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Rating: The dear old Bukowski never had the chance to witness a serious, decent, and coherent film adaptation of his illustrious works, except for a few bland strokes of cinematic ingratitude and carelessness. Indeed, there would have been too many pseudo-commercial temptations to reduce the mythical Henry Chinaski to just any drunk-bum, the prince of drunkenness, the marquis of filth, and the duke of voluntary, aware, and intentional unemployment. That said, in 1987 the old scoundrel, fresh from a life of alcoholic—yet creative and artistic—revelries, prepared to temporarily don the clothes of a screenwriter and shape His filmic work, His creation on film. Barfly, directed by the Frenchman Barbet Schroeder and co-opted in the production by none other than Francis Ford Coppola, is nothing less than the audio-visual summary of the entire Bukowskian curriculum, a great cauldron that mixed the inspirations of the novels tout-court (Factotum...), as well as the ethylic-erotic misadventures of the short story collections (Tales of Ordinary Madness, Notes of a Dirty Old Man...).
Providing even a summary judgment of this work is not a simple, immediate, and automatic task as evidenced by its uncomplicated yet equally entangled plot: Henry Chinaski, the eternal alter ego of the writer—played by Mickey Rourke—is the quintessential anti-hero, the perfect human-photographic portrayal of the literary equivalent, a squandering little man perpetually prey to the fumes of wine and strong spirits who routinely enjoys brawling with bartender Eddie; one evening, having taken revenge on the latter after a previous terrible defeat, Henry meets Wanda, a drunkard pointed out by the patrons of the place as "crazy," and with her, he forms a sort of romantic relationship (naturally spiced with the shabbiness of the apartments, the surrounding crime, the indispensable bottles, and the congenital-chronic joblessness); the bizarre couple's life is, however, interrupted by the arrival of Tully, a young and attractive majority shareholder of a literary magazine to which Henry periodically sends his stories, who offers him a check for $500 and a brand new bourgeois life; Henry, having spent a night with the lady, rejects this incredible social leap and returns to Wanda, nonetheless not witnessing the brawl between the latter (who indeed had quickly sniffed out her partner's affair) and the first, and prepares to fist-fight with Eddie once more.
Barfly, it must be said, fails to filmically elevate in unison the unsurpassable heights of Bukowski the writer, although allowed by the artist himself; yet it manages to offer a coherent, tasty, spicy, adequately commercial product, imbued with a sufficient dose of the "bookish" spirit and with some melancholic-romantic bursts absent from the volumes yet not in conflict with the dominant background. Moreover, Chinaski is embodied by an actor of considerable artistic stature, Mickey Rourke, who knows exactly how to wear (also figuratively speaking) the protagonist's attire: filthy, limping, medium-length greasy hair, rugged and inquisitive face quite marked by blows and wine, sly sneer, hoarse and demonic voice (as well as the adequate dubbing in our native language), the Rourke-Chinaski delves with rare perfection into the squalor of the Los Angeles underworld and pierces with extreme ease into the anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist filth of America not smiling at the Stars & Stripes flag. Besides the masterful portrayal of the saga's "princeps," the film also shines for its excellent environmental reconstruction, of the filthy, silent metropolis, of the little and insignificant alcoves of shot glasses and mugs (with also a sparkling design at the "Roxy Bar" of the assetless-doers).
Adjacent to the main courses of Barfly there are also some bitter and bland dishes, first and foremost the plot (perhaps a bit too narrow and limited when compared to the mutual adventures listed in the novels, especially the collections) and the failure to develop the timid romantic-love component initiated with the provocative Tully, hastily slipped away after the scuffle with her rival. Finally missing is the traditional and hyper-classical alcohol-unemployment dualism: it's true that the inactivity of Chinaski and company represents the film's corollary of interpretation, yet scenes of job failures, lightning layoffs, settlements granted a few days after hiring, vain interviews, and, first among equals, the congenital aversion to the degradation of the Taylorist-Fordist chain, namely the nauseating assembly line responsible for so many man-automaton degradations, have not been included.
Who would have ever said: Charles Bukowski, a solitary drunkard with little money, no steady job, and many ideas on paper, a prolific cursed writer, then a screenwriter in the luxurious and shimmering ultra-bourgeois and semi-aristocratic Hollywood. And with Barfly, while giving a small concession to the studios eager to broadcast to the blockbuster-thirsty populace perversion, lust, degradation, and crisis-friendly decadence, he made an entrance into the upscale green manners of the City of Angels, never forswearing the "alcoholic" past of the quintessential dirty dandy.
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