Allow me to explain myself, part 2

By now, I have been writing about this subject -- movies about the movies -- for more than a month, and if there's anyone more tired of it than you people out there in the dark, it's me.

So I suppose it's a good thing that this will be my last entry on the subject for a while, and that instead of having to be effusive in my praise of this brilliant movie or that, I'll get to do what I do best: rip someone a new asshole.

So with that, here's a movie that didn't make the cut:

Barton Fink

On paper, Barton Fink would appear to be just my kind of movie. After all, it's the story of an idealistic screenwriter (John Tuturro), who is lured to Hollywood to write a movie, only to find a horrific world of compromise. Add to that the fact that it was written by one of the great filmmaking teams of all time -- the Coen brothers -- and you can guess I was understandably excited to watch the movie the first time.

And, you know, it was alright for a while. Tuturro's playright character is an idealist, sure, but he's also a hypocrite and a boob. He talks constantly about his love for the "common man," but when he actually meets a common man -- his salesman next-door neighbor (John Goodman) -- all he talks about is himself.

Tuturro's character struggles with writer's block, meets a William Faulker stand-in, and battles with studio types. All standard stuff, sure, but with one major difference: the strangely inappropriate tone, which instead of being a) light and comic, or b) strangled and dramatic, is actually c) freaky and ghoulish.

Tuturro's character hears things. His room seems haunted. His hotel, the rundown Hotel Earle, has the creepy sliminess of an infected wound. He learns the John Goodman character is actually a serial killer.

All of this is wrong for the story and the characters, and sort of inexplicable. And then this happens.

Ugh.

You want to write a story about a barely talented Broadway playwright who goes to Hollywood and falls on his face because he didn't have the talent he thought he did, fine. You want to write a horror movie, you know, also fine. But shuffling back and forth like this isn't cute or clever. It's just annoying.

In the above clip, the Goodman character is trailed by fire and shoots down two policemen while shouting "I'll show you the life of the mind!" over and over again. So, you know, what does that mean? Is this a fantasy sequence in the head of Tutturo's character, meant to represent the tumultuous inner life of an artist? Who knows? Is the Goodman character, then, even real? Is the Hotel Earle?

Barton Fink apologists point to these unanswerable questions as proof that it's completely open to interpretation. Well, what's good about that? Despite what a legion of surrealistic movie fans will tell you, confusing does not mean good. It means confusing.

In a very real sense, a movie is a contract between it's makers and it's audience. When the movie starts, it tells the audience what it's going to be like, and it's duty, as William Goldman said, is to "give the audience what it wants, but in a way it doesn't expect."

Surrealistic movies like Barton Fink (and 8 and 1/2, which was left off my list for similar reasons) are an affront to that idea.