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'Factotum'
by Mike (movies profile)
Mar 11, 2008
1
of
1 people found this review helpful
Factotum" is so endearingly off-putting because it is a movie at odds with itself. Although it is the story of a miserable, violent alcoholic barely surviving in a cruel world of his own making, its motto turns out to be: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
Hellish yet oddly Pollyannaish, "Factotum" advises us to pass out drunkenly in a gutter on the sunny side of the street.
Poet, novelist and overall slimeball Charles Bukowski made a literary career out of his own dissipation. He was his own favorite topic, writing extensively and with considerable pride about his dissoluteness. The forgotten years spent on bar stools, the meaningless fights, the degrading sex and the constant flow of numbing, stupefying alcohol were his life and his oeuvre.
If Bukowski did not exist, Hemingway would have had to invent him.
The writer lived to see one movie made more or less about himself, "Barfly," which starred Mickey Rourke as Bukowski's frequent alter ego, Henry Chinaski. Chinaski is also at the center of "Factotum," which is not much different in story. But it is different in tone.
In "Barfly," you wanted to take a shower. And you very much wanted Rourke to take a shower. But the sleaze does not rub off as much in "Factotum."
Matt Dillon, his career on an upswing, stars as Chinaski. Throughout the film, he holds and then loses a number of menial jobs (a factotum is someone with many responsibilities).
It is not that he cannot do the work; it is just that he would rather drink. He fancies himself too good for the job, which he is not. He also thinks of himself as a writer, which he is.
When Chinaski finds a woman who drinks as much as he, he immediately moves in with her. Jan, played by Lili Taylor, is highly sexed (and leaves him with venereal unpleasantness) and, like Chinaski, drowned her personality in booze years ago. Much the same is true of Laura, played by Marisa Tomei, only she also provides him with entree into a small segment of wealthy drunk society.
Chinaski floats through his life in a fog, and so, to an extent, does the movie. It has no particular momentum, no movement toward the resolution of a conflict. Much of the time, it is hard to determine what the conflict is even supposed to be, unless it is Chinaski versus his liver.
A Norwegian filmmaker named Bent Hamer wrote and directed with economy and admirable narrative thriftiness. We don't always know why the film is going where it is going, but it takes us there in style. He is not afraid of subtlety: Laura and Chinaski's arms are synchronized as they drink next to each other at a bar -- a sure cinematic sign of unspoken attraction.
It is true that part of the appeal of "Factotum" is pure schadenfreude, the way it makes us feel better about ourselves because we know that no matter how bad our lives, at least we're better off than these characters.
But it is also well-made and well-acted, with moments of chivalry and poetry. It can be as bracing as that first beer of the morning.
-Daniel Neman |
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