Barton Fink is a great film about creativity, or the enemy of creativity, which in this case is Barton Fink's ego. He's basically a writer who had one success with a play about working man's struggles in New York and thinks he's the best writer ever and a revolutionary and a champion of the "common man" as he puts it and the greatest ever. He makes big speeches to thin air about how theatre and movies should be about the "common man," and how the heroes and noblemen who are the subject of the old stories are basically false. He's an awkward, image obsessed man who lives in his own big golden frame. He believes solely in himself as the centre of his world and therefore feels he has the right to discriminate against everyone else. The "common man" to him like to Charles Foster Kane, a similarly egotistical and self-centred character, is a precious gem, a trophy, and yet Barton Fink seems to despise the "common man." He's a misanthrope who treats everyone awkwardly and can't warm up to anyone unless they sing his praises and put him on a pedestal. When he's advised to talk to another writer, he accidentally stumbles across a famous novelist and grovels at his feet, and yet when it turns out said novelist is a raging alcoholic who beats his secretary and has her do all his writing, he jumps at the opportunity to condemn him as the devil and takes pride in considering a flawed man beneath him. He also takes the opportunity to play white knight to his secretary and cosy up to her. Barton Fink is the ultimate fraud. He's a crawling, conniving opportunist with his nose in the air. Which isn't to say he's entirely loathsome, when he's empty and real and reacting to real situations and not full of Barton Fink, great writer in capital letters.
His saviour comes in the form of an overweight insurance salesman who warms up to him right away despite his obvious egomania and offers him a drink. This man, the perfect inspiration for the wrestling picture he's been hired to write, who even knows how to wrestle, is ignored completely when offers the great Fink some stories, and instead Fink ends up writing the worst, self-satisfied crap about his struggle as an artist fighting his demons in the form of a "wrestling" picture. No one cares about his struggle. Everyone shares the same struggle so what people want is to escape from it, and that's what his flamboyant studio boss wants to sell. He doesn't even like wrestling. He never listens to anything but his self absorbed inner chatter so he cannot fathom why anyone would want an escapist film about a great hero who defeats a bad guy. The heroes and noblemen of legend he turns his nose at were in fact no less "common" than anyone else. The big eccentric studio executive who gets up in his face and offends him is no less "common" than the bellboy played by STEVE BUSCEMI. They all want the same thing. Eventually the fat Goodman turns out to be a serial killer, or maybe the devil, who is trapped in hell forever. He helps people, and he helps Fink by murdering the woman he slept with and forcing him to face who he really is and give up his tired, boxed in self image. Eventually he carries his box to the sea and sits with it. A woman passes and he says "you're very beautiful. Are you in pictures," to which she replies "Don't be silly." Finally after being completely destroyed he finds redemption in turning away from his frame, from his corner of the world and finding the ocean. Creativity doesn't belong to anyone. It's not a label you can paste onto yourself as if you're the ultimate creator. To just be is creativity enough, and that's what Fink discovers. He may write a great movie someday, or more plays, but it no longer matters whether Barton Fink specifically does it. No matter what you do, someone has probably done it, no matter what idea you have it's shared, so if you're true to that idea, who cares if you take authorship of it or not. True achievement is life as it is. No longer trying to beat the clock, Fink is free.
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