Newspaper headlines advance the narrative. Miller's Crossing is more homage than deconstruction. And Reason's name is, of course, Love. The film also has style to burn, offering the first fully-formed display of the Coens' stylistic panache. Cameras slink, glide and tip-toe through the action.
Violence always comes with music, usually show tunes or standards.
Similar sequences by Scorsese, Peckinpah or DePalma have nothing on it. T he Coen brothers really hit their stride, however, with Barton Fink , an intriguing curiosity written during a bout of writer's block on Miller's Crossing . Superficially, the film is about Barton's inability to create in the purgatory of Hollywood, here painted as a hellhole with really nice urinals. Mayhew is a sellout with a broken heart, the wicked Charlie is a brawny common man, and Barton himself is a brainy dreamer. The mystery of what's inside the box Barton carries around, copped by Quentin Tarantino in Pulp Fiction, is never explained in the film.