Director - Bent Hamer
Writer -
Bent Hamer and Jim Stark, based on the
novel by Charles Bukowski
Director of photography
- John Christian Rosenlund
Editor -
Pal Gengenbach
Music -
Kristin Asbjornsen
Production designer
- Eve Cauley Turner
Producers - Jim Stark and
Bent Hamer
IFC Films. 94 minutes.Rated R
for foul language and alcohol abuse.
STARRING: Matt
Dillon (Henry Chinaski), Lili Taylor (Jan), Marisa Tomei (Laura), Fisher
Stevens (Manny), Didier Flamand (Pierre), Adrienne Shelly (Jerry), Karen
Young (Grace) and Tom Lyons (Tony Endicott).
Though I have never read
any of Charles Bukowski’s works, I believe I am at least becoming a fan
of quasibiographical films based on his work. Watching his alter ego,
Henry Chinaski, is a lot like watching my late grandfather — only drunk,
and far more entertaining.
In 1987, Barbet
Schroeder directed Barfly, one of my favorite films from that
period. Scripted by Bukowski, it starred Mickey Rourke (in the prime of
his career) as Chinaski, mumbling and stumbling his combative way
through a minefield of lowlifes and high-class scum. Faye Dunaway played
Chinaski’s main sleaze.
Factotum,
which played to European audiences last year — it took Norwegians, of
all people, to do this — brings Chinaski back with the help of Matt
Dillon, now, apparently, also in the prime of his career. Lili Taylor,
finally all grown up and acting like it, portrays the relative love of
Chinaski’s life (relative, that is, to his love for writing, liquor, and
sloth). Fisher Stevens (dare I say it) and Marisa Tomei contribute
excellent supporting performances as a couple of the down-and-outers for
whom Chinaski has more tolerance than others (the former shares his love
for horses and dodging work, the latter shares his love for booze and
sex).
Once again, Chinaski is
simultaneously sickened by his life and immensely proud of it. And in
its way, Factotum illustrates this paradox every bit as
effectively as did Barfly. The difference is that the journey is
far more episodic and impressionistic this time out — less dependent on
a conventional (if languid and tipsy) narrative arc.
And frankly, if one has
a taste for seamy slice-of-life irony, it’s hard not to watch these
movies and appreciate life from Chinaski’s point of view. Sure, he’s
lazy. Sure, he’s a prick. Sure, he’s hardly the model of discipline that
writers tend to emulate. Sure, he hasn’t a clue about how rewarding
relationships can actually be, even when the sex goes south.
But those things really
aren’t his priorities. Living is, and living in a way that’s strictly on
his terms.
And face it, isn’t that
really the case with most of us? Aren’t we all really just selfish
bastards after one manner or the other? The symptoms, for most of us,
are just more fashionable than they are for Chinaski. At least he skips
the hypocrisy, and freely admits his egocentrism as he seeks out the
stories that he feels are worth telling.
A couple of the moments
in Factotum that director Bent Hamer elects to highlight illustrate the
pathetic truthfulness of Chinaski’s self-aggrandizing humility.
In the first, Hank and
Jan (Taylor) lie in bed after a binge. Over the course of the next five
minutes or so, in one continuous take, we see Hank awake, nauseous, and
heave into the toilet. He freshens up with a beer, and it’s now Jan’s
turn; Hank has time to think. By the time Jan is done and soothes her
bile with a smoke, Hank has decided it’s time to move on. He begins
packing while he announces his decision to Jan, and because Chinaski is
Chinaski, he can actually finish packing before Jan has managed to
collect her wits enough to muster a convincing objection. (There are
advantages to living very light.) He splits his remaining dough
with Jan and cuts out, back on his own. Two shipwrecks finish passing
in the emotional night.
In a subsequent scene,
not long after, Chinaski returns home, broke. His mother is all pity and
unconditional love, telling Hank, “You know your room is always ready
for you”; and Hamer stages the scene to suggest the movie might be
heading for some moment of reconciliation. But here’s the glory. This is
Chinaski we’re talking about. Ma ushers Hank into the kitchen where Pa
has just sat down to dinner — and the old man is in no mood for
redemption. Neither, naturally, is Hank. The episode ends with Hank
inviting his father down to the local strip club for a drink and “a
piece of ass.” No bed for Hank, sorry, and not even a square meal. He’s
back out on his own, just the way he really prefers it.
So why do I find any of
this appealing? Certainly, I don’t respond to these films in the way
that most Bukowski fans seem to. I don’t find boozing, whoring, and
sloth something to giggle at sophomorically. I’m also not attracted to
seaminess for its own sake, any more than I am attracted to pretense for
its own sake.
What I see in Chinaski —
whether its Rourke’s or Dillon’s, Shroeder’s or Hamer’s — is an honest,
self-effacing, sarcastic examination of the tragedy of human existence,
idealized and magnified through the portrait of the Artist as Loser.
What I see in Chinaski is a boozy, witty reflection of the simultaneous
perverse romanticism and self-destructive tragedy of my grandfather’s
life.
So my reaction is very
personal, and very subjective. But it’s mine.
Now, if only Dillon
didn’t seem to crib notes from Rourke (with whom he starred in Rumble
Fish), and if his voice-overs didn’t mimic Nicholson’s cadence...
(After all, isn’t that Christian Slater’s shtick?)
But forget it, Jake.
It’s Chinaski-town.
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