BARTON FINK (1991) *** The Coen brothers-widely and properly acclaimed for their originality-borrow the hotel hallways from The Shining , and the life dynamic of F. Scott Fitzgerald (he's not named; if you know enough about it to recognize him you're probably already sympathetic; if not, it won't turn you against him; well played) to focus on an early moment after Hollywood had already been turned, a meditation on writing, and a bunch of other weird stuff. For the first half nothing happens. John Turturro is brilliant as a dull guy. Really dull. You think you want something to happen? Really? Ok, so they light the switch and things start going off everywhere...maybe we should learn to appreciate our quiet hotel room, or the beach on even bad-weathered days, we forget that the universe can turn on us like this . The culmination of it all is, existentially, the only one that we can have while we're still alive: we're out here anyway, we survived, that's good, we've got a chance, or whatever chance we ever had in the first place. That's ok, it may be as close to eternal truth as we're going to get until we prove our immorality...but it's unsettling. Existentialism that forgets the dancing.
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