Factotum.

On first impression this '05 adaptation of Bukowski's '75 novel is more successful than Tales of Ordinary Madness. It feels more authentically American; the earlier movie suffered from a consciously European art house sensibility (owing to its Italian production team) that not only jarred with domestic audiences at the time but still seems to do a disservice to Bukowski's mythology of the (American) self. Matt Dillon's Bukowski may have the benefit of seeming geographically in place (despite it being another foreign production with an American cast, only this time Norwegian) but is strangely out of his time. Factotum at first appears to be set present day, but one is soon desperately trying to guess the period by the age of the cars; the autmotive furniture in the film places it to now but so much of the Bukowski universe is at odds with contemporaneity, the constant cigarettes even in offices just seems anachronistic. This leads one to believe that this was either a conscious decision for budgetary reasons or some sort of statement is being made about the 'nowness' of Bukowski's writing. Certainly Bukowski's writing is more contemporary than perhaps almost all of the Beat generation writing, but he was never really a part of that crowd to begin with. No, this portait of the artist seems intentionally to wrench Bukowski's alter-ego from his time and place him in ours, for what purpose I am unsure, but the confusion also seems to bleed into the narrative; I for one was surprised by the inclusion of the scene where Chinaski visits his parents as I was working under the assumption that Dillon was playing the part as an age older than his own and this seemed to create yet more conflict in terms of chronology. Well, at least they did a better job than Barfly.

Alex B.