SOURCE: "What's in the Box," in Film Comment, Vol. 27, No. 5, September, 1991, pp. 26, 32.

Below, Jameson offers a mixed review of Barton Fink.

What's terrific about Barton Fink has been terrific about Joel and Ethan Coen's work since the last sequence of Blood Simple, when Frances McDormand did everything she could to keep a wall or a door between her and M. Emmet Walsh's implacably murderous private dick as he menaced her in a dark apartment. In the new film, the principal space is the hotel room where Barton (John Turturro), social-conscious New York playwright drafted to knock out genre scripts in 1941 Hollywood, struggles to get past FADE IN. Confronted with an epic sweep of blank page and the whining mosquito of doubt that he has anything to offer as either a spokesman for "the masses" or a proficient hack, he is opportunely diverted by garbled laughter/weeping/moaning coming...