A Day or a Lifetime: Where Is Aunt Ruth?

Note: This entry has nothing to do with the Hotel Earle, or with Barton Fink as a whole.  Instead, I'm piggybacking off my previous ADoaL piece to go into a bit more depth about my comments therein on Lynch's Mulholland Drive.  I promise that I won't do this too often. Also, considerable spoiler warning.

What makes Mulholland Drive such an enduring experience, sixteen years after its initial release, is that it's a deliriously joyful film to get lost in.  Assuming that you can find the pleasure in being lost, of course.  Lynch's film is nothing if not a polarising one - either you'll depart feeling peeved at Lynch for wasting your time and offering no closure to the intriguing scenario he set up and had you invested in for over two hours, or you'll fall in love with the film's unflinchingly discombobulating nature and find yourself twitching for a repeat experience, hoping to figure out where you strayed off course and if any comprehensible route can be mapped out across this dark and tumultuous terrain.  You go back, anxious for another glimpse inside that mysterious blue box, wondering if perhaps on this occasion you'll prevent it from getting the better of you.  Watching it becomes a game, the objective of which is to beat the box, and yet an addiction to the box and to the darkness within is what really drives us.  Much of what Mulholland Drive appealing is that it's a puzzle with seemingly no answer, and yet it beckons us to take up the challenge and, like its spirited young heroine, play-pretend at being detectives.  It's a film which goads us to get lost, over and over again, and yet we go along with it because venturing off course and finding ourselves out in the middle of nowhere offers so much joy and excitement (as well as frustration) in itself.

I was first introduced to Mulholland Drive in 2003 while looking through a stack of DVDs my brother had just purchased.  Before then, I was still a virgin to all things Lynch (although The Straight Story had been sitting on my To Watch list for at least a year).  What caught my eye about this film was the little document that came nestled in the DVD insert, entitled: "David Lynch's 10 Clues To Unlocking His Thriller".  As a marketing gimmick, it definitely worked on me, because I immediately wanted to take a crack at it.  I sat down and watched the film, from beginning to end with the clues at hand, thinking that I could lick this.  The mere existence of those clues had me confident that there was a definitive answer to be gleaned from this puzzle, and that I could figure it out with a little persistence and by paying close attention to the prompts in Lynch's words.  146 minutes later, my Lynch virginity was gone and I was more than a little startled and bewildered as to what had just happened.  At best, the clues had made me a bit more receptive to certain details (the recurring mention of The Sylvia North Story, for example) but as a map to prevent me from completely losing my bearings they were of absolutely no use.  Already, I could feel the addictive nature of that discombobulation taking a hold of me, for my impulsive response was to go back and a second look, in case I had overlooked or misinterpreted one or two important details.  It was then that I picked up on the fact that there was no scene access encoded into the disc, meaning that if I wanted to study a specific scene I would either have to rewind or fast forward manually, or just watch the film from beginning to end again, as seemed like the less headache-inducing option.  This was the first inkling I had that Lynch was maybe a bit of a scallywag.  I didn't quite grasp this at the time, but that might as well have been clue no. 11.  Lynch clearly delights in playing with his victims' heads, so who's to say that the clues themselves are entirely trustworthy, or if Lynch's goal is simply to impress the illusion that there is indeed a puzzle that can be solved?  The clues undoubtedly have their uses in offering a starting point for discussion and analysis, and in training the viewer to be attentive to the minute details of the film, but ultimately they too should be taken with a pinch of salt.

From that very first viewing, the moment that really caught me off guard and haunted me long after wasn't the game-changing moment where Rita opens the box and vanishes into thin air, but what follows immediately after, when Aunt Ruth suddenly appears, glances around the room quizzically and then walks away.  The last of Lynch's clues is has to do with Aunt Ruth, more specifically her whereabouts, so I figured that this must be very important.  She had to be important, or why else would Lynch save her clue for last?  When, finally, my urge to go online and check out what other people had been taking from the clues became too overwhelming (initially, when I believed there to be a definitive correct answer, I feared that this might be "cheating"), I was disappointed on so many levels, not least because nobody seemed to share my deep interest in the character of Aunt Ruth and what she might represent.  Most had picked up on the fact that Aunt Ruth is around in the "Betty" portion of the film but, after the blue box has been opened and we find ourselves trapped in Diane's nightmare of an existence, the only reference to we get to an aunt is to one who's long-dead (Diane never actually specifies that this aunt was named Ruth, by the way), and most were content to interpret this as yet another discrepancy between Betty and Diane's realities.  There was a common assumption that the amount of glaring contradictions between the two meant that the Diane portion of the film automatically invalidated the Betty portion - that Diane's reality was the "genuine" one and that Betty's was simply a lovely idealised dream she had indulged in and which had slowly succumbed to the forces of corruption (much like her "real" life).  That remains by far the most popular interpretation of the film but it left such a queasy taste in my mouth that it very nearly destroyed my affection for the film then and there.  Surely, I thought, the answer to this beautiful, intricate mystery couldn't be that sickeningly shallow?  The Betty portion of the film is so busy, so rich with different characters, story threads and striking images (Club Silencio, the bum behind Winkies) that the notion that it could all be hand waved as the desperate wish-fulfillment of an out-of-work actress immediately rubbed me the wrong way.  I considered the evidence pointing toward the "dream" interpretation.  The first of Lynch's clues advises us that two very important details occur before the credits, and sure enough, we do see things from the perspective of someone sinking down into a pillow right before we move into the sequence where Rita narrowly escapes an attempt on her life.  Then, as Betty's story comes to an abrupt halt and we enter into the Diane portion of the film, things do indeed kick off with her being roused from a deep sleep by the cowboy (Lafayette Montgomery).  On that basis, I could see why others found the explanation so persuasive. If you make the connection between those two moments and can accept that everything that happens in between is simply Diane's dream, we get a fairly simple explanation, from which point onward it becomes a matter of identifying parallels between the two worlds and what these might indicate about Diane's psyche.

Still, when attempting to make sense of Mulholland Drive I think it's important to keep in mind that it didn't start out as a self-contained theatrical feature.  Lynch conceived the project as a TV series and shot a 90-minute pilot for ABC, which gets as far into the story as Betty and Rita discovering the decaying corpse in Apt. 17 and Rita attempting to disguise herself by restyling her hair.  After ABC took a number of issues with the pilot and finally voted to pull the plug on the series, Lynch came up with a new conclusion which incorporated the Club Silencio sequence and the "alternate" Diane reality, and salvaged the project into a feature film with funding from StudioCanal.  Watching the finished product as an abandoned pilot which could potentially have become the basis of a much bigger, more drawn-out storyline, it's possible to account for the large number of story threads which appear to either trail off or become total loose ends.  From that perspective, I think you also become aware of just what an intensely messy picture it is for the first 90 minutes or so (which is not to infer that it's any less of a joy to watch).  Robert Forster's detective initially looks like he's going to be of major importance, but he disappears from the story immediately after one scene (he appears more in the original pilot).  There's that strange sequence where Mark Pellengrino's hit man, Joe, is attempting to retrieve a black book and bungles at every turning, which gets a curious amount of focus for a character who likewise disappears from the story soon after (to reappear briefly in Diane's arc), taking the "history of the world in phone numbers" with him.  And of course there's the extensive emphasis on the turmoils of Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), whose arc looks as if it's going to collide with Betty's but never quite does; the two of them lock eyes during the casting sequence as if gripped with an overwhelming sense of common destiny, but this is quickly aborted.  Adam's arc ends abruptly when he complies with the forces seeking to cast Camilla Rhodes in his film, and he doesn't reappear until we've crossed over into Diane's arc, where things have undergone a dramatic shake-up.  (Note: in the original pilot, Adam was revealed to be a friend of Wilkins (Scott Coffey), the Havenhurst resident whose dog's butt Coco (Ann Miller) threatens to bake for breakfast, and since Wilkins agreed to put Adam up during his financial troubles, it's a safe bet that Betty and Adam would have become neighbours and things might have worked out very differently between them).  The film has so many drawn-out interludes which seem so disconnected from Betty's story that supporters of the "Betty's reality is Diane's dream" theory often have their work cut out in figuring out how they all fit together into this single individual's wish-fulfillment fantasy.  Some interpret them as additional, more cryptic manifestations of Diane's guilt, fears and desires (eg: Camilla betrayed Diane for Adam, so Diane wants Adam to suffer severely in her idealised reality) but it's a messy business, in no small way because Lynch did not initially write these sequences with this outcome in mind (if he envisioned such an outcome at all).  Still, it all works out perfectly in the end.  Mulholland Drive is fundamentally a playful film, and much of that playfulness manifests in Lynch deliberately toying with his viewers' expectations.  The Betty/Adam collision seems destined to happen, but the film seems to purposely back out of it and take an altogether different turning the second that it begins to open up.  It is as if the film itself has been prevented from following its intended course, which has echoes of the overarching conspiracy to get Camilla cast in Adam's film over an actress of his choosing.

So where is Aunt Ruth in all of this?

Aunt Ruth is seen leaving her apartment at Havenhurst at the start of the film, reportedly to shoot a picture in Canada.  She goes back into the apartment to collect her keys and fails to detect Rita lurking underneath her table.  When she reappears at the end of the Betty/Rita arc, her role is once again having an incident of great importance slip right beneath her nose -  this time, the universe literally unraveling on her carpet.  In my previous comparison between the blue box scene in Mulholland Drive and the pipes sequence in Barton Fink, I suggested that Aunt Ruth's casually oblivious reaction to the occurrence functions as a kind of "punchline" to the entire Betty/Rita story, and that the butt of the joke is essentially the viewer.  Ruth walks in right after Rita has opened the blue box, which both she (and the viewer) had anticipated might shed light upon the film's central mystery, only to uncover a dark, deadly, all-consuming nothing that apparently plucks Rita right out of existence.  Ruth then randomly appears; she is visibly reacting to some kind of disturbance, implying that she at least heard something coming from the bedroom, yet when she peers in she sees absolutely nothing amiss.  We too no trace of Rita, Betty, the blue box, or any of their activity - it is almost as if their entire arc has been erased and we have landed back at the beginning of the narrative, with Aunt Ruth never having left the apartment.  Having been teased with the possibility of finally getting to the bottom of the mystery, the viewer instead bears witness to the mystery devouring itself and finds themselves eerily deserted by the two characters who up until now had been commanding their emotional investment.  There's a definite archness to how Lynch concludes this sequence, with the appearance of a character who is visibly confused by what has gone on, but ultimately dismisses the disturbance as "nothing" and walks away.  The film steers its mystery into a dead end, then casually shrugs it off and calls it a day.

Lynch's clue places emphasis specifically on Aunt Ruth's location, and I've seen it suggested that her being in Canada while Betty occupies her apartment should be taken as a clue that she's dead, as there's an old joke in the acting industry that dead actors "really go on to act in Canada".  I was intrigued, but so far my research on the matter has yielded very little about the existence and origins of this euphemism.  If this is indeed what Lynch was going for, then fans of the aforementioned dream/reality reading would no doubt take this as further proof that Diane is re-imagining her life in order to suppress a few uncomfortable realities, in this instance accounting for her deceased aunt's absence by packing her off to a shoot in Canada - but on that note, what are we to make of the fact that both Betty and Diane state that they came to Hollywood from Canada?  Ruth and Betty never encounter one another in person (although they do converse over the telephone), and when Betty is removed from the story, Aunt Ruth returns.  In Betty's story, Aunt Ruth has a tendency to be wherever Betty is not.  There is a cyclic quality to the movements of both characters, which begins with Aunt Ruth moving out of Havenhurst so that Betty can take her place as a Hollywood success, only for Ruth to be recalled to her original position when Betty ultimately fails to assume that identity.  Ruth is, in effect, another doppelganger of Betty's - perhaps she is the future self which Betty, at one time or another, was destined to be, before corruption (in the form of the forces seeking to get Camilla Rhodes cast in Adam's film) seeped in and redirected her story down a very different, far more sinister path, one which Ruth herself is perpetually oblivious to.  In Diane's story, the aunt (who, again, is not specifically identified as Ruth) plays a somewhat different role.  She is deceased but has left her niece an inheritance which is ultimately used to hire the hit man Joe to rub out Camilla.  If Diane represents a corrupted Betty, a Betty who's been pushed down the wrong path and now harbours no hope of redemption, merely retribution, then the death of Aunt Ruth signifies the death of those aspirations.  Unlike many other characters in the Betty arc, Ruth does not cross over into Diane's arc, because Diane, unlike Betty, has not even the vaguest promise of a future.  She is on an irreversible course to crash and burn and it is ultimately the aunt (her estranged future self) who facilitates that destruction.

We might also consider Lynch's fifth clue: who gives a key, and why?  After all, there are three possible individuals to whom this might refer - in Diane's story, Joe leaves Diane a blue key (evocative of the key used by Rita to unlock the blue box) as a signal that the hit has been successfully carried out.  In Betty's story, Coco gives Betty the keys to the apartment at Havenhurst on behalf of Aunt Ruth, so that she can stay there and effectively assume Aunt Ruth's life while Ruth herself is away; as Coco hands across this all-important key, she comments that she is doing so on the basis that Betty and Ruth "probably have an understanding", although that "probably" casts doubt on whether such an understanding actually exists.  When Louise (Lee Grant) shows up at Ruth's apartment, she infers that Betty is an imposter, which would appear to support the common assumption that Betty is simply Diane acting out her silly fantasies, but then a penchant for play-pretense is an integral aspect of Betty's character regardless.  Betty spends much of her story in a kind of cloud cuckoo land, veering between pretending to live out the life of a genuine movie star and acting as if her life genuinely were a Hollywood movie.  Watts plays Betty with an exaggerated, child-like vivaciousness which early on we're goaded to see as indicative of the character's fundamental naivety as a young and hopeful outsider to the Hollywood system.  All the same, there are times when Betty's naivety is laid on almost a little too thickly - for example, when she discovers Rita in Ruth's apartment and accepts that this unexpected guest has every right to be there with next to no suspicion or caution.  Is Betty really too naive for her own good, or is she just too good at assuming the role of the naive young newcomer?  Our assumptions about Betty are further turned on their head when we witness her audition scene and a startlingly different persona emerges, which runs contrary to her earlier, more melodramatic rendition of the exact same material with Rita.  Betty tells Rita that she would "rather be known as a great actress than a movie star, but sometimes a person ends up being both."  Initially, this appears to be a playful dig at the hollowness of celebrity, with its insinuation that stardom does not necessarily equal great talent (see Lynch's eighth clue), but perhaps Betty alludes here to her own skills as a master manipulator.  She plays the role she sees herself as having been cast in order to gain access to Aunt Ruth's vacant apartment and take her place among the Hollywood elite.  Is her status as Ruth's niece even genuine?  We learn from Coco that Ruth has some concerns about who is staying in her apartment and our natural assumption, much like Coco, is that this refers to Rita, but perhaps Betty merits her own share of suspicion.  When the blue box is opened, Betty is stripped of her identity and finds herself cast in a very different role - that of Diane Selwyn, who had previously appeared as a corpse in her story - and the part of master manipulator instead shifts over to Rita, now reborn as Camilla.  As Diane, Betty's vulnerabilities are laid horrifyingly bare and she loses whatever social wiles she had.

Clue no. 5 also calls to question if we are supposed to see any symmetry between the key to the apartment at Havenhurst and the key to the blue box.  The latter unlocks darkness, oblivion, the ultimate nihilism underpinning the world of Mulholland Drive, while the former opens up a world of glamour, luxury and promise, all of which Betty discovers to be nothing more than hollow illusions (a-UNTRUTHS?) when that nihilism finally comes out of hiding and has its cold and callous way with her.  In the end, all that remains in Betty's world is Aunt Ruth, who haunts the empty apartment like the ghost of What Could Have Been, the future which might have awaited Betty had the treacherous twists and turnings of Mulholland Drive not willed otherwise.  Of course, Lynch offers yet another sly subversion in having Aunt Ruth assume the role of the haunted, reacting to a strange and ultimately inexplicable disturbance which has invaded her tidy domestic space.  Perhaps we are meant to question if Betty and Rita are the real apparitions in this story, intruders who wandered into Ruth's apartment from an alternate reality in order to act out their mystery.  After all, while Rita finally is sucked in and devoured by the blue cube, Betty pulls off off a far spookier, spectre-like disappearing act by vanishing into thin air within the split-second that Rita's back is turned on her.  Betty is gone before the box is even opened - was her fate already sealed by that point, or was she never actually a part of this world to begin with?  It plays out like the ending to an archetypal ghost story.  We might consider that character assumed to be Diane Selwyn is already dead in Betty's story, and that the film opens from the perspective of an unseen being who is slowly sinking out of consciousness upon a pillow (the common assumption here is that we are entering into a dream world, but perhaps what we are really witnessing are the final distorted flickers of life of an individual upon the verge of death).  If we place Diane's death as happening chronologically before Betty's story begins, then the possibility opens up that Betty, more than a mere projection of the person that Diane wishes she could have been, actually is the spirit of the deceased Diane, acting out a form of vengeance upon her former erstwhile by leading her into a sticky web of mystery and confusion, a game which finally stops when Rita is coaxed into looking inside the mysterious blue box and confronted by the cold, sinister reality that defines their relationship?  The general impression at the end of the film is that Betty/Diane is the character whose dreams and ambitions have been fundamentally thwarted, yet it is Rita, not Betty, who unsuspectingly opens up the box and gets destroyed.  Betty remains unaccounted for.

Judging by Ruth's reaction, she is totally unwitting to the events in question, but what of the actual key-giver, Coco?  She's evidently not a fan of Rita/Camilla in either of her incarnations, so might she have knowingly assisted in her destruction?  As with just about every question that Mulholland Drive raises, the jury are unlikely to ever return a verdict, but it offers something intriguing to chew on.

A Day or a Lifetime: Mulholland Drive's Mysterious Blue Box

Last time, I likened our journey through the squalid plumbing of the Hotel Earle to the opening sequence of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, in which we pan down beneath the grasses of suburban Lumberton to reveal the bug infestation that runs rife throughout those seemingly immaculate lawns.  In both cases, we become attuned to the forces of darkness which are operating right beneath the characters' noses, although in Barton Fink's case these are concealed more by the tedium and decrepitude of a hotel that's so overwhelmingly mundane that this in itself becomes unsettling.  Our glimpse into the hidden abyss of the Earle essentially confirms our uneasy suspicions that there are screwier forces at work in this hotel, the real shock being reserved for what happens immediately after when Barton swats the mosquito on Audrey's body.  If there's a moment from Lynch's filmography that this truly begs comparison to, it's the scene from Mulholland Drive (2001) in which we get to peak inside the mysterious blue box which appears out of nowhere at the Club Silencio.  In both we see a fascination with a beckoning oblivion; these are films gazing directly into darkness and coming out very different, decidedly more warped creatures as a result.

Mulholland Drive has a number of parallels with Barton Fink, not least a mutual interest in the tensions between Hollywood's glamorous image and the dark underbelly of cruelty, failure and corruption that lurks not far beneath.  Both films follow a hopeful young newcomer to Hollywood (Naomi Watts' aspiring actress Betty/Diane and our good friend Barton the screenwriter) whom we sense right from the start is doomed to have their spirit crushed by an unsparing system.  We see echoes in Betty/Diane's troubled relationship with amnesic femme fatale Rita/Camilla (Laura Elena Harring) of the same jealousy and betrayal that ultimately sours relations between Barton and Charlie.  Finally, the two films each contain a pivotal scene in which we, the viewer, find ourselves drawn into a mysterious abyss which seems to dramatically rewrite everything we thought we knew about the characters' situation.  Betty and Rita uncover a small blue box which they realise can be opened by a key they had squirreled away earlier in the film, and which may yield answers to the question of Rita's true identity.  As Rita prepares to unlock the box, Betty mysteriously vanishes into thin air.  Unnerved, Rita calls to her and gets no response, but is not dissuaded from the task at hand.  The box is unlocked and opened, and Rita finds...nothing.  This is Lynch's great punchline. The box contains nothing and yet that nothingness has a destructive potency all of its own, pulling in and obliterating all who gaze upon it.  We emerge, but Rita is gone.  More hauntingly, we find ourselves back in the presence of Betty's Aunt Ruth (Maya Bond), who left the apartment at the beginning of the narrative and now returns to find it vacant.  She scans the room, attempting to locate the source of the disturbance, but seeing nothing she turns away.  Rita and Betty now cease to exist; they have become part of the nothingness unleashed from the small blue box and, in a particularly cruel twist, it seems that their long and intricate narrative, too, has been completely undone.  Ruth appears exactly as she did at the start of the film, raising questions as to whether she ever left at all.  This is a Lynchian joke that's very much on the viewer, and it seems only fitting that an event so chillingly apocalyptic, in the context of the film, should be played as little more than a minor interruption from the perspective of a character who barely notices anything at all.  In effect, Ruth's mildly bemused reaction is the real punchline, not just to the box opening scene, but to the Betty/Rita arc of Mulholland Drive as a whole.

There's an obvious allusion here to Pandora's box, with Rita's lethal curiosity dooming both herself and Betty, much as Barton's sexual curiosity toward Audrey awakens the beasts lurking deep within the Earle.  The opening of the blue box is truly an apocalyptic event, for it results in a dramatic rearranging of the universe, setting its characters on a catastrophic course where the only possible outcome is to violently crash and burn.  Betty and Rita reappear, but have been recast in vastly different roles.  Betty is now the self-loathing failed actress Diane, while Rita is the seductive and manipulative Camilla, who's had more luck than Diane on the acting front, thanks in part to her ability to sleep her way into a few choice roles.  The blue box reappears toward the end of the film, only on this particular go-around we learn that it actually houses two ungodly demons (in the form of a couple of elderly sadists) who crawl out and beleaguer Diane to the absolute breaking point.  By comparison, the rearranging of the universe in Barton Fink is more subdued; when Barton awakens, he retains his identity as Barton the screenwriter, but finds himself trapped in a nightmare scenario where his reality is rapidly unraveling and his own role as the hero, villain or waif of his story is called into question.  In both cases, our descent into cataclysm is characterised by the cold, hypnotic embrace of the abyss, be it the ominous vacuum of the mystery box or the slimy, infected guts of the Hotel Earle - not only are character and viewer alike sucked in and consumed by it (perhaps literally, in Rita's case), but there is a definite sense of the film itself disappearing down a dark hole as a result of its characters' actions, of a wrong and dangerous turn having been taken from which there can be no redemption or return.  The camera never does find its way out of the meandering pipes of the Earle; instead, it dissolves into Barton's fresh waking nightmare.  It is a place, we suspect, where one goes to get permanently lost.  The feverish intensity that rages deep in the bowels of the Earle comes to dominate the remainder of Barton's story, much as the petrifying blackness of the vacant box infuses Diane's story and sees it through to its sorry conclusion.

Like Barton Fink, Mulholland Drive will forever be subject to the speculation that at least part of it is a mere dream/wish fulfillment fantasy on the part of its young Hollywood hopeful (ie: Diane is "real" and Betty is merely the person she wishes she could be), although personally I've never gotten along with that theory (read: I despise it with the intensity of the heat of a thousand suns) and would be disappointed should Lynch ever come out and confirm it (thankfully, I know he never will).  For me, few things could spoil the effect of that wry, eerily muted apocalypse that takes place on an unsuspecting Aunt Ruth's carpet than the revelation that it was all cortisol-induced.

A Day or a Lifetime: The Audrey Whodunnit

One of the greatest sleights of hand in Barton Fink is how, sixty-five minutes into the film, it takes a startling turn and goes from being a subdued, claustrophobic comedy-drama about an aspiring screenwriter's grappling with writer's block to a full-blown and particularly gruesome whodunnit. Having invited Audrey into the Earle and allowed her to seduce him, Barton awakes the following morning to find her still at his side and, in an ostensible double victory, finally does away with the pesky mosquito who's been depriving him of sleep ever since he arrived in Hollywood. Then he notices that Audrey is dripping with blood and turns her over to discover that she has been messily butchered during the night. Oh shit indeed.

One of the film's more subtle tricks is that it doesn't actually give a clear answer to the whodunnit by the time the end-credits start rolling, although it does deceive us into thinking that it has. Likely, we'll take it as a given that Charlie somehow managed to off Audrey while Barton was sleeping, because we're told that Charlie leads a double life as serial killer Karl Mundt. He is implied to be responsible for a number of off-screen atrocities, including the death of Mayhew and, more hazily, Barton's own family, and if nothing else the audience gets a first-hand glimpse of his homicidal fury during the final showdown with Mastronatti and Deutsch. The bathroom sink shot, in which the camera plunges down into the grungy, sordid depths of the Hotel Earle piping while Barton and Audrey are making love in the adjacent room, would appear to link Charlie to the outcome, for his tortured cries become all the more audible the deeper we descend; it is as if he is reacting in anger and revulsion and Barton awakens to find the consequences the following morning. We even have a plausible motive - jealousy - when we take into account just how eagerly Charlie seems to vie for Barton's attention. I noted in my previous entry that the Earle and its many facets - Charlie, the wallpaper, the mosquito - seem to be locked in an eternal battle with the manifestations of feminine beauty - Audrey, the picture of the beach beauty - which offer Barton release from the barren confinement of the Earle. Charlie has his sights set on becoming Barton's muse, but not only does Barton turn to Audrey instead in his hour of need, he commits the ultimate taboo of inviting Audrey into the Earle so that they can have sexual relations right on Charlie's territory. It's hardly surprising that this should bring out the very worst in Charlie.

All the same, one of the recurring themes of Barton Fink has to do with the deceptive nature of outer appearance and the repeated intimation that we should not trust the superficial guises that the world at large would greatly like for us to swallow. The vast majority of the film's supporting cast are ultimately revealed to be fakers in some way. Charlie presents himself as a jovial, down-to-earth insurance salesman, but is revealed to have to an immensely sinister side. Mayhew is a literary heavyweight who's actually a drunken fraud, propped up by his long-suffering "secretary" Audrey. Lipnick insists that he likes Barton and wants that "Barton Fink feeling" for Capitol Pictures, but his use of the phrase loses all meaning as the film goes on. Truth in Barton Fink is a far more ugly, messy and sordid thing than most prefer to contemplate, so on that note should we necessarily trust our own assumption that Charlie killed Audrey based on what we subsequently learn about his character? Is it too facile a solution to the mystery, what with the lack of any really conclusive evidence to link him to Audrey's death beyond the reveal that he apparently has a habit of butchering people? At most, this accounts for why he's so proficient when it comes to disposing of Audrey's body, but it does not itself provide proof that Audrey died at Charlie's hands, nor address the improbable manner in which Charlie would have had to have pulled off the crime (how probable is it that Charlie could have entered Barton's room and killed Audrey without Barton noticing?  Did he literally send his vengeful wrath up through the pipes?).

In the end, we cannot be certain that Charlie actually did kill Audrey, although it's a safe bet that he's not as innocent to what's gone on as he infers - earlier, he stated that he "hears everything that goes on in this dump" and the retching noises that accompany our journey down the bathroom pipes would suggest that he means this all-too literally. There are times when Charlie and the Earle appear to be one and the same and his character is given a kind of omnipresence which lingers long after Charlie has left Room 621, all of which indicates that his shock and revulsion upon being greeted with the murder scene are feigned. We know that Charlie is not to be trusted, but then who in this film truly is?

Supposing that Charlie is not Audrey's killer, are there any other plausible suspects? Hotel employees Chet and Pete seem too incidental as characters to be taken seriously as culprits, and we are not given evidence that there is anyone else in the hotel other than a couple making love in the room next to Barton's. The only other viable candidate would appear to be Barton himself (his lack of knowledge of the incident notwithstanding), which is a far more disturbing proposition than the suggestion that Audrey died at the hands of an accomplished killer like Charlie. Of all the figures in the film, the viewer is prompted to believe that they can at least trust Barton - while not blinded to the fact that he is a fool and a hypocrite, the viewer experiences Hollywood and the Earle through his eyes, remaining at all times as uncomfortably in the dark as he is. Barton is the viewer's ally in their mutual discombobulation; the notion that he could have done something so shocking and unpalatable behind the viewer's back is a troubling one. We're inclined to go along with Barton when he professes his innocence to Charlie, but should we?

In my previous entry, I dismissed a theory proposing that everything that happens from Barton's first night in the Earle onward is a dream on the grounds that "that's when weird things start to happen". The entire film, I argued, could be described as "weird", and no such distinction exists between the nature of the of weirdness that Barton initially experiences upon arrival at the Earle and what happens immediately after. I did, however, suggest that this theory might have a bit more weight if applied to the point where Barton wakes up to find Audrey murdered, because it's here that the film kicks into a completely different gear. Strangeness pervades every corner of Barton Fink, but it's from this point onward that the film starts to become strange in more extraordinary ways - whereas its sense of menace previously came from an eerie emphasis upon the mundane (mosquitos, noisy neighbours, peeling wallpaper), it now comes increasingly from far-out twists like waking up to find that your lover has been murdered or the revelation that your neighbour is a serial killer. Reality, of course, can be every bit as twisted and far-out, but here it definitely feels as if the film is taking a self-conscious wander into the territory of more sensationalist fiction. If we view the Earle as a representation of Barton's own inner mind then we might see Audrey's death as something that happens entirely for the purposes of changing the rules of the game. Audrey is sacrificed in order to give Barton - and Barton Fink - a release from the stifling monotony of his writer's block, one that grants him the forward momentum he needs to knuckle down and finish his screenplay. We get no clear answer to the whodunnit because one does not actually exist - Barton simply wakes up to find Audrey dead. The exact cause of her death is irrelevant.  Having finally achieved sexual intimacy with the woman whose quiet, unassuming charm has been tantalising Barton eve since he first locked eyes on her, he drags her down into the darkest, most perverse depths of his psyche, whereupon she is ripped to shreds. The viewer is left to ponder not merely the horror of Barton's situation, but also the casual cruelty with which Audrey, by far the most compassionate figure encountered by Barton throughout his adventures in Hollywood, is reduced from character to prop in the blink of an eye.

We may recall that earlier on, during his second meeting with Charlie, Barton had summarised the duties of a writer as having to "plumb the depths" in order to "dredge up something from inside." This is Barton at his most hopelessly naive, oblivious not only to how well-acquainted his companion truly is with dredging up the gruesome inner details of the human condition, but also to the darker forces he unconsciously implies are lurking deep within his own soul. It's tempting to dismiss Barton's words as the empty pretensions of a would-be artist anxious to conceal the fact that he has no hidden depths to speak of, but the bleaker reality is that Barton is an unfledged dolt who knows little of the world, not least the chaotic impulses that lie in wait at the back of his skull, and his journey from Audrey's death onward is one of frightening self-discovery (albeit one which ultimately leaves Barton stranded in yet another limbo). The shot linking the love-making scene with the gruesome morning after discovery - our excursion through the dank, dark waterworks of the Earle - seems to deliberately evoke Barton's comments on plumbing the depths of the life of the mind and exploring the unpleasantness that lies within. We find ourselves swallowed deep by a hidden underworld of sickness and squalor, where the sounds of Barton and Audrey are slowly drowned out by the sounds of Charlie in a vomiting rage; this is the ugly, feverish anguish that runs all through the innards Earle and manifests on the surface as an abnormal stickiness leaking from the walls. Like the black bugs infesting the suburban grasses of David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986), this alerts us to the darker undercurrents at work in the Earle, which up until now have largely stayed hidden out of view; it also serves as a passageway from one part of Barton's brain to the next, slipping away from an awakening erotic fantasy and resurfacing in a nightmare scenario where Barton comes face to face with Audrey's desecrated corpse. Barton cannot account for what has happened; he has been caught off-guard by the cruelty and depravity of his own creative mind, which has moved to sacrifice Audrey on artistic whim and now proceeds to mock him with the consequences.

The most accurate answer to the film's whodunnit would be to say that Audrey was murdered by the Earle; that is to say, the same malevolent forces that caused the wallpaper to peel and brought a distinctly out-of-place mosquito into being. The question this immediately raises, of course, is who ultimately pulls the strings at the Earle - Barton, whose inner mind the Earle embodies, or Charlie, who appears to actually be a part of the Earle? If we view the Earle as a representation of Barton's inner head, then what are we to make of Charlie's accusation, toward the end of the film, that Barton is but a tourist with a typewriter and not naturally at home inside what is supposedly his own psyche? Is the cruelest twist of all that Barton should be rejected by his own inner mind, which dismisses him as merely a front, a constructed self belied by the chaotic demons that rage underneath? If Charlie resides in the murky depths of Barton's brain, then the implication would follow that he too is another facet of Barton's psyche, yet he appears to have a mind and will all of his own, and to be toying with Barton in a manner that seems by turns adoring and merciless.

Charlie too gets what he wants out of Audrey's death. He gets to be Barton's confidant and rescuer in his new hour of need, disposing of incriminating evidence and experiencing the satisfaction of having Barton weep feebly that Charlie is the only friend in Hollywood upon whom he can truly rely. Above all, he gets to impart words of inspiration that once again come back to the idea that Charlie wishes to be embraced and remolded by Barton - the suggestion that Barton "think about me...make me your wrestler." Charlie may be a raging inner demon, but above all what he yearns for is a companion with whom he can drink whiskey and swap anecdotes about the capriciousness of life, and to whom he can be extremely useful. He is, in effect, a terrible fiend who aspires to be the ultimate friend.

A Day or a Lifetime: Awake for the first time in years?

Back when I first started blogging about Barton Fink (only the second string of entries I started writing on The Spirochaete Trail, after rating the gruesome deaths of cute cartoon forest creatures), I stated that the very first analysis I ever read of the film came from the "Pocket Essentials" guide to the Coens by Ellen Cheshire and John Ashbrook.  I also indicated that I don't think so much of the book or their analysis now, which definitely falls on the facile side.  By that, I mean that they identify several the key themes and motifs without delving particularly deeply into what these might mean (eg: there are a number of obvious Hell allusions during the scenes at the Hotel Earle, so Cheshire and Ashbrook are happy to accept that Barton literally goes into Hell every time he sets foot in the Earle, and that Charlie is literally either The Devil or a fallen angel).  Truthfully though, it seems a bit churlish to go after a slim, easy read like a Pocket Essentials book (one which devotes a meagre eleven pages to the film in question) for not being in-depth enough.  No, by far my biggest issue with the book would be their shoddy researching (or lack of) on the death of Takako Konishi, a Japanese office worker who in 2001 was falsely reported by several media outlets to have traveled to Minnesota in search of the money buried by Steve Buscemi's character in the Coens' 1996 film Fargo, apparently unaware that the film was a fiction, only to die of exposure in the effort.  This was subsequently debunked and Konishi's death was determined to have been a suicide, but Cheshire and Ashbrook do not appear to have looked this up, and these days I practice a personal rule about immediately throwing out books on the Coens that lazily perpetuate the old Konishi myth.  Their extremely lightweight reading of Barton Fink will not satisfy the hardcore obsessive who delights in picking over every last detail of the film, but it's fine enough as a starting point or for somebody who just wants to get to grips with some of the basic symbolism.

At the end of their analysis, Cheshire and Ashbrook propose that there are three possible interpretations of Barton Fink, which they term The Brazil Theory, The Videodrome Theory, and Apocalypse Now/The Buffy The Vampire Slayer Theory (they act as if these are all familiar and well-established theories among the Coen brothers fandom, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they pulled them all, names included, out of their arses on the spot).  Respectively, these mean that a) Barton is crazy, b) Barton is dreaming and c) Barton's world is really just that weird.  All frustratingly generic theories that basically hand-wave rather than tackle the film's feverish madness, but what interests me about the second theory is their rationale that we cannot trust anything that happens from very early on in the film because of a simple visual cheat on the part of the Coens - in Cheshire and Ashbrook's words "you see Barton drop off to sleep when he arrives at Hotel Earle, but you don't see him wake up, and from then on weird things start to happen."  Straight off the bat, it's a theory that doesn't hold up to scrutiny, because it would indicate that Barton's initial encounter with Chet and his early glimpses of life in the Earle are part of the non-dream portion of the film, yet they definitely qualify as every bit as "weird" as much of what we see thereafter.  Secondly, it's not actually the case that we see Barton drop off to sleep during his first night at the Earle - rather, we see him attempting to sleep only to be kept awake by the intrusive whines of the mosquito.

Nevertheless, I got to thinking about the various points in Barton Fink where we see Barton either settling down to sleep or awakening from sleep and what we might take from this.  After all, there can be little doubt that dreaming is an important theme in Barton Fink, as hinted right from the opening sequence when we hear the hero of Barton's play proclaim that he is awake for the first time in years, having been accused by his companions of living in a perpetual fantasy.  The film repeatedly prompts us to question where we are to draw the line between the objective and subjective.

The list of scenes is as follows:

• When Barton arrives at the Earle, he attempts to retire to sleep for the night but is disturbed by the mosquito.
• After the disastrous picnic with Audrey and Mayhew, Barton is seen sleeping at the Earle but is once again snapped back into alertness by the mosquito.  Unlike the aforementioned scene, Barton is lying on top of the bed in his regular clothing and the light in his room is on, hinting that he took a brief nap while working on his screenplay.
• Barton is lying with his face buried under his pillow before Audrey arrives.
• Barton awakens after his night with Audrey.
• Barton passes out while watching Charlie do his little clean-up.
• Barton is restored to consciousness by Charlie physically slapping him.

Early on, there appears to be a pattern with Barton attempting to fall or remain asleep but not succeeding.  Barton's problem is not that he's a dreamer, but rather that he cannot dream and is forced to wander through life with his eyes wide open (which is not to say that he actually sees a great deal).  He cannot physically settle himself, nor can he latch onto any fleeting traces of escapism that come his way.  His lack of focus and inability to step out from the barren walls of his own socially-stunted mind are what make getting his screenplay written such a formidable task.  Up until the dramatic twist that occurs midway, the film is characterised by an absence of dreaming, a sort of frenzied insomnia that pervades every moment of his time inside the Earle and outside in diurnal Hollywood.  There is a strong sense of unease throughout, but for the first half this never tips into the overtly nightmarish, this menace being rooted in mundane, everyday disturbances whose intrusions seem magnified by the great empty spaces they have to fill.  Barton's life is horrifyingly dull, and that dullness, much like his mosquito nemesis, is threatening to drain him of all vitality.

Where Barton does find glimpses of potential liberation are in his brushes with femininity - the magnetism of the mysterious and compassionate Audrey and his fascination with the kitschy image of the beach-dwelling beauty that hangs above his desk.  Both provide Barton with momentary solace, yet both are also at odds with the machinations of the Earle, which repeatedly strikes out and pulls Barton back into his stifling situation should he happen to glance their way for too long.  The picture, chintzy as it is, moves Barton and offers to lift him up and carry him beyond the walls of the Earle, into an escapist fantasy accompanied by sounds of crashing waves and shrieking gulls.  Barton can only get so far into this diversion, however, before the Earle hits back and once again commands his attention, with its peeling wallpapers and bloodsucking fauna.  This foreshadows the unspoken rivalry which later develops between Barton's two confidants.  Charlie, who is for all intents and purposes the human manifestation of the Earle's dark and imposing nature, professes a desire to be Barton's muse, and it seems that Barton is even considering taking him up on his offer when he ponders the question (originally posed by Lipnick) of "Orphan" or "Dame" right before inviting Audrey into the Earle.  Earlier, Charlie had mentioned that his parents have both passed on, making him the orphan that Barton considers turning to but ultimately passes over in favour of the dame Audrey.  Ironically, Audrey too arouses Barton from his bed when she shows up at the Earle, although lying there with his head buried under the pillow Barton does not appear to be attempting to sleep so much as hiding from an all-consuming void which is dangerously close to getting the best of him.

Through his successful seduction of Audrey (or vice versa), Barton ostensibly appears to have beaten the Earle, for he not only gets to satisfy his long-frustrated sexual and escapist urges, but he also gets to sleep and, although the mosquito once again proves a disruption, Barton finally appears to defeat the mosquito by swatting it as it perches itself upon Audrey's body.  It becomes apparent, however, that the mosquito, in offering itself up for sacrifice, has played a final trick on Barton, beckoning him to strike Audrey and uncover the most horrific disturbance imaginable.  The Earle is very much on top of the situation.

It's at this dramatic midway twist that the film finally steps into the territory of a full-blown nightmare, raising the question as to whether Barton really is now asleep and dreaming.  This is a fairly improbable turn of events, a sledgehammer shock which goes far beyond the subdued peculiarities of the initial half.  I'd say that Cheshire/Ashbrook's "Videodrome" theory might have more credibility here than at the start of the film as they propose, as the film itself seems to radically change direction at this point.  At the same time, the screaming, hysterical Barton has never appeared more animated and alive.  When Barton does attempt to remove himself, by passing out, it is one of the facets of the Earle, Charlie, that aggressively restores him to the present.  Barton has not escaped the Earle, which continues to have a tight hold on him, but it now seems to be playing a very different game to the one before, in which the muted discomfort of Barton's earlier predicament are replaced by far more sensational twists and revelations, and from which Barton actually rediscovers his ability to write.  It is as if the Earle has allowed Barton to escape down one hole in its dark and squalid piping, only to surface and wake up in a different reality altogether.  This is what has happened, more or less, and from here on in Barton Fink becomes less a film about the turmoils of writer's block than the monstrosities of the mind untethered.

A Day or a Lifetime - Lou Breeze (R.I.P. Jon Polito)

 

Note: This entry is a tribute to Jon Polito, who passed away on 1st September 2016 at age 65, leaving behind a rich and prolific legacy of character acting which includes appearances in five Coen brothers films.  Among them was Barton Fink, where he played the role of Lou Breeze, the quiet and much-abused personal assistant of Capitol Pictures big cheese Jack Lipnick.  The Coens had written the part of Lou Breeze specifically for Polito, but ironically Polito was more interested in the role of Lipnick, which he considered by far the juicer job, and initially turned down their offer.  As recounted by Polito in this A.V. Club interview, it was thanks to a conversation with fellow Coens regular Frances McDormand that he was persuaded otherwise.

Lou, who appears in three scenes throughout the film, is a deceptively subtle character, one who initially appears to be little more than a mumbling dogsbody to a much more powerful and imposing presence, so perhaps it's understandable that Polito worried about the role not being challenging enough.  By the end of the film, Lou reveals himself to be a far shrewder and more manipulative figure than Barton could ever have pegged him for.  One of the recurring themes of Barton Fink has to do with the falseness of Hollywood; the notion that no one whom Barton encounters upon his increasingly disorientating journey is ever quite what they appear, and the more sordid realities which occasionally manage to seep their way through to the surface.  The relationship between Lipnick and Lou is one of the more muted examples of these falsities in action, but also one of the most fascinating.

For much of the time, Lou acts as an obvious foil to Lipnick's excesses; whereas Lipnick is brash, aggressive and overblown, Lou is largely silent and, what with his hunched, shuffling movements and hushed tone of voice on the scant occasions that he does speak, appears timid and uneasy.  What little Lou does say tends to be sensible, observant and to the point.  As Lipnick prattles on endlessly about that "Barton Fink feeling" and how excited he is about it, Lou seems to recognise Barton as being severely out of his depth from the start, suggesting that the studio write a treatment for the Wallace Beary wrestling picture before handing it over to him, a reasonable idea that is immediately shot down by Lipnick.  Lou spends a good chunk of his first and second appearances shuffling back and forth in order to supply Barton with beverages, although his primary purpose is to act as a kind of whipping boy for any displays of incompetence or naivety on Barton's part; someone whom Lipnick can continually rubbish in order to make Barton seem valued and important by comparison.  Lipnick never misses an opportunity to undermine Lou in front of Barton, asking him questions which he then does not allow him to answer, belittling him as a "poor schmuck" who used to have shares in the company but "muscled out" behind his back and openly ridiculing him as having less perspective upon the ins and outs of the picture business than Barton (and poor Lou looks so dejected when he does).  The noticeably rough, wordless manner with which Lou directs Barton around Lipnick's office and later removes him at the end of the scene suggests a very different story, one in which Barton is plainly several rungs lower down than Lou upon the studio ladder, and the studio's inevitable disdain for Barton as a writer is always faintly evident.

Lipnick's apparent maltreatment of Lou reaches its climax during their second meeting, which takes place out in the open beside Lipnick's pool, in another display of colourful grandiosity that comes off as startling compared to the claustrophobic squalor in which most of the film takes place.  Barton, now having to deal with the shock of Audrey's sudden demise on top of his writer's block, attempts to bluff his way through the meeting, and out of having to disclose to Lipnick the details of his non-existent screenplay.  Lou, who seems wise to Barton's floundering, suggests that he let Lipnick know exactly what he has been doing if he wishes to remain employed.  A reasonable injunction, which nevertheless appears to backfire dramatically when Lipnick launches into a furious tirade over his audacity in daring to tell an artist like Barton what to do.  When Lou defiantly refuses to grovel in humility before Barton, Lipnick dismisses him, much to Barton's shock.  The writer, we have been told, is King of Capitol Pictures, and Lipnick is seemingly quite happy to roll the heads of anyone who dares to infer otherwise.  It is, however (and not at all surprisingly), an entirely false gesture, one that Lipnick and Lou are strongly implied to have colluded in on previous occasions with writers who have been similarly non-compliant.  Judging by the look of suppressed fury on Lipnick's face, he isn't buying Barton's "work in progress" ruse, but for now it's Lou who is required to take the fall, in a blatant display of theatrics designed to spare Barton for as long as the studio's interest in him lasts.  Perceptive viewers might have noticed the subtle non-verbal exchange which takes place between Lipnick and Lou before the latter turns to address Barton.  With Barton choking out his feeble defence, we see Lipnick make a sideways glance toward Lou, who nods in understanding.  Having delivered his warning to Barton, Lou turns back to Lipnick, a distinctly knowing twitch in his eye.  To echo sentiments expressed by Barton during his second meeting with Charlie, Lou is a man who truly knows what's expected of him, or "the drill", as it were.  Sure enough, when Barton heads back to Lipnick's office for the final time toward the end of the film, we see that Lou is still present, and still very much in Lipnick's employ.

Notably, Lou's statements to Barton carry the implicit threat that, "the contents of your head are the property of Capitol Pictures", at which point he momentarily dips into Charlie's lexicon, with the head serving as an embodiment both of power and entrapment (it is through the presumed ownership of quite another head, of course, that Barton finds his apparent liberation). Lou's warning is borne out by the end of the film when Lipnick informs Barton that his failure to produce a usable screenplay has stranded him in screenwriter limbo: "Anything you write will be the property of Capitol Pictures.  And Capitol Pictures is not going to produce anything that you write.  Not until you grow up a little."  Having demonstrated that he won't be much of an asset to Capitol Pictures, Barton's fate now is to be completely broken by the system, and Lipnick implements this by ensuring that Barton is perpetually trapped with the contents of his head, which he is told no longer belong to him, forced to continue writing under the studio but with no real means of mobility or expression.  In this sense, Barton's head has essentially been severed from his body, deprived of all agency, and boxed up in a manner that mirrors the more literal treatment given by Charlie to Audrey.

One of the most striking changes to the established order of business at the final meeting is that Lou, who'd previously positioned himself at an almost uncomfortably close proximity to Barton, now maintains a firm distance from him, except for at the very end when he gets to eject him in the usual manner.  There are few more telling signals of Barton's fall from grace than in this supposed dogsbody no longer having to maintain the illusion of being on a close or comparable footing to him, much less run back and forth fetching cups of coffee for this lowly and undesirable writer.  It was Lou, we also learn, who actually read Barton's screenplay for The Burlyman and reported its merits (or lack of) back to Lipnick; Barton's fate has essentially been resting in Lou's hands the entire time, rendering Lipnick's overblown rants about that "Barton Fink feeling" completely meaningless.  Lou may be a bootlicker to the core, to the extent that he's willing to be mocked and humiliated whenever Lipnick is looking to butter up the new blood (when Geisler telephones Lou at one point in the film, he taunts him by asking "how's Lipnick's ass smell this morning?", an insinuation that seems entirely astute), but he himself is no fool, and he ultimately doesn't suffer them (save Lipnick himself, of course) for long.

A Day or a Lifetime - Charlie Calls #3 (and Peeling Wallpaper #2)

Charlie: Ah, you'll lick this picture business, believe me.  You've got a head on your shoulders, and what is it they say?  Where there's a head, there's hope?

Barton: Where there's life, there's hope.

Charlie: See, that proves you really are a writer!

It's evident during Charlie's third visit to Room 621 just how much better-disposed toward him Barton has become since their initial meeting.  Whereas Barton was previously standoffish or at the very least generally rather condescending toward Charlie, and had always tried to maintain a safe distance by remaining at his desk throughout his visits, here he quite willingly sits beside him on the bed as the two of them put on the correct pair of shoes and enjoy a round of liquor together.  With all that he's experienced in Hollywood, Barton's appreciation for Charlie's cordial, down-to-earth demeanour is greatly increasing, and Charlie's intermittent visits have become a vital source of moral support to him.  So much so that the bombshell that Charlie delivers on this particular occasion threatens to leave Barton in rather a difficult position - Charlie will be leaving the Hotel Earle in just a few days.

When Charlie enters the room with Barton's shoes in hand he appears in lower spirits than usual.  He attributes this to having had a difficult and wearying day on the insurance-selling front, reportedly having failed to sell any polices and having endured his share of verbal abuse from some of the housewives he encountered.  Charlie indicates that he is particularly sensitive when it comes to being teased about his weight, which he describes as being his "cross to bear".  A peculiar choice of expression, perhaps, for a character who is commonly perceived as being the literal Devil, but then Charlie's language has always indicated a curious Christ fixation alongside his more obvious interests in heads and damnation, which ties in neatly with the duality of his character.  Charlie sees himself as a benevolent protector who provides people with a much needed service, so much so that when Barton (who, for once, does not cut Charlie off or condescend him at any point during this meeting) suggests that the housewives might have teased him as a defence mechanism, Charlie finds the notion that anyone might perceive him as threatening to be incomprehensible.  At the same time, his motto, "a little peace of mind", provides a clue as to his darker practices.  When Barton later runs into Mastrionatti and Deustch, they inform him that Charlie/Karl's murder spree started in Kansas City with a couple of housewives who presumably got on the wrong side of him.  Based on what they also disclose, it's safe to assume that the next character that Charlie goes on to describe, a physician who failed to offer any help or insight into his ear infection, wound up becoming his latest victim - here Charlie refers, more ambiguously, to their interactions having "led to an argument".

Charlie then shifts the topic of conversation to Barton's recent struggles with the life of the mind.  At this point, Barton is beginning to show awareness of his own limitations, suggesting that perhaps he already exhausted all of his potential as a writer when he wrote Bare Ruined Choirs.  A valuable insight, although one which only grasps about half the picture - Barton does, it seems, only have one idea within him, although this is a self-imposed limitation which arises from just how firmly entrenched he is inside his own head.  Charlie decides to cut to the chase by hitting at what he deems to be the mutual source of their respective frustrations - namely, a lack of sexual satisfaction.  He asks Barton if the love-making couple in the room next to his are a problem, making it plain just how tantalising their activities are to his own intense feelings of sexual starvation and evoking a connection, suggested elsewhere in the film, between sexual and creative energies.  Barton is taken back by Charlie's observation, questioning how he would even know about the couple when they are not located next to him.  Charlie states that he sometimes feels as if he hears everything that goes on inside the Earle; when he refers to the "pipes or something" this is actually a call-back to a scene that was removed from the theatrical cut, in which Barton discovers that his sink has become clogged with the wad of cotton wool from Charlie's infected ear.  Even shorn of this context, it remains an important line, as the implication that Charlie can hear everything that goes on in Barton's room through the pipes (whether this is achieved by bugging the sink with supernatural cotton wool or a more general uncanny connection with the hotel as a whole) will surface again when Barton persuades Audrey to spend the night with him.  The original script also contains an additional statement from Charlie not present in the film itself - "I'm just glad I don't have to ply my trade in the wee, wee hours" - a double entendre which also foreshadows the overnight horrors that will shortly be calling at Room 621.

Charlie assures Barton that he will finish his screenplay, citing an expression coined by Roman comedy writer Terence, "Where there's life, there's hope", but giving it his own personalised twist: "where there's a head, there's hope" (Barton will later discover this to be entirely true, when Charlie leaves a mysterious package in his care).  Barton returns the moral support by telling Charlie that he is confident he will sell many polices tomorrow, prompting Charlie to deliver the bad news that he will shortly be leaving the Earle.  Presumably, it is in Charlie's interests to flee and lay low for a while following the outcome of his doctor's appointment earlier today; no doubt he anticipates the arrival of Mastrionatti and Deustch or their ilk, but he allows Barton to think that he is going away purely for business purposes.  He tells him that "things have gotten all balled up at the Head Office," a statement that potentially references his own inability to keep his murderous urges in check, but could just as easily refer to Barton's writer's block and his increasingly fraught mental state - a hint that Charlie's activities may be emblematic of the darker recesses of Barton's mind that are being unleashed by the frustrations of his mental blockage.  Barton expresses his sorrow that Charlie will be leaving, confessing that he will miss him, but Charlie assures him that he will be back at the Earle sooner or later - the Earle is, after all, the type of place in which one tends to find themselves lost for a lifetime.

Having learned that Charlie will be heading to New York, Barton supplies him with details as to where to find his parents and his uncle, with the intention of enabling Charlie to enjoy a home-cooked meal while he is out there.  This is by far the kindest and most thoughtful gesture that Barton has made to Charlie since the two of them first met.  It is also one of the greatest mistakes that Barton has made so far (shy only of invoking Charlie's attentions in the first place or, one might argue, agreeing to the job in Hollywood at all), for, by offering his family up in this manner, Barton may be satisfying a much more gruesome appetite of Charlie's.  It is particularly eerie, then, that a strip of wallpaper should happen to peel as soon as Barton has passed the details onto Charlie, as if in direct reaction to Barton's gesture.  Wallpaper is a significant motif in Barton Fink, and the last time that Barton had to contend with peeling paper, it seemed emblematic of the wrath of Charlie; a sign that the Beast had truly been awakened and intended to keep a tight hold upon him.  Here, it happens in Charlie's presence, and appears to induce feelings of shame in Charlie, who describes the Earle as a "dump" and asks Barton if he finds it pathetic.  The purpose of wallpaper, as we know, is to cover things up; here, peeling wallpaper functions as an exposure of the sticky, feverish ugliness that lies below the surface, a hint that Charlie's ostensibly very amiable demeanour conceals a more grotesque reality, which Barton has now fated himself to discover in due course.  The complete unraveling of everything that Barton thinks he knows will truly begin from this point onward.

As Charlie makes his way out of Room 621, Barton asks him not to leave without first saying goodbye.  Charlie assures him that he will see him again, a statement in which there lurks yet another of his implicit threats.  For indeed, as far as Barton's relations with Charlie are going, things are only just getting started.

A Day or a Lifetime - Early morning traffic is audible, as is the cry of fishmongers

 

Before we get on to the details of Charlie's third visit, I wanted to backtrack and talk a bit more about the opening scenario of Barton's screenplay for The Burlyman, something that I only vaguely touched upon in my last post on Hotel Earle.  I noted there that Barton has a blatant fixation with fishmongers which seems to dominate just about everything we get to see him write (which, admittedly, isn't much, but it does nonetheless provide us with a crucial glimpse into his world view and creative approach).  We know that Barton's play, Bare Ruined Choirs, was about a family of fishmongers working at the Fulton Fish Market, and his need to refer to the cries said fishmongers (aka the titular "choir" of his previous work) in his opening set-up for The Burlyman is frequently interpreted as a sign of his limited creativity.  Barton himself invites such an interpretation when he confides in Charlie his fear that he only ever had one idea in him, and that once his play was written he was left with nothing else to say.  Based on the small snippet of dialogue we hear from his finished script for The Burlyman via Mastrionatti and Deutsch (which distinctly mirrors the closing dialogue of Bare Ruined Choirs) it appears that he could have been onto something all along.

What is certainly curious (and something that I've honestly never seen mentioned in other analyses of the film) is that Barton's fishmonger obsession appears to be precisely what summons Charlie into being in the first place, and thus sets everything else into motion.  In the build-up to Charlie's initial visit, when Barton has begun work upon his screenplay, his inclusion of fishmongers in the initial setting is clearly shown to be an afterthought.  Barton sets the opening in a tenement building in Manhattan's Lower East Side, which already threatens to take us right back into the world of Bare Ruined Choirs.  Barton initially adds a full stop after the specification that "Early morning traffic is audible" but pauses and decides to go back and override that full stop with a comma, so that he can tack on that extra, seemingly arbitrary detail about the fishmongers.  It is immediately after this that he suddenly gains an awareness of the sounds coming from the room next door, and finds himself no longer able to focus upon his work.  It is not clear whether the noises Charlie is making are the sounds of crying or laughter, but his disturbance can be interpreted as a reaction to Barton's amendment either way -  if he is laughing, it is in derision of the naive young writer who has just sealed his fate with his foolishness, and if he is crying, it is in pained anticipation of the horrors to come.  Or perhaps the indistinctness of Charlie's reaction indicates that he feels a mixture of both.  I would even be so bold as to propose that this ostensibly minor action on Barton's part is one of the key defining moments of the film, and certainly the most important prior to Barton inviting Audrey into the Earle.  The moment seems so small and subdued that it is easy to overlook it altogether, but it is here that Barton is essentially setting himself up for failure - his inability to hear past the cries of the fishmongers are what doom him to keep on repeating the cycle of entrapment and self-absorption that prevent him from escaping from himself.  They are the filter through which he insists upon seeing the world, and which ensures that he stays firmly locked within his own head.  Barton denies himself the opportunity to grow, either as a person or as a writer.  He might indeed be correct when he suggests that he may have only ever had one story inside of him, but he unwittingly betrays the source of his limitations in the process - it never occurs to him that other people might have stories that could inform and enrich his own; in fact, Barton seems to be entirely averse to the idea, reflexively cutting off Charlie whenever he attempts to recount any of his own anecdotes.

Barton's increasingly estranged connection to the "real world" (a term I must use very loosely in the context of this film) is reflected in the minor but nevertheless very telling modifications he makes to his initial opening.  Later (before Charlie's third visit), we see a revised version in which the setting has now been moved to a tenement hotel on the Lower East Side (better reflecting Barton's current environs), and which states that it is too early for the sounds of traffic to be audible (hinting at the increasing extent of Barton's isolation, while the reference to it being "early" recalls one of the closing statements from Bare Ruined Choirs), although the fishmongers will still not be silenced.  The bare ruined choir threatens to haunt Barton for all eternity.

As it turns out, the fishmongers of Barton's world are indeed eternal and have existed since the beginning of time, something later confirmed when, in the post-murder stages of the film, he discovers a Gideons Bible in his hotel desk drawer and flips it open to see that the opening words of his screenplay have replaced the opening verses of Genesis (something else of great significance happens here, but we can save that particular detail for later).  This is one of the film's most overtly surreal moments, which many interpret as the ultimate indication of Barton's hubris, although it comes as a nightmarish blow to Barton, arriving as it does during a time of immense shock, fear and desperation. He looks to the Bible, presumably for some form of hope or enlightenment, only to find his own solipsism staring him right in the face.  He is essentially being mocked by his own self-absorption in this scene, which speaks volumes about the sense of self-loathing that accompanies his self-obsession.  It is also indicative of the true nature of the Hotel Earle - not quite a literal Hell, as is commonly assumed, but representative of the inner workings of Barton's own mind, where everything is murky and univiting, the outside world is heavily shut out, and the Universe literally does begin and end with the distant cries of fishmongers.

A Day or a Lifetime - Mosquito Encounter #3 (and another man's shoes)

Barton's been grappling with the opening to his wrestling picture screenplay for long enough now and the pressure is beginning to intensify.  Since his last meeting with Charlie he's had the opportunity to become better acquainted with Mayhew and Audrey, and witnessed first-hand the extent of the former's alcoholism and what a sorry, washed-up wreck his experiences in Hollywood have made of him.  Audrey hints that Barton's unwillingness to put himself in another individual's shoes may be his shortcoming, a suggestion which only serves to deepen Barton's confusion.

Right before Charlie calls on Barton for the third time (and the last before it all really goes to hell for Barton) he is visited by another of his old acquaintances at the Earle - the mosquito, who disturbs Barton as he lies, apparently sleeping, on his hotel bed.  Once again, we close in upon Barton from the mosquito's perspective, reinforcing the sensation that Barton is not only being watched but also being stalked by some unseen predatory presence.  With the camera nearly upon him, Barton wakes with a sudden start and reflexively slaps himself in the face, only to find that the phantom ectoparasite has vanished mysteriously into thin air.  Worth noting is that this is the first point in the film in which we actually see Barton sleeping - at most, previously, we had seen him lying motionless on his bed during his first night at the Earle, visibly unsettled by the disembodied whines of the mosquito.  As we've acknowledged multiple times, there are numerous interpretations of Barton Fink which have it that not all of Barton's Hollywood experiences are objectively "real" within the context of the film, and that he spends at least a portion of the film deep in troubled fantasy (a reading potentially supported by the film's opening sequence, in which the protagonist of Bare Ruined Choirs insists that he's awake for the first time in years), but distinguishing exactly where the dreaming ends and reality begins is a tricky business.  Barton's literal awakening in this scene might prompt speculation that the scene which immediately preceded it - the unpleasant picnic with Mayhew and Audrey - was merely a dream, although this immediately raises the question as to whereabouts in the film we're expected to interpret Barton as having fallen asleep in the first place.

Once again, I'm compelled to view the Earle and its Hollywood exterior as two oppositional spaces, each as feverish and as surreal as the other, as opposed to one representing "reality" and the other pure fantasy.  The picture of the sun-bathing beauty that hangs above Barton's desk is the obvious anomaly within the environs of the Earle, as it provides a window into a another world altogether (albeit a false one).  As I've discussed previously, Charlie appears to have a (one-sided?) rivalry with this picture, so much so that whenever Barton becomes particularly transfixed with the image, the rest of the Earle (which seems to have an uncanny connection with Charlie) reacts in protest.  But what of Audrey, the more corporeal object of Barton's desires?  Is it that the mosquito, in waking Barton, has forcibly removed him from Audrey's domain and dragged him back safely into the barren walls of the Earle, where he can longer look upon her?  Such a reading would suggest that the mosquito is allied with Charlie (much as the peeling wallpaper and the hotel pipes seem to be), and certainly, its bloodsucking tendencies could be interpreted as mirroring Charlie's own predatory habits, although a case could equally be made for the mosquito having a connection to Audrey (when Barton finally sees the mosquito in its physical form, it follows on from his successful sexual seduction of Audrey, and his vanquishing of the creature once and for all comes just before the revelation that Audrey has been brutally murdered).  Mostly, the mosquito seems to be a threatening force all of its own - something that, according to Geisler, should not exist in this world and yet has found its way in regardless.  The mosquito is an indication that something is deeply amiss in this world, an intrusion into Barton's psyche that persistently haunts him but that he is unable to pinpoint and expel.

Unsettled by the mosquito, Barton decides to take another stab at getting his wrestling scenario off the ground.  The screenplay has barely progressed beyond his description of the initial setting, although it has been altered slightly - whereas Barton originally opened the film in a "tenement building in Manhattan's Lower East Side", where early morning traffic and the cry of fishmongers are both audible, it now takes place in a "tenement hotel on the Lower East Side".  Those fishmongers can still be heard (Barton will forever have fishmongers, the ultimate signing of his own solipsism, on the brain), although the traffic has notably been silenced, an indication of Barton's deepening isolation.  A sudden spark of inspiration appears to strike, for Barton begins to type and, as he does so, the camera pans downwards to show his feet sliding into the shoes beneath the desk - as it turns out, he has somehow ended up with Charlie's shoes (due to an accidental mix-up on Chet's part, or part of Charlie's scheme all along?), which are several sizes too big for him.

Some, such as Eddie Robson in the Virgin Film publication Coen Brothers, argue that Barton's feet being too small for Charlie's shoes is an illustration of how severely out of his depth he is in the world of the Common Man.  Others might point to the obvious metaphor of putting oneself in someone else's shoes and interpret the scene as an indication of just how alien and confusing the whole process is to Barton, particularly in light of Audrey's earlier statement about the nature of empathy.  Nevertheless, John Turturro's performance (the quizzical, uneasy smile) suggests that the experience, while clearly overwhelming for Barton, is not an altogether unpleasant one.  He moves his feet back and forth through Charlie's shoes as if finally having the opportunity to survey another individual's personal space is of genuine, if somewhat inexplicable fascination to him.  Putting his feet into Charlie's shoes is, both literally and figuratively, a liberating experience for Barton, who savours the additional foot-room.  We may have garnered from the closing dialogue to Bare Ruined Choirs that Barton, above all, yearns for an escape, being as constrained by his own ego as he is enamoured and reassured by it.  If Barton put himself and his own perspective at the centre when he was writing Bare Ruined Choirs, it is through his unconscious fascination with Charlie that he begins to find a window into the world of The Burlyman - we see that he has finally had enough of a breakthrough to have introduced his protagonist as "a large man in tights".  To make the connection totally complete, the phrase itself appears to summon Charlie into the room, for he immediately appears at Barton's door with the correct pair of shoes in hand.

A Day or a Lifetime - Barton Bonds with Charlie (Deleted Scene)

 
It's February 14th, and what better way to mark the occasion than with an entry devoted to one of the all-time great screen couples, Charlie Meadows and Barton Fink?

Anyone who's read the script for Barton Fink or trawled through the deleted scenes included in home media releases will know that the initial meeting between Barton and Charlie originally ran on a little longer than in the theatrical cut of the film.  Once Barton has delivered his spiel about his ambitions to create a theatre about and for the Common Man, Charlie has a little more to say about his own preoccupations, and he and Barton enjoy a moment of shared amusement.   Bolding indicates what was missing from the theatrical cut.

Barton: ...to put it in your language, the theatre becomes as phony as a three dollar bill.

Charlie: Well, I guess there's a tragedy right there.

Barton: Frequently played, seldom remarked.

Charlie: Whatever that means. [Laughs]

Barton: [Laughs] You're alright Charlie.  I'm glad you stopped by.  I'm sorry if I...well, I know I sometimes run on.

Charlie: Hell no, Jesus!  I'm the kind of guy I'll let you know if I'm bored.  I find it all pretty damned interesting.  I'm the kind of schmoe that's generally interested in the other guy's point of view.

Barton: Well, we've got something in common then.

Much of what was cut here serves mainly to reinforce details and information that have already been established elsewhere, namely that Barton is a hypocrite (his obvious lie when he professes to share Charlie's interest in what anybody else has to say) and that Charlie's language, while ostensibly lively, indicates preoccupations with hellishness and suffering (yet another "Hell", "Damned" and "Jesus" work their way quite starkly into his speech).  The most interesting point to be excised from this scene concerns Charlie's assurances that he would let Barton know if he were tiring of him - another ostensibly genial remark that seems implicitly threatening when viewed with hindsight.  And while the viewer recognises Barton's claim that he shares Charlie's interest in other people's perspectives to be false, it is nevertheless an early hint that Barton, self-appointed pilgrim of the life of the mind, may have found both a kindred spirit and his match in Charlie, someone who already knows more about the life of the mind than Barton can possibly wrap his head around.

All in all, it's not as baffling or unfortunate a cut as the scene in which Barton uncovers Charlie's wad of cotton wool from his sink, although if I regret anything being removed here it's the moment in which Barton and Charlie share a spontaneous outburst of laughter (some of Barton's laughter does make it into the theatrical version but it's not clear that this is in unison with Charlie).  It's here that the initial animosity shown by Barton toward Charlie completely dissolves and we get a sense of the two of them making a genuine human connection.  In the theatrical cut, Barton appears to warm up to Charlie solely on account of his willingness to act as an audience to his own pretensions, but this moment of laughter suggests that there may have been deeper human feelings involved right from the start.

A Day or a Lifetime - Sink Overflowing (Deleted Scene)

The following scene was excised from the final cut of Barton Fink but can be found among the deleted scenes included as bonus content in some home media releases of film.  It follows on from Barton's second meeting with Charlie, revealing what happens in the immediate aftermath once Charlie has left the room.

Barton, still recovering from the head-banging he endured during Charlie's wrestling demonstration, starts gazing up at the picture of the sunbathing woman when he is suddenly interrupted by the sound of dripping coming from the bathroom.  He goes to investigate, and finds the taps in his sink running and the bowl overflowing.  Barton puts his hand into the water and pulls out the source of the obstruction - a small wad of cotton wool which he eventually recognises as being the same wad that Charlie had inserted up his infected ear a little earlier.  Barton flinches with revulsion and drops the cotton back into the sink, where it is immediately swallowed by the plug hole.

Particularly sharp-eyed viewers may have noticed that when Charlie steps back out of the bathroom (having gone in there, ostensibly, to fetch a damp cloth for Barton's battered head) the cotton wad has disappeared from his infected ear, but there is no explanation as to what actually becomes of it in the final cut of the film.  Perhaps viewers are able to make their own inferences, but there is nothing to explicitly indicate that he disposed of it in Barton's sink.

Myself, I find it a bit unfortunate that this moment wound up being cut because, as noted in the previous entry, it disrupts a pattern that was visibly being established in terms of Charlie's visits to Room 621 and how each of these scenes concluded.  That is to say, Barton's attentions fall back upon the picture of the sunbathing woman, only to be diverted by an aspect of his surrounding environs mysteriously unraveling, be it the wallpaper peeling or the bathroom sink overflowing.  Whenever Charlie departs, he always leaves behind a little piece of chaos for Barton to contend with, and dripping liquids seem to be a recurring feature of this (dripping, we recall, indicates an underlying malaise and ugliness that goes beyond concealment or containment).

It is also, quite frankly, rather a baffling cut, because Charlie indirectly refers back to the occurrence during his third meeting with Barton, when he comments that he feels like he hears everything that goes on in the Earle, due to "pipes or something".  In the absence of this particular scene, the audience is unable to make the connection between Charlie hearing everything through the pipes of the hotel and the cotton wad from his infected ear having previously been ingested by said pipes.  Later still in the film, when Barton and Audrey spend the night together, a tracking shot shifts us away from the love-making couple and into the bathroom, where it closes in upon the plug hole and goes deep into the pipes, a beautifully sordid shot that nevertheless loses some of its impact without the knowledge that we are making the exact same journey as Charlie's cotton wad did prior.  I can only assume that the Coens deemed Charlie's previous reference to the hotel pipes to be sufficient enough a callback to enable the audience to make sense of this sequence. In fairness, Charlie appears to have an uncanny enough connection with the Hotel Earle already without the need to infer that his knowledge of everything that happens therein is specifically due to him "bugging" the bathroom pipes with wads of cotton wool from his ear.