That Barton Fink Feeling

I've come to the realization that my favorite Coen Brothers movie is the one that I saw last. Having said that, the wife and I caught Barton Fink last night. It was the first time I'd seen it in 13 years or so, and I had forgotten what a truly bizarre film it is. So, in my usual obsessive compulsive way, I looked online for reviews and interpretations at my earliest convenience. Here's a quote from the best (and ugliest) site I found, Cinepad:

Barton views most of the people around him as incomprehensible grotesques because they're so much coarser, so much more animated and alive than he is. They curse, they drink, they sweat, they spit, they vomit, they have sex -- but Barton is so repressed that he's become completely disconnected, not only from others but from his own body. So, he sits behind his typewriter, imprisoned in his own head and his own room, and stares dully at a framed tinted photo of a beautiful girl gazing out over the ocean at a sky as blank as the paper in Barton's typewriter. Barton's life of the mind is composed of nothing but barren abstractions. It takes Charlie to bring Barton crashing into the real, physical world.

You can read the rest of it here, if you so desire.

And as a bonus, there's an interview with Joel & Ethan Coen, conducted by the same writer before Barton Fink's release. Right about ... here.