So far in my ongoing analysis of Barton Fink I've mainly been focussing upon the Hotel Earle and the various motifs and happenings therein. Truthfully, Barton Fink is a film about two seemingly very distinctive worlds - the dank nocturnal world of the Earle and the diurnal Hollywood exterior that Barton must navigate in trying to locate his bearings as a screenwriter - and what goes on beyond the Earle's sickly dripping walls is every bit as significant as what happens within. A deliberate contrast exists between the two during the first half of the film, much of which is conveyed through use of light, colour and sound - the Earle is dark, decrepit and deserted, as external Hollywood is bright, garish and populated. Despite these distinctions, neither world seems any less alienating or discomforting than the other, and the feverishness that pervades the Earle is every bit as prevalent in the world outside. Within the Earle it is the soft whines of a mosquito that fill the painful silences and appear threatening, while elsewhere in Hollywood the monotonous tapping of a secretary upon a typewriter fulfils the same purpose. Amid the disorientation, each world offers one figure who provides Barton with a form of emotional anchor - Charlie with his intermittent bursts of companionship, and Audrey with her immense tolerance and emphasis upon understanding and compassion. And yet these two worlds do not mix - it is when Barton, midway through the film, oversteps his bound and brings the two together, in having Audrey spend the night with him at the Earle, that the experience explodes into an absolute nightmare.
The Earle is such an odd and alienating place that it's tempting to interpret it as a kind of "dream" world that Barton retreats to on a nightly basis. The theory that at least part of the film represents Barton's dreams/fantasies is a popular one, and we see Barton lying down upon his bed at multiple points, prompting the question as to whether Barton is actually awake for the entirety of the film. This is arguably foreshadowed in dialogue overheard from Barton's play, Bare Ruined Choirs, at the start of the film, in which one character (speaking, tellingly, with John Turturro's voice) denies that he is dreaming, insisting that, "I'm awake for the first time in years." It would be naïve, however, to assume that the outer Hollywood should be inherently more grounded in reality than the Earle. In a deleted piece of dialogue from the scene in which Barton discusses his prospective move to Hollywood with his agent, Garland Stanford (David Warrilow), Garland warns the viewer, indirectly, to be on their guard by suggesting that the words "Hollywood" and "realism" do not readily mesh within the same sentence. Barton likewise anticipates a lack of reality in Hollywood, in the sense that the perpetual glamour and hedonism of meeting big shots and attending parties will inevitably distance him from the "reality" in which his work is supposedly grounded - that is, the life and mind of the common man. This notion of Hollywood of course is pure fantasy, at least for the likes of Barton, who gets absolutely no whiff of glamour once he's out there. If the scenes at the Earle play out like a nightmare, albeit an eerily mundane one in the early stages, then Barton's "waking" life in the daylight of Hollywood offers no refuge, instead assuming a dislocating, nightmarish quality all of its own.
A sense that the two worlds are not so dissimilar occurs during the scene in which Barton has lunch with Geisler. Barton, who spends much of the film in isolation, here finds himself in an unusually crowded venue (the only other occasions in which he is seen in the presence of numerous people are in the Broadway scenes at the start of the film and later on at the USO dance) but the sense of alienation is still rampant, with the conversations of the adjacent diners translating into a sea of unintelligible babble. Strikingly, the backdrop of the restaurant is dominated by a mural depicting a painting of a New York street scene, with the letters of "New York Café" painted on backwards in order to evoke the sensation that one is gazing from their table into an authentic view of the world outside (ironically, it is a recreation of the world that Barton has left behind). In other words, it is a false window and, while larger and grander than the picture of the bikini-clad woman in Barton's room at the Earle, there is an obvious connection between the two images in providing a view into a world that is not actually there. Throughout much of the film, the picture in Barton's room has little relevance to the Hollywood that Barton actually encounters, either inside the Earle or out (the closest that it arguably comes is in Barton's fascination with the picture mirroring his longing for Audrey), and its primary function for Barton is escapism. This is signified in the sounds of waves and gulls (sounds that are otherwise out of place within the walls of the Earle) that are heard whenever Barton's gaze falls upon it, indicating that it is transporting him out of his squalid surroundings and into the realm of fantasy. The mural in the restaurant conveys a similar lack of reality, and suggests that the world outside of the Earle is just as susceptible to escapism, and every bit as consigned to living in a state of fantasy.
The most dangerous aspect of a false window is that it obscures what is actually lurking outside. Much as we never see the real view of the world that exists outside of the restaurant, Barton never really gets a sense of where he stands in Hollywood and how he is expected to function in it. Garland's words are borne out, in part, by the utter phoniness of the figures that Barton encounters there, with Lipnick being a notable example (no viewer can surely believe Lipnick when he tells Barton, in their first meeting, that the writer is king at Capitol Pictures, no matter what claims he makes about the size of their paycheck). We later learn that W.P. Mayhew's screenwriting career is also a sham - Mayhew has long been consumed by alcoholism and it has fallen upon the long-suffering Audrey to ghost write his more recent work. It is the confusing, superficial and contradictory nature of much of the talk in external Hollywood that makes Charlie, for all of his eccentricities, seem all the more affable and down-to-earth in his nightly conversations with Barton. And yet he too is not all that he seems.
No comments:
Post a Comment