Barton Fink - Reception

Reception

Barton Fink premiered in May 1991 at the Cannes Film Festival. Beating competition which included Jacques Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse, Spike Lee's Jungle Fever and David Mamet's Homicide, the Coen brothers' film won three awards: Best Director, Best Actor, and the top prize of Palme d'Or. This sweep of awards in major categories at Cannes was extremely rare, and some critics felt that the jury was too generous to the exclusion of other worthy entries. Worried that the triple victory could set a precedent which would undervalue other films, Cannes decided after the 1991 festival to limit each movie to a maximum of two awards. Barton Fink was also nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Lerner), Best Art Direction (Dennis Gassner, Nancy Haigh), and Best Costume Design (Richard Hornung). Lerner lost to Jack Palance for his role in City Slickers; the awards for Art Direction and Costume Design went to Bugsy. The film was also nominated for the prestigious Grand Prix of the Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics.

Barton Fink was an overwhelming critical success. The movie-review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes lists a 91% favorable rating on its "Tomatometer" (based on 46 reviews), with all but one of its "Top Critics" giving it a positive review. The aggregator Metacritic lists a 69% favorable rating, based on 19 published reviews. The Washington Post critic Rita Kempley described Barton Fink as "certainly one of the year's best and most intriguing films". The New York Times critic Vincent Canby called it "an unqualified winner" and "a fine dark comedy of flamboyant style and immense though seemingly effortless technique". Critic Jim Emerson called Barton Fink "the Coen brothers' most deliciously, provocatively indescribable picture yet".

Some critics disliked the abstruse plot and deliberately enigmatic ending. Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum warned of the Coens' "adolescent smarminess and comic-book cynicism", and described Barton Fink as "a midnight-movie gross-out in Sunday-afternoon art-house clothing". In a 1994 interview, Joel dismissed criticism of unclear elements in their films: "People have a problem dealing with the fact that our movies are not straight-ahead. They would prefer that the last half of Barton Fink just be about a screenwriter's writing-block problems and how they get resolved in the real world...." Talk show host Larry King expressed approval of the movie, despite its uncertain conclusion. Writing in USA Today, he said: "The ending is something I'm still thinking about and if they accomplished that, I guess it worked."

The movie opened in the United States on eleven screens on August 23, 1991, and earned $268,561 during its opening weekend. During its theatrical release, Barton Fink grossed $6,153,939 in the United States. That the movie failed to recoup the expenses of production amused film producer Joel Silver, whom the Coens would later work with in The Hudsucker Proxy: "I don't think it made $5 million, and it cost $9 million to make. a reputation for being weird, off-center, inaccessible." The film was released in VHS home video format on August 18, 1993, and a DVD edition was made available on May 20, 2003. The DVD contains a gallery of still photos, theatrical trailers, and eight deleted scenes. The film is available on Blu-ray Disc in the UK in a 5-movie Coen Brothers collection, however this collection is region-free and will work in any Blu-ray player.