When you consider a few of the greater, extra commercially profitable movies made by the legendary directing brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, referred to as the Coen Brothers, titles like Fargo, No Country for Old Men, Raising Arizona, and The Big Lebowski typically pop to thoughts. Before they made a reputation for themselves with a spate of remarkably memorable films, they had been nonetheless experimenting with the surreal and quirky nature of their characters and storylines. Barton Fink is without doubt one of the filmmaker duo’s lesser-known movies simply seven years into their careers that started with their characteristic debut Blood Simple. It was made in 1991 and the lead function was written with John Turturro in thoughts to play the titular character.
The story of the New York playwright who heads out to Los Angeles to put in writing a B-movie within the mid-Forties has the texture of the administrators beginning to actually set up their footing as creators who’re tough to categorize. While every one among their films has a heavy quantity of satirical commentary and a singular arthouse really feel within the model of Wes Anderson, they aren’t definable by style. Barton Fink is the quintessential instance of how the Coen Brothers have made a profession out of standalone choices which might be solely related by their larger-than-life misfit characters and the handful of performers that painting them (assume Turturro, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Frances McDormand, and George Clooney). And one factor the Coens have by no means executed is make a sequel. So what’s with the thrill round making a second Barton Fink film some 30-plus years after the unique?
Why ‘Barton Fink’ Deserves a Sequel
Fink is a quiet, meticulous man by nature, who takes nice pleasure within the artwork of expression via writing (He feels very very like a noirish send-up by the Coens of the misdirected idolization of writers.) So when he’s struck with a crippling case of author’s block as he unpacks his luggage in sunny Hollywood and runs right into a collection of mysterious, Coen-esque oddballs and eccentrics that keep within the Earle Hotel, he enters into disillusionment and a full-blown existential disaster. It’s a fantastic movie marked by a masterful screenplay and the deft performances of Turturro, Goodman, Tony Shaloub, and Judy Davis.
The greatest cause the Coens by no means make sequels is that they not often permit for unfastened ends. They inform a narrative from starting to center to finish. They are allegories doused with irony, parables distinctive unto themselves every earmarked for a selected time and house. And they’re chock-full of characters who had been by no means meant to make encores. Even although we might like to see what H.I. McDunnough is as much as as of late or precisely what sort of misadventures Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski has stumbled into, we shudder to consider a reprisal by some means tarnishing their cinematic legacies. So what’s completely different about Barton Fink, and who’s flaming their cigarette lighter for extra of him?
A Possible ‘Barton Fink’ Sequel
In a 2016 interview with Variety, the brothers made the stunning admission about bringing again Turturro’s character for one more run with Ethan saying, “We’re going to do a ‘Barton Fink’ sequel sooner or later.” And brother, Joel added, “That’s the one film that we thought deserved a sequel, known as ‘Old Fink.’ But we don’t need to do it till Turturro is kind of previous. He’s getting there.” So how previous do they need their muse to be precisely? Here we’re in 2023 and Turturro, the 66-year-old man who has collaborated with the administrators at least 4 occasions, is not getting any youthful, and whereas entertaining, Barton Fink just isn’t one among their most memorable characters in the way in which that McDunnough, Lebowski, Marge Gunderson, and Anton Chigurh are. In truth, Turturro has been pleading with them to convey again one other one among his characters, Jesus Quintana from The Big Lebowski for a by-product. But apparently, the Coens aren’t biting on bringing again the nimbly flamboyant trash-talking bowler any time quickly. It looks as if a Fink sequel is more likely than a Quintana one as we’re fairly certain that the Turturro is not almost as spry as he was for the function in 1998.
So What’s the Latest on the ‘Barton Fink’ Sequel?
As a lot because the filmmaking siblings need to convey Barton Fink again to the large display, it would not look like coming anytime quickly. In 2018, after wrapping The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coens determined to go their separate methods – not less than in the interim. They mentioned a few of the the reason why Ethan determined to take a break from their decades-long profession collectively attributing a few of it to the pandemic of 2020, as Ethan famous in 2022, “None of the decisions are definitive. We might make another movie. I don’t know what my next movie is going to be after this. I turned into a big baby and got bored and quit, and then the pandemic happened. Then other stuff happens and who knows?” He went on to debate how the working relationship wanted a break after so lengthy, “You begin out whenever you’re a child, and also you need to make a film. Everything’s enthusiasm and gung-ho, let’s go make a film. And the primary film is simply a great deal of enjoyable. And then the second film is a great deal of enjoyable, nearly as a lot enjoyable as the primary. And after 30 years, not that it’s no enjoyable, nevertheless it’s extra of a job than it had been… It was the expertise of creating a film. More of a grind and fewer enjoyable.” Apparently, Even the best auteurs can undergo some type of burnout.
Is a Coen Brothers Reunion Still Possible?
While the information that the brothers are taking a little bit of a breather from one another is comprehensible, it is no much less disappointing, as we love their movies (and we imply all 18 of them – aside from perhaps one or two ahem, Ladykillers). But, the silver lining is that Ethan continues to be open to reuniting with Joel, and we’re heartened by the truth that in the event that they ever do determine to do a sequel, it will likely be of the angst-riddled author, Barton Fink, and his typewriter. So we’re positively not slamming the door shut on “Old Man Fink” even when it is not official, or they have not written a phrase of dialogue for it but. And it isn’t like both of them is even near calling it quits as Joel simply completed a movie for A24 Studios known as Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind simply final yr that he partnered on together with his longtime spouse, Tricia Cooke.