Factotum

FACTOTUM               A-                   

USA  Norway  Germany  Sweden  France  (94 mi)  2005  d:  Bent Hamer

If you’re going to try, go all the way. 

There is no other feeling like that.

You will be alone with the gods,

and the nights will flame with fire.

You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.

It’s the only good fight there is.  

—Charles Bukowski, excerpt from his 1992 poem Roll the Dice

The film is about fucking and drinking

There is an alluring Norweigan influence to this slow, perfectly paced, moody autobiographical adaptation of the life of Charles Bukowski based on his 1975 novel by the same name, a man whose sole desire seemed to be to stay drunk all the time, but who also had a strange fascination with words that kept bubbling out of his head, writing two or three short stories a week at one point, sending them off to would-be publishers (the Black Sparrow Press and The New Yorker) despite never hearing from them, supporting himself by finding a multitude of menial, dead-end odd jobs (Factotum – a man who performs many jobs) that held little interest, some that did not even last a day, the kind that blue collar workers and day laborers around the world are forced to take every day in order to survive, but here they provide a pay check to buy a drink.  Shot largely in a bleak, factory district of Minneapolis/St.Paul, there’s a terrific scene where he’s ordered not to smoke on the job, then immediately pulls out a cigarette and blows smoke out a window, where the camera pulls back until eventually Bukowski is a tiny speck in a vast expanse of brick and industrial waste.  Matt Dillon plays Bukowski (whose parents moved to Los Angeles from Germany when he was age 3), as a man with inner confidence and a quiet swagger, yet he narrates in a calm, steady tone, always shown at a very leisurely pace, at times barely able to get up off the barstool, mumbling, always polite, never as a man possessed, instead as a man who knows what lies within, who has utter faith in his abilities.  At one point, when reflecting on moments when doubts enter his head about his ability to write, all he has to do is read somebody else’s writing and he has no more doubts.

Lili Taylor is exceptional as his drunken girl friend, matching him drink for drink, who is completely in love with this unpretentious lowlife who does nothing but lay around and screw her up to 4 times a day.  After a few lucky runs at the race track, he starts dressing in style and buying more expensive booze, but she finds him a shell of his former self, a complete phony that has lost all appeal for her, as she prefers lowlifes, the lower the better.  There’s a wonderful scene as they both awake one at a time in the morning, each separately wretches in the toilet, he immediately grabs a beer, she a cigarette, and within this realm of shifting orientation, with a minimum of words, they inexplicably separate.  Penniless, spending his last dollar buying a drink for a girl in a bar (Marisa Tomei in her first onscreen nudity), she leads him to a temporary alcoholic promised land, where the drinks and lodging are all on the house, paid for by a sugar daddy who has younger lady interests to keep him company.  This vision of happiness is a temporary oasis, a mirage in a lifetime of facing up to the hauntingly grim realities that lie under each and every phony facade.  This is a film that exposes life on the edges, where he even returns home at one point, where mom shovels out a meal, but dad thinks he’s a worthless swine, so Bukowski offers to take dad out for a few cocktails, but he admits he’s looking to find a “piece of ass,” whereupon he’s thrown out on his ass, a wonderful scene that acknowledges how far he’s come from the world of decency.  He hooks up again with Taylor, but they shortly realize why they split up, and they soon meander off again into their wretchedly pitiful lives. 

There’s a highly personalized allure to this film, beautifully photographed by John Christian Rosenlund, capturing the poetic beauty of being alone with your thoughts in a dingy bar, with mesmerizing music by Kristen Asbjørnsen that couldn’t possibly sound more like solitude, where we come to accept the languorous pace of the film as a natural extension of  Bukowski’s imagination, which edges forward in small cinematic portraits, like sketches, offering precise language and details, much like the exquisite flavor of short stories, made more powerfully intense by the superlative performances of the 3 major players who are always inviting, who continually add a measure of interest and authenticity to the material.  By the end of the film, as Bukowski is a solitary customer watching a stripper in a surreal neon-lit landscape, you have a feel for the dreary ennui, for days that extend into nights, which could easily pass into an endless haze that stretches to infinity.   

To Die For

TO DIE FOR               B+                  

USA  Great Britain  (106 mi)  1995  d:  Gus van Sant

What's the point in doing something good if nobody's watching?     
—Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman)

DEAD CALM (1989) introduced a young 22-year old Nicole Kidman to movie screens, but it’s her outrageous performance as a celebrity obsessed small town television wannabe in Gus van Sant’s TO DIE FOR that introduced her to the world and remains her most stunning performance in her much heralded career.  Kidman’s range is impressive as she wears so many hats in this film (and stunning outfits) that it seems like she suffers from personality disorder, but what she’s really doing is introducing a character that is literally performing all the time, in every situation she finds herself, just hoping for that rare opportunity of being discovered and becoming a TV star.  It’s all she ever thinks about as van Sant presents this film in overlapping layers, beginning with the montage of tabloids that have a field day with photographs of Suzanne Stone, this glamorous woman who is suspected to have been involved in the murder of her husband, which is seen in the beginning of the film, so everything that’s shown afterwards is seen in flashback, like the renowned structure for Joan Crawford in MILDRED PIERCE (1945).  Based on a novel by Joyce Maynard, the film is unofficially based on the story of Pamela Smart, a 23-year old New Hampshire schoolteacher who conspired with several teenagers to murder her husband and was tried and convicted in 1991, currently serving a life sentence.  Given a different twist by screenwriter Buck Henry, it does maintain the narrative stream-of-conscious sound bite commentary by several different characters offering their views on Suzanne.  Initially Suzanne herself is seen speaking directly to the camera from an unidentified room, which has a modern subtext to it, as the audience hasn’t a clue who she’s speaking to, or under what circumstances.  Her comments continue throughout the film, though, interjected with comments by a few others from her town in New Hampshire who are offering their opinions about what kind of person she is.  These all have a man-on-the-street feel to them, as the speakers are relaxed, talking in familiar settings, and not holding back their real feelings as they speak candidly to the camera.   

Kidman is seen as a pampered Barbie-like beauty queen who’s used to having her way, something of a socialite who is trying everything she can to be noticed, as she’s amazingly ambitious, a woman who has had her career mapped out in front of her since childhood. She marries the cutest guy in town, Matt Dillon as Larry, who works in his father’s bar and also plays drums for a local bar band, which is where Suzanne stands out from the rest, all decked out in a provocatively skimpy outfit so Larry can’t take his eyes off of her, even after they get married, where her dreams of becoming a TV celebrity couldn’t make him prouder.  But instead she gets a job at a nickel and dime local cable channel that just needs someone to run errands from time to time.  But she keeps pitching ideas for the station to run, which they deny, becoming so persistent that the 2-man operation is eventually worn down and put her on the air as the weather lady, where she begins pitching ideas from that forum, one of which is a documentary photo shoot with local high school kids, who are seen as little more than deadbeats.  Always good at discovering new talent, this is Casey Affleck’s first screen appearance, playing a smart mouthed juvenile delinquent, also Alison Folland who plays the mildly overweight girl with no friends that is continually made fun of, while Joaquin Phoenix is given his first major role in his fourth film, playing a completely alienated high school kid whose sullen nature leaves him largely strung out and disconnected from reality.  All three have a crush on Suzanne, always wearing killer outfits, where their teenage hormones are simply aroused by her open sense of sexual provocation.  In contrast, these kids wear drab indistinguishable sweat gear, but these are the kids who agree to be in the movie, and despite working on this film day and night, it’s clear there’s no substance to it as these kids have nothing to say.  Instead, it may be a front for other ambitions.

When Larry suggests Suzanne give up the Hollywood dream and come work in the bar with him, it’s as if she has a Stepford wife moment, where she coolly doesn’t reveal what she really thinks, but she finds this insult so personally degrading that she really has no use for her husband any more after that, where instead he needs to be removed as an obstruction to her path of achieving success.  Suzanne is simply not a woman who takes no for an answer, eventually plotting behind the scenes with these teen kids to have him removed from the picture.  Larry is right, however, as she is so determined and single-mindedly sure of herself, rock solid in her belief in herself, yet has nothing to show for it.  Her pathetic attempts to manipulate a few socially disconnected teenage kids borders on pandering and sexual indecency, perhaps even rape, but they’re not the types that go running to the authorities.  Besides, they’re delusionally inclined to think she’s a cool adult who may actually have some interest in them.  The way this all plays out has a unique feel to it, as the sick sarcasm is so pronounced, at moments hilarious, yet darkly disturbing the next, like the sequence when Suzanne receives the news of her husband’s death, making a beeline to the awaiting reporters as the television plays “The Star Spangled Banner,” where it’s as if she’s performing a screen test.  It intentionally makes the audience feel uncomfortable, where their more mature perceptions will not likely match those of adolescent teenage kids who every day are the targets of every advertising campaign across the nation, where they have yet to establish individual identities, as they’re still so confused at being bought, sold, and influenced through the market place.  David Cronenberg makes a somber, late appearance in the movie, but his actions are disturbingly decisive.