Factotum

The leading figure in Factotum (which means a jack of all trades) is Henry Chinaski. The movie, written and directed by Bent Hamer, a Norwegian, is based on the novel of the same name by Charles Bukowski, who died in 1994. Like Chinaski, Bukowski was a drunk, indulged in casual sex, and liked to gamble; and most of Bukowski's books, including Factotum, are based on his own experiences in and out of blue collar worker. Also, like his creator, Chinaski is a writer, albeit unpublished as yet. Nevertheless, it is probably best NOT to approach this film as a partial biography of Bukowski, but simply as a fictional movie based on his writings.

Chinaski, played by Matt Dillon, is the ultimate, irresponsible goof-off, living just above the level of skid row, who gets work when he needs cash for booze etc, but invariably gets fired within days or weeks. Told not to smoke in a particular workplace, he lights up once the boss is out of the way; asked to make a delivery, he drives the van away while it's still connected to an electric plug, leaves the van door open and drifts into a bar. Even outside work, he behaves perversely - notably leaving ointment on his private parts overnight, when he's been told that one hour is the absolute limit! And Chinaski, though initially appearing mildly passive, is not averse to violence, even to women.

The man's sole redeeming features are his belief in himself as a writer, and his persistence in writing and submitting his work. (His main redeeming feature should be his actual talent for writing, but the film gives us little evidence of this, except for a few Bukowski quotes, which in any case are mainly about his belief in himself.) .

Dillon fits this role like a glove. By turns, he sleepwalks, staggers and rampages through the movie - that is, when Chinaski isn't drinking in bars or sleeping it off with or without a woman. And, because this is fiction rather than biography, Dillon can mitigate his deplorable behaviour and slovenly dress simply with his good looks and dark eyes. One suspects that in real life Bukowski was far less likable than his cinematic alter ego.

Chinaski's main squeeze for most of the movie, bravely and quite unglamorously portrayed by Lili Taylor, is Jan who shares her lover's fondness for alcohol and a slacker life. In one sequence, when he has split from Jan, Chinaski encounters a glossier woman, Laura (Marisa Tomei), who introduces him to a more bourgeois world; but this doesn't last long, and he soon reverts to his usual round of drink and casual jobs. (Incidentally, I found the sound quality in the whole Marisa Tomei sequence quite poor, and missed much of the dialogue.)

I'm not too sure what anybody uninterested in Bukowski (or Matt Dillon) will make of this movie; but if you're looking for somjething in English other than blockbusters, rom-coms, costume dramas etc - this is it. And, whatever your view of the movie, if you haven't already done so, read some Bukowski - you'll love it!

'A man or woman of all work' is indeed what Matt Dillon is in this out-there adaptation of Bukowski stories. Bent Hamer directs in this brilliant and quirky tale of a man who walks through life doing odd-jobs to fund his booze, gambling and womanising habits.

Henry Chinaski is made real by the always brilliant Matt Dillon. It really is no surprise that Hollywood's former pin-up embodies the part so well, as his perfected mix of sleaze and slack minded cool have made him the renowned actor he is. From 'Over the Edge' in 1979, the award winning 'Drugstore Cowboy' and his recent role as the scarred cop in 'Crash', Dillon really has the ability to expose man's flaws and run to a bar with them.

The film is spliced from various Bukowski writings and follows Chinaski (his alter-ego) around town as he drinks from job to job occasionally taking time to get fired and get laid. Lily Taylor and Marisa Tomei play two of Chinaski's bed-pals with equal sleaze and conviction.

This is not your usual movie in terms of subject matter and execution. It takes a Norwegian director, committed actors and a fantastic performance from Dillon to pull off a story that really is as much a Homage to Bukowski but also a bold attempt to deliver something different, a word not regularly accepted in today's Hollywood run industry. (Hence some of the finance coming from Japan).

From our introduction to Chinaski's routines of getting work and drinking; then losing work and drinking to watching what is essentially a horrible man (his treatment of woman, his lack of respect for anything) we are never really meant to like him. So why do we? It isn't just the looks or square jaw of the lead (Bukowski was the complete opposite) or his fantastic humorous charm but what lies beneath those eyes. Dillon has always been able to make the jerk likable. In this case, we do because he's funny and because we get a tiny glimpse of background reasoning why this man is so talented and yet so flawed. (The real Bukowski suffered a tough childhood and Chinaski's family is only referenced to in a hilarious scene of steak and ass- you'll see what I mean…).

Bent Hamer has accomplished a feat pretty standard in European film-making traditions- light comedy with black undertones outside of the rules of the usual three part formation. This tale could have started anywhere and ended anywhere in this man's life as the selling point it simply having Dillon on screen as this character- that is the story.

Bukowski was a genius who stuck to his loose morality with his back to society. It should be noted that he held down jobs for long periods, one for 12 years while doing what he did best, drinking and gambling but the only time he truly engaged was when he was observing for his writings, looking for funding i.e. work or needed a female drink buddy. He later had works published, hung around with Sean Penn (also considered for the role) and U2 dedicated a song to him.

The cast and crew have created a delightful fresh film that is both funny and dark. The performances are as authentic as ever with a mention going to Lily Taylor's career best performance. This film is a Jack of all trades and seems to have mastered a new one with the tone and atmosphere set perfectly to mirror the down and dirty LA Bukowski became part of.

Factotum means "jack of all trades", and Matt Dillon interprets the role of a drunk trying nothing but to survive from day to day. He has no ambition, he doesn't have to compete with anyone, he makes part of no desirable demographic group and doesn't want a white picket fence.

He drinks, smokes, womanizes :), and writes all the time. His writing (much like Charles Bukowski's, the author of the book this movie is based on, dead in 1994 at 74 years old) is based on his own life and feelings and seems compulsional: he needs to write more than he needs to be read.

Now, about the movie. It is rather slow paced, close to boring. Matt Dillon plays very well his role and he has never looked and felt like Bruce Campbell in his life. When the movie ended, though, I felt I have been enriched somehow. A lot of the modern pressure of proving something, having a home, getting a job, the things that we start to think define us, all these things have no power on Matt Dillon's character. Of course, in Romania such a guy would have starved a long time ago, but still... A bit like The Big Lebowski, it shows that there are alternate lifestyles right next to us. You can make the choice to lose women, friends, family, but go all the way in the direction of your choosing. And after all, this is what Factotum is all about.

Bottom line: you need to be in the mood for a slow film, but it is worth it.

If you remember that Bent Hamer made the little film about a Forties Scandinavian household efficiency program called Kitchen Stories, you'll be partially prepared for the dry, sardonic style of this follow-up feature, the Charles Bukowski-based epic of seedy living Factotum, in which Matt Dillon gives a stylized, restrained performance as the authorial stand-in, Hank Chinaski, and Lili Taylor and Marisa Tomei seamlessly slide into the roles of Hank's alcoholic girlfriends Jan and Laura. Bulked up with a zombie stare, stifled voice and shambling walk, Dillon is very good, if, due partly to script limitations, not as compelling as Mickey Rourke in Barbet Schroeder's Barfly. Even overweight and horribly dressed Dillon is still far too handsome to resemble the pockmarked and ugly real-life Bokowski, but you can't fault good looks in a leading man, and the film is dominated by Dillon's character, who's in every scene, his narrative voice brought in to move the episodic plot along and provide Bukowski's insistent commentary on life as he sees it.

Those episodes are all we get, and apart from brief writing and longer romantic interludes, they mainly concern a long round of short-lived jobs -- sorting pickles in a pickle factory, boxing brake shoes, dusting statues, driving a cab (a hard-on's no danger to the driver, the instructor says, but sneezing is), assembling bike parts, and so on, from which Hank is unfailingly soon fired for drunkenness or lateness, insubordination or other misdemeanors -- whereupon he goes back to writing, drinking, and sex -- which latter, Jan tells him, is no good when he gets successful as he does for a while playing the horses. (There's none of the post office sorting job Bukowski did for a long time.) For Bukowski and his alter ego being a seedy loser is a thing carried off with such chutzpah that it's sexy -- and drinking and sex are equally close ways to feed the libido. There are plenty of the ten-cent aphorisms the tireless writer worked at, and there's a plug for the Black Sparrow Press that eventually started to keep and publish his endlessly mailed out submissions and today still survives off maintaining the slob genius' oœvre in public hands.

Bokowski appeals to the young, the easily impressed, the hard drinking, and those who like the pithy sayings and ignore the arrested development. For those of bourgeois mentality and upbringing there's a certain imperishably tonic thrill in watching a man who's been down so long it looks like up; who can tell the employer who's just fired him to give him his severance check immediately so he can hurry up and get drunk; for whom no flophouse or flat is too seedy, no bibulous girlfriend a worse drunk than he. How liberating it might be not to care about losing everything, knowing that since paper and pen are nearly free you'll never stop writing: or if you lose heart for a minute or two, a dip into the works of some other writer will encourage you in the belief that you can do better. Bokowski was a tough one.

Matt Dillon is Irish enough to have seen something of the hard drinking life himself. One senses that he knows whereof he speaks and can convey the alcoholic lifestyle without irony or melodrama. There's nothing quite like Lili Taylor coming out in her underwear to fix Hank a meal. His request is for another round of pancakes. "There's still no butter," she says. "Well, they'll be extra crisp," he replies.

In a smaller but still choice role Marisa Tomei is well disguised as another drunken lady Hank goes home with, finding that she lives with a flaky French millionaire called Pierre (Didier Flamand) with a little yacht and dreams of composing an opera. Hank's been taken off so many two bit jobs being fired has no sting left for him. Bukowski's persona is impenetrable and he's a simple survivor: he's almost utterly resistant to the forces of change his wayward lifestyle would activate in lesser beings and hence, unlike the downward spiraling drunk so movingly played by Nick Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, Bukowski's Hank in Dillon's performance cannot build toward pathos or true depth. As suggested, this film doesn't develop its sequences and relationships as thoroughly as Barfly, for which Bukowski himself wrote the screenplay, giving it a continuity and focus Factotum's more cobbled-together script doesn't quite muster.

There's something condescending and cultish in the European cultivation of the Bukowski myth in which this is another short chapter. Factotum is an occasionally amusing, at moments laugh-out-loud kind of movie that's well served by all the principals and by director Hamer's dry wit and restraint, but after the desultory and boring stretches have eventually started to pile up you may begin to say: So what? and wish the fresh novel feel of the early scenes could've been better sustained throughout. Not to fault the editing, but mightn't a native's keener ear for the rhythms of the dialogue have kept the flow going better? This is one to see if you like Matt Dillon or Bukowski; otherwise, save your time.

First, my only gripes with the film are about authenticity. And they're just because I'm a huge fan of Charles Bukowski. I've never thought of Matt Dillon as a "great" actor. But I thought Dillon's role as Bukowski was just okay. I almost can't quite put my finger on it. He looks a decent bit Like Buk, but his actual performance seems almost too much like a mediocre impression. I don't know. It's just not very natural or convincing or something. I'm not an acting coach. He just didn't click with me as Bukow...*ahem*, Chinaski, anyway.

As a whole the film just didn't capture the feel of the Bukowski novel. It seemed too clean for some reason. The whole film just seemed a lot more tame than the literature. His writing captures this great sense of adventure, danger, and a frequent raw vulgarity. But also, it has a very artful heart to it. The movie missed this entirely, in my opinion.

But believe it or not though, I still think it's a good movie. Outside the actual interpretation of Charles Bukowski's novel, it's still fun watch, with generally good performances, and a phenomenal story to have been based on.