Let's start with this poster. A mosquito casts a huge shadow on the writer's forehead. In my humble opinion, this shadow seems to imply two meanings, one is a hint to the plot of the movie itself, maybe what the movie is about is just a young writer's fantasy; the other seems to be a hint to the writer's creation itself. The implication is that all creative processes are, to some extent, an exaggeration of reality.
Personally, I tend to think that from the moment the male protagonist checks into the hotel, he is already in an unrealistic state of imagination. As for why I think so, it mainly comes from the scene where the water hits the reef twice in the movie. For the understanding of these two shots, I am inclined to think that this is the turning point of the two comprehension processes of the hero writer Barton Fink's personal artistic creation in the film, and these two shots also serve as the introduction of these two phantoms. turning lens.
Let’s elaborate in sections:
I roughly divide the film into three parts:
In the first part, Barton Fink’s works were successful, and his uncle suggested that he go to Hollywood to make money and develop. What happens in the first part, individuals tend to think is what happened in reality.
In the second part, Button Fink comes to Los Angeles alone and begins to experience this series of events until he leaves the hotel. Personally, I tend to think that this is Barton Funk's first-level illusion.
In the third part, at the end of the film, Barton Fink carried the box to the beach and saw the girl until the end of the film. Personally, I tend to think that this is a second-level illusion of Button Fink.
For the above three parts, the second part is undoubtedly the most inked in the film. Before describing the content of the second part in detail, let's first analyze the relationship between the three parts. The first part is the starting point of the whole story, which lays a foundation for the whole movie, and also leads to the subsequent plot by the way. One of the things that attracts me here is that Barton Fink mentioned his ideals for artistic creation in his conversation with Uncle Garland. In my humble opinion, Button Funk's idea is to extract the most difficult philosophy of life from the most ordinary people, that is to say, his creative idea is to dig out the soul in the ordinary life, and at the same time his His uncle persuaded him to be realistic, because ordinary life is everywhere, and the opportunity to make money may be lost if he misses it. For the contradictory relationship between ideal and reality, the writer's soul struggle was born. And so came the second part.
The specific details of the second part will be discussed later. Here are two points.
One point is about the script itself that Barton Fink needs to create, to tell a wrestling story, and at the end of the second part, through the words of the film company boss, we can also see that the writer finally wrote the script as a A story about soul wrestling. To a certain extent, this echoes the contradiction of the writer himself on the two concepts of success raised in the first part: one is to obtain money, and the other is to achieve his ideal creative realm.
Another point is that the painting hanging on the wall that appeared repeatedly in the second part finally appeared in the third part. In terms of the film's expression, this painting is an ideal state that the writer dreamed of, and he finally achieved this state.
In the third part, the writer asked the beach beauties a question: Are you in pictures? The meaning of the first floor is to ask: Are you a movie actor? And the beauty's answer feels weird: Don't be silly. So this other layer of meaning may be: Are you real? Are you the one in the picture? Beauty's answer seems to imply that the writer has truly reached his ideal state.
Therefore, in general, the relationship between the three parts is that, firstly, the first part elicits the writer's own complex feelings about the contradiction between ideal and reality; the second part describes the process of the writer's struggle and struggle between these two contradictions; The three parts imply that the writer has reached his ideal state. As for why I think the second and third parts are unreal, this needs to start with the second part and elaborate.
The second part begins with the writer checking into the hotel. First of all, the style of the hotel is quite strange. The front desk who came out of the basement, strangely, there were only two staff members in this hotel from beginning to end, one of them was the front desk Chet, and the other was the old Peter who drove the elevator. At the beginning of the film, Chet asks the writer a question: Is this all your luggage? Writer's Answer: Others are on the way. What makes people feel strange is that, from the beginning to the end, in the film, the writer's entire possessions are only those two boxes, so what does it mean to be transported on the road? The writer's sentence seems to mean that he does not intend to stay here for a long time, but the actual situation may be completely different from what he imagined, which may also be a hint of the film.
Then the film introduces the writer's boss, who speaks very fast and has no logic at all. The image of the boss in the film seems to be alluding to the resistance the writer encounters in his search for the ideal, the bitter reality. Then, one of the film's most important characters appears, that is, Charley, the writer's next-door tenant. Charley claims to be an insurance salesman. Judging from the content of the film, Charley actually symbolizes the most ordinary people in the writer's mind, and this is the group of people the writer should care about most. The writer treats Charlie as a confidant, confides his ideals to Charlie, and at the same time asks Charlie to help deal with the mess. But at the same time, the contradiction between the writer and Charlie is constantly reflected in the film. This contradiction does not refer to the physical contradiction, but to the object that should be the most concerned, but from the beginning, the writer hated Charlie first. noise made. From Charlie's words at the end of the second part of the film, we can clearly understand that if the so-called writer who digs inspiration from life has already left life, then all this is just a dream. As Charlie said: "You think you know what pain is? You're just a tourist with a typewriter. And I live here." The implication is that you only have a quick glance at the life of ordinary people. , without actually experiencing the pain and all the feelings in it, and expecting to create the greatest drama out of it, is nothing but irony.
Charlie appears as the ideal character of an ironic writer, and my personal understanding also ultimately leads the writer to his ideal state. And the hotel that was burned down by the raging fire also heralded the end of the writer's struggle to be enclosed in his own thoughts. Charlie's role is intended to be a critique of the writer himself, not a malicious slander, but a denial of the writer's own indecision. Compared to Charlie, another character in the film is also particularly important to the writer, that is, the female secretary. The film introduces the female secretary through Mayhew, a writer whom Barton Fink admires, and Fink discovers that Mayhew is just a coward who escapes himself in alcohol, and his feelings for the female secretary are established from the first meeting. Here, Mayer is actually a hint of Funk's future, losing his inspiration and numbing himself with alcohol. As for the female secretary, she appears in the film as an inspiration for Funk. This became clear after the murders. From the progress of the plot, it can be inferred that when Charlie left temporarily, what was left was the box, which must be the head of the female secretary. And when Fink put the box in front of him, he began to write incessantly and tirelessly. In the third part, when the beauty by the sea asked Funk what was in this box and whether it belonged to him, he replied that he didn't know. In other words, although he is very reliant on this box, he doesn't really know where his inspiration comes from. The image of Funk as a writer is actually quite a daydream style, which means that Funk himself may be more persistent. It is used to construct one's own ideals with dreams, or to find a kind of inspiration in the dark, without really experiencing life.
As for the death of the female secretary, it is implied in the film that the murderer should be Charlie. The first is Charlie's statement that he can hear the sound of a man and a woman having sex through the sewer, and the other is the description of the two police detectives about Charlie's tool: a shotgun. And the corpse of the female secretary just proves this. Here, why did Charlie kill the female secretary? If he hated sex, he should have killed Funk too, but he only chose to kill the female secretary. This also caters to my hypothesis to some extent, that Charlie as a critic of Funk's existence in Funk's mind, his role is to remove all factors that might lead Funk to depravity, so he killed the female secretary because She is the object of Fink's help, from outside sources of inspiration, which may often be short-lived. Although Fink was still reluctant to part with the box with the head in it, maybe even though he didn't understand it, he had actually found his own inspiration, and this inspiration didn't just come from the box.
In the other two episodes of the film, when Charlie runs to the detective in the fire, he shouts: I'll show you the life of the mind. Why did he shout this sentence, and the meaning of this sentence is to symbolize that real life is resisting the images that try to separate Funk from real life. And when Charlie pointed the gun at the detective's head, he said: hey, hitler. This sentence echoes the sentence he shouted, meaning that the power of the will lies in constant struggle, not in arbitrariness. Another detail is when Fink finally finished writing and went to a party to rave. Fink shouted to the navy boy: I am the creator, and thought is my uniform. This also echoes another scene in the film, when Fink picks up the Bible in the hotel, he finds that part of the Bible is exactly the same as the content of the novel he wrote at the beginning. Another detail about the Bible is that Mr. Meyer's book is called Nebuchadnezzar. As a famous Babylonian king, this man also appears in the Bible and there are scenes in the film. This detail represents the awakening of the writer himself. Through the metaphor of the Bible, he understands that he is his creator, which is very important.
The film is actually no less than Mulholland Drive in a way, but for some reason it didn't get much attention. It may be that the film's hints are not enough. When I conceived this film review, I still couldn't find a completely impeccable explanation method. At the end of the article, let's call this film: a writer's daydream.
View more about Barton Fink reviews
