Barfly
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DVD details
Actor: Alice Krige, Faye Dunaway, J.C. Quinn, Jack Nance, Mickey RourkeDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Unknown; French (Original Language), Unknown
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 97 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-09-03
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Barfly
DVD Review: 12 Steps is one step too many---pour me another
Summary: 5 Stars
Gonzo poet, writer, rebel, wild man and veteran Barfly without peer Charles Bukowski cranked out the script and guerilla filmmaker Barbet Schroeder wielded the camera for this pungent, wicked, hysterical tale of Hell itself: it is nothing other than the Damned with Drinks and the Dive Bar as steaming Hellpit. It's also huge tanker truckloads of fun.
Drink up, the rounds are on me!
Mickey Rourke, then at the height of his powers, plays Bukowski stand-in and poet-genius-drunkard Henry Chinaski, who would love to write fantastic world-famous poetry and become wildly wealthy and idle his days away listening to Handel and chumming on caviar---but you know, a man's gotta have a First Love, and Henry does: Lady Booze, and boy is Henry faithful.
What they hey! It's much easier to head down to the local watering hole, you know, and have just one shot. Just one shot.
Just one, c'mon Man, you know?
Consequently Henry is witty, sharp, caustic, totally disgusting, lives in a rat & cockroach infested flophouse, has meandering chatter sessions and fumbled sleepwalker sex with fellow drunkard Wanda Wilcox (Faye Dunaway who looks all bleary-eyed and tilts that bottle back like a champ! You go, girl!), and passes out in his own urine.
Publisher Tully Sorenson (Alice Krige, at the height of her powers and still eleven years away from her role as Borg Queen) discovers Henry: she's shocked by his nastiness and, simultaneously, by his genius. She wants to publish his poems. She wants to throw a life preserver down to Henry, with which he can escape the big old wine-dark sea of Old Grand-Dad in which he swims.
Guess what happens? Yeah, that's right, have another drink.
Anyway, underrated genius Barbet Schroeder and Charles Bukowski make a kind of diabolic duo in turning out this rummy-headed little epic of mind-boggling personal destruction. I don't know about Barbet (though the guy must have been fortifying himself with whiskey when he shot the amazing documentary "General Idi Amin Dada", which if you haven't seen, you should---hell, make it a double feature with "Barfly"), but Bukowski, who drank his way around the world---from Nazi Germany to seedy back alley L.A. dive bars---over the course of his 74 years on the planet---knows himself and knows his Enemy. His expertise shows.
The dialogue is funny and rings true. And cinematographer Robert Muller is just too cool for school here: you can practically feel the grime and smell the stale sweet rank stench of sour whiskey and sweat. And hey!---Buk himself puts in an appearance as a bar patron. Hey there, is that glass empty?
The acting is all first-rate: Mickey Rourke completely owns this movie. Completely. He actually pulls it off: he makes the life of a half-crazed almost totally out of his mind teeth-grinding wild-man look glamorous.
I bought it. Faye Dunaway carries off the role of her career. Krige looks like a sturdy, stoic tugboat hitched to the stern of a swiftly sinking Titanic. Frank Stallone shows up as the angry barman! Jack Nance (of "Twin Peaks" fame and loyal David Lynch stable actor) puts in an appearance as the tricky detective. The script is crisp and crackles and rocks and rolls: frankly, I think this one gives David Mamet a run for his money; see if you don't agree.
In the end, we get to laugh it up and share a round or two or three---um, or four---with people who are disintegrating before our eyes, albeit in the funniest, most completely honest way possible. Henry is totally right: "Anyone can be a non-drunk: it takes a special talent to be a drunk---it takes endurance." That much is true: Henry and Wanda's "life" is chewing them up.
Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it. Drink up!
JSG
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