Movie: Barfly (Barbet Schroeder, 1987)
This film wants to show the despairs of alcoholism and it wants to make us believe that Henri Chinaski/Charles Bukowski is happy to be an outsider who rejects Big Publishing to remain an alcoholic with his fellow lowlifes in underground LA bars. The problem is that it is much more successful at the former, and that it exists with a screenplay written by Bukowski himself. I can see why he wrote a book a couple of years after the release of this film decrying Hollywood and everything it stands for. Barfly inadvertently makes him come across as a bit of a phony. It is too transparently invested in mythmaking to make you believe in the myth, while being at its most believable when it contradicts the myth. The film is such a harrowing depiction of an alcohol addict's complete inability to function that it's hard to believe Bukowski was as addicted to alcohol as the film wants to make you believe.
These feelings towards the film sort of make me its villain. Barfly is at its best and most interesting during the section in which publisher (and fan) Tully (Alice Krige), having finally tracked down Henri (Mickey Rourke) tries to convince him to sleep with her, and more importantly, to give up his old life. It's quite notable that up until that moment we've mostly seen disheveled people living in semi-decaying apartments, frequenting run down bars. With Tully's arrival the film suddenly remembers that it's the 1980's and gets a shinier, cleaner look, befitting Tully's perfectly groomed yuppy outfit, her shiny cabrio and her oversized house on the hill. Tully believes there is more to Henri than meets the eye. A great writer, or rather a writer she admires, cannot possible live the life he does, or want to. The quality of one's writing must reflect the quality of one's life, and the quality of one's life is determined by one's access to the moneyed elite. These scenes have a somewhat surreal feeling (not the only time the film goes for such an effect) and Tully's role in the film is to be a sort of Faust, offering Henri a look of the life he could live if he follows her to 'her world.' The film (and obviously Henri's) rejection of her and her worldview is the best visual and narrative representation of Bukowski's rebellious outsider status.
While it's not bad, the rest of the film doesn't come close to these scenes, and is not helped by Mickey Rourke whose spEEhch cadEEhnce in the film feels like a combination of a bad imitation of Marlon Brando in The Godfather and Seinfeld's 'funny voice' in "The Voice". That's maybe a bit overstated, but for me his choice to speak like that throughout the film made his performance feel fake and contrived. Especially in contrast with the wonderfully direct no-nonsense performance of Faye Dunaway, 'Wanda', who becomes his partner in drinking. Possibly also his romantic partner, but this is left ambiguous, and of little relevance for their relationship anyway. Wanda and Henri are primarily together for beer and whiskey, not for sex and romance.
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