Factotum
Directed by Bent Hamer
IFC Films, 2005
By Doug Nayler
Charles Bukowski lead an interesting and very unconventional life as an author. Living most of his life in total obscurity, his poetry and prose became recognized very late. Bukowski wrote reams and reams of observations about the world in which he existed without ever becoming isolated from it. He took the banal, dirty world of mid-century blue collar America and made it into something fragile, noble and dignified with his words. Bukowski was in the real shit, and could express what it was like with such acuity that it becomes hopelessly fascinating.
In Factotum, a surprisingly surly (and beefy, might I add) Matt Dillon plays Bukowski’s literary alter-ego, Henry Chinaski. Chinaski stumbles from job to job, and from woman to woman. The only constants in his life are that he keeps losing them, he keeps writing about them, and he drinks like a fish the entire time. And somehow he makes himself into some sort of hero because of it. While trying to get a paycheque for a half-day’s work from an ex-employer Chinaski remarks that he wants his money so that he can go and get drunk: “It may not be noble, but it’s my choice.” Nobody can tell him that he’s living his life any way other than how he wants to. He is uncompromising in a way most people could really only hope or fear to be. And he writes it all down.
However, writing is a very different medium than film. In writing one can take the simple act of drinking from a bottle and expound for pages about the significance, the history, the beauty of what it represents. On celluloid all you see is some guy taking a drink. So, what happens when you try to make a movie about a guy who thought great things about a boring, wasted life? Well, you see him living his boring, wasted life without being able to see what he thought about it. Watching someone work a minimum wage job has the same effect on me as working one. I notice some strange and interesting things along the way that I’ll probably think about later, but really I just keep checking the clock to see when I can get the hell out of there.
