• Quotes (36)
• Trivia (14)
• Plot Description
• Soundtrack
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Release Date
• USA: Aug 21, 1991
DVD Release Date
• R1: May 20, 2003
Budget $9,000,000
MPAA Rating
R
Running Time
1 hour, 56 minutes
Country USA, UK
Studio 20th Century Fox, Circle Films
More info on IMDb.com
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Genre: Thriller, Drama, Comedy, Black Comedy, Surreal, Showbiz, Psychos, Spoof, Hollywood, Serial Killer, Disturbing, Fantasy
Tagline: Between Heaven and Hell There's Always Hollywood!
Plot: BARTON FINK is steeped in homage, to everything from Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING to Roman Polanski's THE TENANT, in which inanimate objects (hotels, apartments) represent the decaying mind of the protagonist. Like Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) at the haunted Overlook Hotel, Barton is at the Hotel Earle to write but is having problems. The wallpaper keeps falling down, oozing out a sticky substance (brain matter?) as weird noises and whispers appear to come from nowhere and everywhere. Director of photography Roger Deakins takes long shots of the narrow hallway, filled with shoes to be shined, that echo Kubrick's long shots of the Overlook hallways. With the many references to the mind and the head, the screenplay imagines Barton's hotel room as the inner workings of his decaying mind, as Roman Polanski did with the apartment in THE TENANT. And the hotel itself might just be hell; when Barton first enters the seemingly vacant, rotting hotel and rings the bell, Chet (Coen regular Steve Buscemi) comes up from a trap door in the floor as if he has emerged from the bowels of the underworld. The wrestling picture that is screened for Barton to give him ideas is called DEVIL ON THE CANVAS. Next-door neighbor Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) sweats more and more as the film continues,
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 Discussion forum for this movie
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| Directed by |
Joel Coen
Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou? |
 | Ethan Coen
Fargo, Raising Arizona, The Man Who Wasn't There |
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| Written by |
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| Ethan Coen
The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Crimewave |
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| Cast |
John Turturro
The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Secret Window |
 | John Goodman
The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Monsters, Inc. |
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 | Judy Davis
Absolute Power, Deconstructing Harry, The Break-Up | | |
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