision of reality, life
is irremediably antagonistic, chaotic, dangerous, and wildly destructive--as
well as creative. Pain cannot be separated from pleasure, and life not from
death. Existence is basically unending struggle--and on balance far more characterized
by deep agony than blissful ecstasy. In spite of its life-embracing exuberance,
the Dionysian assessment of the world is profoundly pessimistic. It fully subscribes
to the despairing view that Nietzsche's contemporary Joseph Conrad expressed
in The Heart of Darkness--in the famous parting words of the murderous Kurtz,
for example: "The horror, the horror..."
Nietzsche locates the dark Dionysian worldview in the folk wisdom of the ancient
Greeks:
There is an old saying to the effect that King Midas for a long time hunted
the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, in the forests, without catching
him. When Silenus finally fell into the king's hands, the king asked what was
the best thing of all for men, the very finest. The daemon remained silent,
motionless and inflexible, until, compelled by the king, he finally broke out
into shrill laughter and said, “Suffering creature, born for a day, child
of accident and toil, why are you forcing me to say what is the most unpleasant
thing for you to hear? The very best thing for you is totally unreachable: not
to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing. The second best thing for you,
however, is this: to die soon" (The Birth of Tragedy, Section
2).
By drawing full attention to this dark side of Hellenic culture, Nietzsche laid
the basis for his reinterpretation of classical Greek art. Until Nietzsche's
Birth of Tragedy it was customary to emphasize the bright side of classical
culture. The magnificence of Greek architecture and sculpture was almost exclusively
associated with harmony, serenity, and perfect beauty. The art historian Winckelmann
had set the tone for this discourse by coining the famous phrase "noble
simplicity and quiet grandeur" for the summarizing characterization of
classical Greek art.
The provocative re-interpretation offered by Nietzsche consisted in his contention
that the famous beauty and serenity of Greek art cannot be properly understood
unless one sees it as a reaction to the profound horror of existence of which
Silenus speaks, and of which most ancient Greeks must have been keenly aware.
The serenity and beauty of the Olympian world was not the product of some sort
of simplicity or naivete, but, on the contrary, the result of an overwhelming
insight into the irremediably dark and tragic nature of life, an insight that
is reflected in the famous horror tales that the tragedies of the 5th century
present. Juxtaposing the pessimistic wisdom expressed by Silenus with the bright
vision of the Olympian gods, Nietzsche writes:
Now, as it were, the Olympic magic mountain reveals itself to us and shows
us its roots. The Greek knew and felt the terror and horror of existence. In
order to live at all, he must have placed in front of him the gleaming Olympians,
born in his dreams. That immense distrust of the titanic forces of nature, that
Moira [Fate] enthroned mercilessly above all knowledge, that vulture that devoured
Prometheus, friend of man, that fatal lot drawn by wise Oedipus, that family
curse on the House of Atreus, that Orestes compelled to kill his mother, in
short, that entire philosophy of the woodland god, together with its mythical
illustrations, from which the melancholy Etruscans died off, all that was overcome
time after time by the Greeks (or at least hidden and removed from view) through
the artistic middle world of the Olympians (Section 3).
The truth of the serene world of the Olympian gods is that it is a sort of lie,
a lie that the Greeks produced in order to be able to live. The bright Olympian
world is mere appearance, a willingly accepted illusion. True reality is an
existence that is dominated by struggle, agony, and the inevitability of death.
To not see this dark underside of classical Greek art is to misunderstand its
beauty, is to forget why it exists. The seemingly naive serenity of the Olympian
world depicted by Homer and the classical statues cannot be grasped but as a
hard-won victory over an oppressively dark reality.
As an awareness of the horrific and dark nature of reality is a necessary condition
for the vitality of the bright Olympic vision, it is also the basis for other
significant works of art. There is, indeed, no artistic creation of substance
without the artist's experience of the pain and dark horror that is at the heart
of life. An artist who intended to produce just "beautiful things"
would be hopelessly shallow, and writers who try to be successful by avoiding
disquieting subjects are notoriously forgettable. A comedy like Shakespeare's
"Twelfth Night" is as good as it is because it deals with deep pain,
and a seemingly plain cornfield painted by van Gogh has its haunting power because
it depicts an ultimate darkness of life. An encounter with the dark and irrational
underside of life is at the heart of any significant artistic creation--that
is the meaning of Nietzsche's theory of art. And it is also the point that "Barton
Fink" as a story of a writer's block gets across. Barton, at the beginning
of the movie, is a writer who has run out of things to say; he finds himself
cut off from any source of artistic inspiration. The ensuing story tells us
how he descends into a terrifying depth, a depth that transforms him profoundly.
It is this depth that makes Barton an artist-- the terrifying experience of
Dionysian frenzy.
Barton in Hell
Before moving to Los Angeles, Barton was what people sometimes call "a
typical New York intellectual." He embraced the rationalism of the Enlightenment,
had left-wing political leanings, and cultivated an understanding of the arts
that favored social engagement on the part of the artist. Barton voiced his
progressive and class-conscious sentiments when he reminded his agent of his
idealistic ambition, the "creation of a new, living theatre of, about,
and for the common man." And when Barton has his first conversation with
Charlie at the Hotel Earle, he still hopes to inspire “the masses”
by writing socially conscious and emancipative plays:
There's a few people in New York--hopefully our numbers are growing--who feel
we have an opportunity now to forge something real out of everyday experience,
create a theatre for the masses that's based on a few simple truths--not on
some shopworn abstractions about drama that don't hold true today, if they ever
did. … We all have stories. The hopes and dreams of the common man are
as noble as those of any king. It's the stuff of life--why shouldn't it be the
stuff of theatre? Goddamnit, why should that be so hard a pill to swallow? Don't
call it new theatre; call it real theatre, Charlie! Call it our theatre!
The way Barton advocates his ideas is always sincere, but also pretentious.
In the case of Charlie it becomes downright condescending. Throughout the film
Barton tends to make an ass of himself whenever he "spouts off" his
ideas about progressive drama, and because of this there is a danger of forgetting
how important and persuasive these ideas actually were at the time. One only
has to listen to Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man," composed
in the midst of the Great Depression, to understand that it was by no means
silly or platitudinous to speak up for ordinary people and their hitherto neglected
hopes and dreams. In 1941 the country was still in the grip of the depression;
large numbers of people were asking pointed questions about the enormous wealth
of the few and the evident misery of millions who were suffering without any
fault of their own. Left-wing political parties openly demanded that the country
be run by ordinary people, instead of by a rich and small upper classes, and
progressive intellectuals everywhere were dreaming about a culture in which
the mass of people would be keenly aware of their situation, and ready to take
their collective fate into their own hands. At the time of the ascendance of
Barton Fink as a writer, in other words, there was a seemingly real and urgent
point in trying to produce theatre "of, about, and for the common man."
In spite of the inherent importance of his ideas, however, Barton's social idealism
is systematically, albeit gently, debunked throughout the film. The debunking
starts with the very first shots of "Barton Fink," where, off-screen,
we hear the up-beat dialogue of Barton's play, while the camera reveals the
cranky machinery and mundane operations backstage. Theatre here is exposed as
theatrical in a derogatory way. While Barton, watching from the wings, is enthralled
by the performance of the actors and his own upbeat words, the stagehands are
visibly unenthusiastic or outright bored. The actor who shouts "Fresh fish!
Fresh fish!" is far more interested in reading his newspaper than in the
play or the play’s message. The stagehand in charge of pulling the ropes
for the curtains attends to his job without any feelings for what is happening
on stage; he would be pulling his ropes whatever the writers write and the producers
produce. There is a ludicrous discrepancy between the common-man pathos displayed
on the stage, and the sullen indifference of ordinary workers backstage. By
means of this discrepancy the whole medium of stage drama is exposed as something
that is rather out of touch: an anachronistic, bourgeois institution that is
inherently alien to the actual interests of the common man.
The anachronistic nature of stage drama--particularly with respect to addressing
"the masses"--is further emphasized by one of Garland's remarks. After
Barton has reminded him that he wants "to make a difference," his
agent points out: "Here [at the traditional theatre] you make a difference
to five hundred fifty people a night--if the show sells out. Eighty-five million
people go to the pictures every week." In an age of mass communication
it seems almost silly to worry about a "new kind of theatre," or about
making theatre "real." Stage theatre as such is out of date and out
of touch with the masses. For purposes of raising the consciousness of the millions
a socially progressive theatre is as irrelevant as the formalistic experiments
or the traditional comedy of manners that Barton condemns. The whole debate
about the new and the old theatre that preoccupied progressive intellectuals
at the time of the Great Depression and the rise of fascism was, as "Barton
Fink" reminds us, an affair that went on in the minds of people who had
not yet fully realized how profoundly the world and the role of the media had
changed. These intellectuals, just as Barton, were in a serious way the prisoners
of their own elite-culture presumptions.
Barton's move to California rudely confronts him with the irrelevance of his
intellectual pretensions. Not that he understands right away, but the facts
of the matter are made clear in the various encounters he has in Hollywood.
In an entertainment industry that calculates its profits and losses in millions,
a "serious" writer like Barton Fink is out of place. "This is
a wrestling picture," Lipnik tells Barton in their last conversation. "The
audience wants to see action, drama, wrestling, and plenty of it. They don't
wanna see a guy wrestling with his soul--well, all right, a little bit, for
the critics--but you make it the carrot that wags the dog." And Audrey
tries to help the blocked writer by reminding him of what mass audiences actually
consume in terms of dialogue and story: "Look, it's really just a formula.
You don't have to type your soul into it." Ben Geisler even suggests that
Barton abandon writing altogether, and work as an extra instead: "Think
about it, Fink. Writers come and go. But we always need Indians." With
regard to the quality of the product that Barton is supposed to create as part
of the entertainment industry, the producer adds: "Don't worry about it.
It's just a B picture. I bring it in on budget; they'll book it without even
screening it. Life is too short."
If such a thing as literary soundness or artistic integrity is irrelevant in
the business of entertaining the masses, the pathos of the "common man"
fares even worse--particularly among ordinary people. "I guess I write
about people like you," Barton tells Charlie. "The average working
stiff. The common man." "Well, ain't that a kick in the head,"
Charlie replies, making nice use of the ambiguity of the phrase. And when Barton
assures the two homicide detectives "I've got respect for working guys
like you," Mastrionotti sneers: "Jesus! Ain't that a load off!"
It is because of Barton's naïve pretentiousness and his pervasive lack
of awareness of real social and emotional conditions that Mayhew dismisses his
idealistic talk as that of a "schoolboy" and a "buffoon."
What makes Barton's pronouncements sound so stilted and hollow is not just his
insufficient grasp of the facts of the world. For much of what he tells people
is not necessarily wrong. The trouble with his pronouncements is that they are
acquired theory, not something that grew out of his experience and a significant
life. When he tells Charlie that some writers insulate themselves from the common
man, for example, his statement is not false, but he is himself is in the middle
of doing just what he denounces: he is "not listening," as Charlie
points out to him later on. And when Barton talks about the importance of pain,
he again is not wrong, but he does not really know yet what he is talking about.
He sermonizes about "a pain that comes from a realization that one must
do something for one's fellow man," but he has no idea of what real suffering
is until sex, death, and insanity move in on him personally and in a most threatening
way. Caught in the political rhetoric of the "common man," Barton
has no real depth to look into. The author of "Bare Ruined Choirs,"
whose play was praised by New York critics as a "triumph of the common
man," is in no position to write anything of substance until he is personally
plunged into a despair that will make him a different person.
Barton's going down into hell begins with Audrey’s visit and their making
love. That having sex with Audrey is tantamount to his descent into some netherworld
is made graphically clear by the camera movement in the scene. We first see
the couple in bed, slowly becoming intimate. But instead of keeping Audrey and
Barton in focus, the camera tracks into the bathroom and to the sink. While
the noises of their love making are still audible, the camera moves in on the
black drain in the white porcelain, and then goes down the drain into a murky
and undefined space. While reaching this unsavory depth, the viewer hears what
seems to be painful groaning and faint, distant screaming. Nothing is definite,
but it is clear that Barton has moved into a strange and threatening environment.
Next comes the horror of waking up beside Audrey's bloody corpse. Involved in
this horror are feelings of guilt, and the terrifying fear of standing accused
of a murder that he has not committed--or that he desperately hopes he has not
committed. For Barton cannot be sure of what has happened; he has no recollection
of anything connected with Audrey's death. In a sense he does not know who he
is anymore: "I feel I'm going crazy," he tells Charlie in a panic.
"Like I'm losing my mind."
From this point on there is no more talk about the "common man" or
"real" theatre. Barton has arrived at a point where he will not live
out of acquired discourse and idealistic notions anymore, but out of the anxieties,
fears, and terrors that are thrust on him by his unsettling experience and harrowing
situation. In this oppressive darkness he suddenly finds himself ready to do
some serious writing.
Before Barton gets to writing his scenario, however, he is called downstairs
to talk to the homicide detectives. What they tell him about Charlie connects
the writer yet more thoroughly to the uncanny depth that he has entered. The
alleged salesman is a killer, and the madman's modus operandi leaves little
doubt that his mysterious package contains a human head--Audrey's head. Technically
Barton makes himself an accomplice of the killer by withholding crucial information
and evidence from the cops of the LAPD; the writer becomes a sort of outlaw.
Surprisingly calm he returns to his room and holds Charlie's parcel to his ear.
He hears voices and he begins to type. The typing does not stop for days, nor
do the voices--pieces of dialogue that find their way into the script. Repeatedly
Barton looks at the twin set of package and bathing beauty print. Their mysterious
energy seems to sustain him until the script is completed. Clearly, his inspiration
comes out of a depth that is beyond the pale of all moral order and rational
deliberation.
The title "The Burlyman" indicates that Barton took Charlie's advice
by making his troubled neighbor the protagonist of his screenplay. Charlie had
predicted that Barton would succeed with his story if he made him the main wrestler
in the picture. Since Barton started writing only after learning that Charlie
was identical with Karl "Madman" Mundt, we can assume that it was
the murderous darkness of Charlie's personality that gave life to the protagonist
of his script. The psychotic wrestler, internalized by the frenzied mind of
the author, was thus the cause of Barton's extraordinary burst of creativity.
Both the subject matter and the mental condition of the author testify to a
close connection between dangerous insanity and artistic creativity. If Barton's
alliance with Charlie Mundt was something like a pact with the devil, the pact
clearly paid off for the writer. Barton assures his agent over the phone and
Lipnik in person that "The Burlyman" is the best work he has ever
written.
The Darkness of Life
Completing the script was not the end of Barton's descent into hell; a further
leg of his journey had yet to be traveled. When the detectives found the blood
on his mattress and accused the writer of murdering and decapitating Audrey
and Mayhew, it looked as if some sort of payment to the devil had come due.
For the two cops there was no question that Barton would end up on death row.
The writer is lucky, however. The man who had gotten him into the depth of hell
delivers him from his legal predicament by killing the enforcers of the law.
It is in the course of this last encounter that a further dimension of Charlie's
hell comes into view.
Sex and death had brought the writer into contact with his own deeper self--away
from the sphere of his cultured intellect, and close to the chaotic turmoil
of his desires, uncertainties, and fears. And by making Karl "Madman"
Mundt the dark protagonist of his screenplay Barton had gotten in touch with
a reality that was stranger and far more threatening than anything in the ordinary
and civilized world of "Bare Ruined Choirs." "The playwright
finds nobility in the most squalid corners and poetry in the most calloused
speech," the reviewer of "Bare Ruined Choirs" had written in
New York. That reviewer was the voice of the bourgeois patrons of the theatre
who, dressed in formal attire and ready to frequent expensive restaurants after
the show, enjoy the titillating texture of working-class talk as a form of cultured
amusement. Barton's old writing had been enjoyed as a sort of slumming. Such
a culinary approach to things is not part of Barton's new writing anymore. His
"Burlyman" is superior to his previous work because it includes a
horror that has to be acknowledged as unredeemable and incommensurable. Its
impact transcends an evening's cultured entertainment at the theatre in the
same way in which serious painting transcends the pictures that people hang
over their living room sofas.
The further dimension that becomes visible during Charlie's final appearance
at the Earle is the global reach and the historic reality of his murderous hell.
As presented in "Barton Fink," the horrors of Charlie's killings are
not just a matter of individual psychosis, but a manifestation of forces that
can claim a universal presence. The names of the two detectives, "Mastrionotti"
and "Deutsch," are an obvious allusion to Italy and Germany, the two
leading fascist powers that were about to declare war on the United States.
Mastrionotti's anti-Semitic insult, furthermore, brings the historical context
of the story into sharp focus: "Fink. That's a Jewish name, isn't it?"
Mastrionotti asks the writer. And when Barton confirms that, the detective remarks:
"Yeah, I didn't think this dump was restricted." In 1941 the authorities
in Germany had began to organize and implement the genocide of European Jews,
and the anti-Semitic sentiments that existed in the United States made many
Jews wonder whether there would be any place anywhere in the world where they
could be entirely safe, and where their human rights would be respected without
question. Under the circumstances, rude insults like that of Mastrionotti were
vivid reminders that for many people the world was not a home, but a dark and
threatening place that could turn into hell at any moment.
When Charlie says "Heil Hitler" before putting a bullet in Deutsch's
head, the global and historical dimension of the killer's insanity is made explicit.
What in Charlie is a personal sickness has with Hitler become a political program.
At the studio Barton had seen the wrestling footage where the main wrestler
had shouted over and over: "I will destroy you! I will destroy you!"
Like many Hollywood scoundrels since, that wrestler spoke with a German accent.
Also, Karl Mundt is a German name. The implication for the movie is clear: Charlie,
who tried to teach Barton about wrestling, and who appears in the writer's scenario
as a wrestler, is an embodiment of the same forces that manifested themselves
in the Nazi slaughters of World War II. Charlie represents a darkness and insanity
that runs much deeper and extends much further than the pathology of a single
deranged mind.
"Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations,
and ages it is the rule," Nietzsche suggests in one of his epigrams. (6)
There are few periods in world history that could be more appropriately described
in terms of collective insanity than that of the World Wars of the 20th century,
and the industrialized massacres that were perpetrated in their shadows. The
six years of World War II alone resulted in more than 50 million deaths, and
the amount of casualties, pain, and destruction visited on dozens of countries
is beyond all adequate description and calculation. The fact that a gangster-like
group of political adventurers could enroll a seemingly civilized nation like
Germany in such an enterprise is difficult to understand; in a sense it is beyond
comprehension.
It did not take the events of World War II, however, to provoke gloomy generalizations
concerning human history among philosophers and writers. The seemingly endless
chain of bloody events and their dubious justifications in the minds of their
perpetrators has often struck observers as utterly insane. "History is
a nightmare from which I am trying to awake," James Joyce once wrote, and
Matthew Arnold summarized his feelings in his famous lines from "Dover
Beach": "For the world/ Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,/
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;/ And we are here as on a darkling
plain/ Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,/ Where ignorant armies
clash by night." Pensive writers, in other words, have often found reason
to describe the entirety of human history as one of murderous psychosis, and
it is in part to invoke this dark vision of human existence that Charlie is
made to utter his "Heil Hitler" when murdering Deutsch.
Charlie’s last rampage and its connection to history completes Barton’s
descend into hell--his encounter with the horrors that are part of the Dionysian
vision of the world. He now is aware of the tragic nature of life as described
by Silenus—life’s unfathomable darkness and inescapable connection
with death. He has experienced the disorienting tangle of irrational forces
that give the lie to facile dreams of rational, peaceful societies and Enlightenment
civilization. It was Charlie’s last killing spree on the sixth floor that
completed Barton’s transformation from a naive optimistic progressive
into a writer who is keenly aware of the dark underside of human existence,
and whose artistic inspiration will be the voices of the dead.
As mentioned earlier, it is the darkness of the Dionysian experience that provokes
the emergence of its opposite, the Apollinian vision of light. The serene harmony
and order of the sun god is the necessary illusion that makes life bearable
in the presence of life’s inescapable horrors. The Apollinian comes to
Barton by way of the bathing beauty of the print in his room. After he has experienced
the terrors of the sixth floor, he walks into that peace and light of the Pacific
beach as an engulfing reality. He still hangs on to his horrible package; the
darkness of life will be with him from now on. But in the light of the beach
he can live with this darkness: he has become a denizen of Hollywood and California.
His life and writing, we can assume, will be a dynamic and precarious balance
between the darkness of Dionysus and the light of Apollo.