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.
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