(2005) Norwegian director Bent Hamer's bittersweet film is based on author Charles Bukowski's semi-autobiographical novel along with extracts from his other books. Henry "Hank" Chinaski (performed most convincingly by Matt Dillon in a role Jack Nicholson could have played 20 or 30 years ago), a writer of short stories he's been mailing off frequently to Black Sparrow Press without acceptance, finds and loses jobs along with the women he picks up in bars along the way.

Working for someone else, he believes, is simply slavery. From ice deliveryman to pickle-factory worker to bicycle-supply warehouseman to auto-supply packager to custodian at a newspaper, sometimes he gets fired the same day, sometimes he doesn't even get hired as happened at the taxi company where his falsification on his application (neglecting to mention any of the eighteen arrests for disorderly conduct and two DUIs) was discovered before he finished the driving-instruction class. "Can you call me a cab?" he asks after he's told to leave. Instead he takes a bus because any writer who can be swayed by editors, publishers, critics, or the public is finished.

The owner of the pickle plant asks Hank what his novel is about. "Everything," says Hank. Including cancer? "Yes." "My wife?" asks the owner. "She's in there too."

Hank meets Jan (Lili Taylor) in a bar, buys her a drink and gets her phone number; three days later he moves in with her. They live on pancakes and wine; they ignore the fire department when the building they live in catches fire. A pair of otherwise adults, they can't figure out an exit from adolescence.

While working at the bicycle-supply warehouse, Hank and Manny (Fisher Stevens) play the ponies at the racetrack and hit a streak of luck. Other employees give them money for placing bets. Hank and Manny just keep the money, never placing any bets for them because the other guys are losers. "What if they bet on our horse?" Hank asks. "Then we pick another horse," says Manny. Manny's not married. "Why?" asks Hank. Because women don't like it when he drinks and gambles; all they want to do is screw. So why not get a woman who likes to drink, gamble, and screw? "Who wants a woman like that?" answers Manny.

Jan turns critical of Hank's new fancy clothes and expensive booze, taunting him with "Mister Big-Time Horse Player," complaining he doesn't show her love anymore. Hank tells her that he gives her wisdom, enlightenment, music, and laughter.

Most of the time Hank acts nonchalantly with a humid self-confident air about him, but on rare occasions his easy-going demeanor can turn violent. In a bar he publicly scolds Jan, telling the crowd he'd tried to make a woman out of a whore, then slugs her. Intentionally he gets fired from his job, but threatens to come after the owner if he doesn't get unemployment insurance. No longer the big shot, he and Jan patch up their relationship.

Life is a grind with trying to win something before dying. To a chubby man who's taken his seat at the racetrack he pontificates that the poor have to be decent to each other; but when the man says he's a wealthy real-estate agent, Hank responses that gentlemen can't be hogs. Egged on by Jan, Hank again demands the seat but receives another refusal; he chokes and pummels the man before leaving the track.

After living wretchedly together, smoking and drinking to excess, Hank tells Jan that people don't need love, they need success. He splits his money with her and splits.

Words are not precious things, they're necessary things: when he finds himself doubting his ability to work with words, Hank reads another writer's book to regain his self-assurance as a writer. Spending his last dollar to buy a woman and himself a drink in a bar, he makes a strong impression on her. Laura (Marisa Tomei) takes Hank home. Hesitant at first after he says he's a writer, Laura asks Hank if he is a pervert or wacko who chops up his women and throws their body parts into garbage cans. "I stopped doing that years ago," he says. Later she introduces him to her sugardaddy Pierre, who collects needy girls from bars.

After Pierre dies, that gig's up, and Hank goes home to his mom and dad, who criticizes him for his drinking, lack of a job and ambition; Hank gets his dad's goat by inviting him out for a drink and some whoring. He finds Jan again working as a chambermaid and brings her back to his apartment, but she accuses him of having another woman when she returns from work to find the apartment cleaned up and a vacuum cleaner in the room. (Hank had performed the tidying up.) She goes off with someone she'd met in a bar; Hank gets drunk for three days, loses another job, discovers he's got crabs, and finally gets evicted. Without an address he can't get employment.

"How grimly we hold onto our misery" … until finally there's nothing left for death to take away. In an unemployment office Hank chats with a wino and shares his bottle, getting both of them thrown out on the street. A letter arrives for Hank from John Martin, the editor of Black Sparrow Press, at a long abandoned address. "If you're going to try, go all the way" - because that's the good fight, the only fight worth fighting, in isolation with the gods.

The soundtrack includes three songs by Kristin Asbörnsen with the lyrics from Charles Bukowski's poems. Another less successful film based on Bukowski's fiction is Barfly, directed by Barbet Schroeder and featuring Mickey Rourke.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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