Thank you, Barton Fink for telling me to get my melancholic, woe-is-me writer's head out of my butt. I needed this film. Written during a Coens' writing block, I imagine they needed it too. After watching this movie with 5 or 6 other film students, everyone discusses it. They "liked" the beginning, then it got boring; they hated it; it was confusing. I wanted to slap each one of them in the face, but the bliss of revelation I experienced from the film wouldn't let me.
The movie opens with our eyes travelling down a rope. We hear a play in progress. As the camera pulls back, we see the playwright. We know he's the writer because he silently recites the lines with the actors, and we know he's the writer because the look of complete joy on his face. His baby has been born and she is beautiful, priceless. Anywhere outside the mind is scary for me and Barton Fink and probably every other writer type. Why write? The joy of creation. For a writer like me, who has only given birth to deformed or bastard children of the mind, I tell myself to keep writing, hoping for the day when I sit in a theater and mouth the words with my beautiful child.
Watch it. Especially if you're a writer.
