Another episode I can't really figure out, although I found it poignant, was when he goes to the dance to celebrate the completion of his script and he ends up drawing the hostility of a soldier, then an all-out army/navy battle ensues. What is this supposed to mean? Is it just more of the notion that he is wildly out of touch with the common man? Is there some idea that intellectual theorist types ultimately divide rather than unite the common man? Does it play into the rise-of-fascism allegory that some suggest as a reading of the film?
It just occurred to me that maybe Lipnick's telling Barton that he will remain under contract but that nothing he ever writes will see the light of day is not consigning him to hell, but rather to the life of the everyday man, who toils and toils in anonymity for little reward. Thoughts?
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This won't surprise any of you, but I didn't understand the fight scene.
I like that idea, kc.
The USO scene seemed really odd to me. It seemed sort of out of character for Barton to go to a big dance.
I agree, Erin, that going to such a dance is out of character for Fink. And you wouldn’t expect him to cut loose with such funky moves on the dance floor either. But he was very excited about what he perceived to be a monumental creation, and he had probably been drinking too. So he makes an ass of himself and starts a fight. Maybe even more oblivious to others than he usually is, he leaves chaos in his wake. Kc, unlike other episodes, I don’t read anything larger into this scene. The Coens often will put in an homage to some recognizable bit of film history. So in this movie we also have Fink’s feet on the floor during the sex scene as a nod to the Production Code, and we get our two wise-cracking detectives straight from film-noir. So the army/navy is a similar tribute.
Kc, that’s a good take on Lipnick and Fink. But don’t you figure that Fink is just going to take his thousand dollars a week and drink himself into an early grave? I figure that he doesn’t understand the “everyday man” and will never be one either.
Instead, I go back to where he is talking to his agent at the bar in New York. The agent has lined up a cash cow in what should be easy, mindless, writing in Hollywood. Fink at first acts as if he and his art are above the whole earning a living thing. But, alas, he decides to go take the money anyway. He was wrong about having a grand important talent. And now he is going to at least have some money, but all it is going to buy is a dissipative, and probably short, life.
DW, I made a note when I watched BF that the detectives seemed to be some kind of super-noir characters, a movie archetype. I didn't assign much significance to them beyond any of the other larger-than-life characters Barton encounters.
The dance scene seemed out of place to me.
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