Barton Fink by Stephen Farber The Coen brothers' Barton Fink is a chic conundrum that touches on the subject of anti-Semitism. The title character, played by John Turturro, is a Jewish playwright who comes to Hollywood in the early days of World War II and strikes up a friendship with a traveling salesman (John Goodman) who lives next door to him in a slightly seedy residential hotel. Goodman turns out to be a mass murderer of German descent, and the film ends with Fink, the uprooted Jew, fleeing a blazing holocaust with a little bag of belongings. The Coens would probably deny that they intended to create a political allegory, but these portentous references to ominous world events add a rather dubious air of importance to a slight, shaggy dog tale. Nevertheless, Barton Fink is their most entertaining movie because it's explicitly about old Hollywood, their one true passion. The movieland lore enthralls them, and it's fun to compare the characters with their real-life counterparts--Clifford Odets, Louis B. Mayer, William Faulkner. The Coens have a flair for overripe dialogue, as they showed in Miller's Crossing, and some of the florid speeches crackle. They also have an undeniable knack for period re-creation and visual set-pieces. And as usual they've assembled a superb cast. Turturro and Goodman are at the top of their form. The early conversations between the self-absorbed Turturro and the overly ingratiating Goodman qualify as creepy but original odd-couple comedy. Some of the other performances are equally fine--John Mahoney as the courtly alcoholic Southern novelist, Judy Davis as his loyal secretary, Michael Lerner as an unctuous but deadly studio chief, Jon Polito and Tony Shalhoub as two of his craven yes-men. Thanks to the acting and the writing, half a dozen scenes are the best in the Coens' canon. But in the end, it all dribbles away into film school glibness and pretentiousness. What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the Movie Forum.