Barfly, directed by Barbet Schroeder (1987)
“…at times his movements show a sudden swiftness and grace. It is as if he were saving himself for some magic moment, some magic time. Meanwhile, he drinks and drinks and drinks.” Charles Bukowski’s description of main character Henry Chinaski in his script for 'Barfly'.
Charles Bukowski’s alter ego, Henri Chinaski, is a literary prototype and a film anomaly. As played flawlessly and recklessly by Mickey Rourke, Henri is the quintessential outsider who finds purpose in avoiding purpose, at least in the conventional sense. He contains the alienation of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, the chivalry of Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, the toughness of Hemingway’s Nick Adams, the existential angst of Knut Hamsun, and the nihilism of Celine’s Ferdinand Bardamu, from Journey to the End Of Night. He is a drunk. He is a fighter. He is a loser. He is a poet. He is a dying breed.
Barfly is a one of a kind film that celebrates the romanticism of being down and out. We can only guess how many aspiring poets it has led astray and how many AA meetings it has engendered. Henri Chinaski, like his creator Charles Bukowski, who Jean Paul Sartre referred to as America’s greatest poet, was steadfast in his avoidance of the 'cage with golden bars', the nine to five treadmill of material gain and conformity - the safe suburban jails where people exist in fear of life itself. He didn’t know what he wanted as much as what he didn’t want. So he drank and fought and recovered and wrote and lived and drank some more. And then wrote about it.
Chinaski is the town drunk, village idiot, and holy fool who celebrates his poverty by giving what little he has to his fellow lost souls, and raising a toast to “all my friends.” He is a fantasy who reminds us of how sad and beautiful it can be to be lost and hungry. To have finally hit bottom. To answer to no one. To live outside the clock. To embrace uncertainty. To be intoxicated and free and lonely. To confront pain. To be alive.
Chinaski embodies many of the virtues and defects of the 20th century American writers who sought inspiration at the end of a bottle. William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen Crane, Raymond Carver, Dorothy Parker, Eugene O’Neill, John Steinbeck, Truman Capote, Herman Melville, Jack London, Dashiell Hammett, John Cheevers, Ernest Hemmingway, and Hunter S. Thompson all sought the wellspring of creativity in alcohol. Some like John Cheevers sought treatment and recovered. Most stumbled from the vivid light that booze provided into a dark and twisted world of addiction and nihilism. Mickey Rourke had to dig deep in order to capture Bukowski’s Chinaski in all his alcoholic glory and defeat. The literate brute that exposes his deepest flaws and blemishes for the world to be disgusted, repelled, and ultimately attracted to. He likely paid his own price to inhabit that persona for as long and as effectively as he did. He provides us with a human car wreck and we love to watch. We love the romanticism of failure, the honesty of the drunken poet who has nothing to sell but his honesty. Especially when the exposure is raw, unadulterated and manic. Alcohol allows the inhibitions to disperse. It provides outsiders with companionship and insiders with glimpses of the dark side. Barfly exposes a life that all of these aforementioned novelists, playwrights and Nobel Prize winners would have experienced during the dark nights when they were creating the material that lit up the days and years that followed.
“I envy people who drink – at least they know what to blame everything on.” Oscar Levant
Charles Bukowski made it to seventy-three and died of leukemia. Ernest Hemmingway shot himself at sixty-two and Hunter S. Thompson, who brought substance abuse into the modern age with entire pharmacies of intoxicants, recently took his own life at sixty-seven. Two writers who lived large and provided the modern psyche with a more informed picture of itself. They both had glimpses of the infinite and reached the summit where they could see things invisible to the rest of us. Though one questions Hunter S. Thompson’s literary output after Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. He became a parody of himself much sooner than we might like to acknowledge. Ultimately the same fuel that helped them reach certain heights vanquished them. We are left to wonder what they might have seen without the sauce. The alcohol provided them with an out and they took it. Their writing, lives, and movies like Barfly provide us with a funeral celebration of how dangerous the creative life can be. Cautionary morality tales that entice us with their reckless abandon but ultimately bring us back to earth where sobriety promises longevity. Stories wherein “the night before” bears little resemblance to “the morning after.” Myths that remind us that creativity and uncertainty shouldn’t be practised by amateurs. As Marcel Proust said, “Blessed are they who have no story to tell.”
In the end, Barfly is a happy accident. The behind the scenes stories of the inebriated and creative efforts that went into the making of the film are as much a part of the narrative as the finished product. Barfly is a throwback to some imaginary time when both artists and producers made films to make films instead of money. Everyone was onboard Barfly because they were all enthused to honour the words and mythology of Charles Bukowski. Barbet Schroeder’s inspired direction, Mickey Rourke’s psychogenic fugue acting, Faye Dunaway’s perfect pitch and legs, Robby Muller’s command of camera and light, Bob Ziembicki’s skid row production design, all contribute to fulfilling Charles Bukowski’s only script. Barfly is a slice of life film, a window into a hung over world wherein denizens of the street and the night suffer, brawl, recuperate, and celebrate the moments when they can buy another round for all of their friends. Barfly is more of a place to visit than a place to live. A reminder of what good fictions do best. We lift our glass to the finest film of its kind.
Henry
Look girls, be realistic. None of us hardly knows each other. We’ve passed in the night and met again in a bar. Be realistic: there’s no reality in any of this.
(loudly)
Another round of drinks for everybody!
The bar patrons cheer.
*We highly recommend Hollywood (Black Sparrow Press), Charles Bukowski’s written account of the making of Barfly.
