Hilariously, the Coens say that, before filming began, they were contacted by an animal-rights group that had seen a copy of the script and was concerned with how the mosquitoes in question would be treated during filming. Mosquitoes are among the distractions that plague an unraveling Barton in his hotel room (also distracting: the concurrently unraveling wallpaper).The word “head” appears dozens of times in the film before homicidal maniac Charlie (John Goodman) leaves Barton the box that presumably contains that sole remaining part of his brief paramour Audrey. Moreover, as a film Barton Fink is as obsessed with heads-what’s in them and what they may be in-as Miller’s Crossing was with hats. It’s a thoroughly apt description of the film’s lead character on multiple levels (his intellect, his self-regard, his towering hairdo). But the title would have far better suited Barton Fink. The original working title for Miller’s Crossing-the script from which the Coens had taken a break to write Barton Fink-was “The Bighead,” a reference to that movie’s cunning protagonist, Tom Reagan.The Coens are not technically adept nihilists with no compassion. It’s both an ingenious reminder of Charlie’s earlier claim that he hears everything that goes on in the hotel through the pipes, and a wicked updating of the classic “train goes into a tunnel” cinematic metaphor for sexual intercourse. The most famous shot in the film is a wonderful twofer: As Barton and Audrey (Judy Davis) get busy in the bedroom, the camera leaves them and wanders into the adjacent bathroom, where it plunges, snakelike, down the sink drain and into the pipes.(The two films were, not entirely coincidentally, my top two for the year.) Miraculously, Deakins’s collaboration with the Coens-he would work on ten more of their films after Barton Fink-proved to be even more successful than Sonnenfeld’s had been. It’s possible that in 2007 he lost by splitting his own vote, as he was nominated for both No Country for Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. He has been nominated for 11 Academy Awards for cinematography (five of them for his work on Coens films), without yet winning a single one-perhaps the greatest ongoing oversight at the Oscars. In his place, they hired Roger Deakins, who has gone on to have one of the most extraordinary careers in cinema.
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