Barfly (1987)
MGM DVD (region 1, 2, 4)

d. Barbet Schroeder; pr. Tom Luddy, Fred Roos, Barbet Schroeder; scr. Charles Bukowski; ph. Robby Muller; m. Jack Baran; ed. Eva Gardos; cast. Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway, Alice Krige, Jack Nance, JC Quinn, Frank Stallone (97 mins)

Although European director Barbet Schroeder had worked in documentary, charting the early rule of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada (later played by Forrest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland) he was better known for the sexual themes of Maitresse.

  After this he made several televised interviews with cult American author Charles Bukowski.  Bukowski, often considered the “poet of skid row”, was a drifter who had spent most of his life in cheap, dingy rooming houses and bars mixing with other down and out alcoholics and available women.  Schroeder urged Bukowski to write an original screenplay based on these experiences and then spent many years trying to get it made before it finally attracted the attention of exploitation outfit Cannon Studios, who were vying for added respectability.  The leading character provided an opportunity to a then-rising actor, Mickey Rourke, who in such films as The Pope of Greenwich Village, Year of the Dragon and Angel Heart had established himself as a talented dramatic actor and courted a reputation as a dishevelled narcissist.  The resultant film, Barfly, became an immediate critical delight although it remained an obscurity for mass audiences.  It was considered by critics to be one of the finest American films of the year and went a long way towards launching the director’s subsequent American career – he would indeed soon become an A-list Hollywood director noted for actionful thrillers including Reversal of Fortune, Single White Female, Kiss of Death and Desperate Measures.

Barfly centres on drunken writer Mickey Rourke, who has a cheap hotel room but spends much of his time in bars, one in particular where he regularly brawls with a bartender.

Usually he takes a beating but occasionally he does manage to pummel his arrogant opponent, who embodies everything about human masculinity that Rourke despises.  However, Rourke is seemingly followed by a strange man (Jack Nance), who soon breaks into his room and takes photographs of his writings.  One night in the bar Rourke spies a woman (Faye Dunaway, in the role that supposedly rescued her reputation) and hits on her.  The two of them soon form a bond and Rourke is shown to her apartment.  However, they are short of money for booze and Rourke says he will do the responsible thing and get a steady job.  He leaves Dunaway at the bar whilst he goes in search of such employment.  He returns to discover that she has gone off with the despised bartender.  Still, they manage to maintain their connection.  Soon the strange man returns – he is a private detective hired by a rich publisher (Alice Krige) to find the promising author.  Krige is infatuated by this skid row bum with a writing talent and invites him to her place to sample the good life.  Ultimately, however, he feels much more comfortable in his life as a drunken wino and returns to the bar and to Dunaway.  Krige can’t understand this and follows him.

The plot of Barfly is rather flimsy as the attention is firmly on character and environment.  

It is a world of booze, one night encounters and back street brawls yet is presented not as a sign of human desperation although it may be that for some.  Instead, for Rourke, this is a valid lifestyle choice.  He is a talented writer, thought to have great potential, but who rejects the calm and elegantly ordered world of publishing privilege in order to remain an inebriated, scruffy and hard-living bum, writing only in his reflective and semi-sober moments.  Amidst the realistic squalor the film manages a wry sense of humour and even dares to capture the invigoration with which Rourke treats this life.  Therein is found the film’s main achievement: capturing the perverse, masochistic pleasure that a drunk has in his lifestyle.  Rourke is not a self-pitying alcoholic, whatever hold the booze may have over him, but has voluntarily defined himself and his lifestyle.  What is disreputable and dirty to others is a source of inspiration to this drunken philosopher.  Complementing the script’s rather misanthropic wit is the director’s fondness for the characters and their unique existence, complete with its rituals and private despairs.  Where some may see this lifestyle as a trap, for Rourke it is a form of liberation and he tellingly refers to the rich accoutrements of Krige’s world as “a cage with golden bars”.  He is not a down and out, as he lives by choice.

It is impossible not to see the film as, in part, Bukowski’s autobiography.  However, the film is not uncritical of Rourke and indeed depicts him as an essentially masochistic person, tying well into Rourke’s stylized narcissism. 

Dunaway is a crazy kindred spirit but is in a sense a kept woman, a boozer’s trophy prize as she admits that she will go with any man who has a fifth of anything.  Their relationship is a clever tonal mix of desperation and togetherness and there is a sense of the laughably pitiful in their effort at conformity when Rourke seeks a job.  When he finally gets money from selling his writing he uses it to buy every bum in the house round after round of drinks, to be for a moment the toast of this limited milieu and as a means of further provoking the bartender.  He is a king in his own world and the film is thus filled with his sense of personal triumph, however shallow others may find it.  Through it all is stressed the issue of choice and the due sense of victory over limited circumstances that comes with the life of this bum.  Far from desolate, it is an affirmative counter-culture vision: a deliberate rejection of conventional society.  The sense of celebration rather than entrapment makes the film a surprisingly amusing story, despite the surrounding urban desolation.  No other film has so well captured the almost grotesque triumph of a skid row existence with such exuberance and affinity.  Barfly is a truly unique American film.

DVD DETAILS:

Vision

The 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer is a standout, wonderfully preserving the design of the original film as well as its intended aspect ratio, unlike other releases from this distributor.  The often bright, lurid neon colours of the bars and grimy streets are richly deployed; even the sometimes grainy image of the source material adds to a transfer which at times effectively captures the smudgy look of sights seen through too many drinks.  Interiors and exteriors are often bridged by a startlingly mobile camera as the film frequently contrasts the artificial neon lights of the barroom interiors with the bright sunlight outside.  This imposing sunlight shines through into the bar when doors are opened.  Indeed, a motif is made of blinds drawn as if the outside sunlight is undesired by these mostly nocturnal creatures.  Yet, the visuals constantly stress a realistic squalor to the sets, especially Rourke’s hotel room, which again makes for a major contrast to the open, bright, clean world of the rich and affluent Krige, a woman who cannot contain her infatuation with all that she is not.  The trappings and conventions of class distinctions thus carry in the contrast.  Bar scenes use shadows and smoke for authenticity and there is a fine sense of the immediate street environs (shops, other bars) outside these places.  The constant neon makes for a vibrant texture and contributes to a wonderful use of coloured backlighting effects.

Sound
The audio transfer is of unexpectedly good quality, always crisp and engagingly distributed within its Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo limitations.  There is a solid contrast between the sounds of the street life outside and the barroom jukebox world, nicely conveying the notion of escape and even sanctuary offered by the bars (thus, the bluesy music-filled rooms function as a self-contained world).  Ambient details are crisp, serving a fine spatial sense of the open outside world as even potentially overwhelming if one lets it be.  Much is made of how the sounds of this outside world are thus almost intrusive.  There is more pleasure and vibrancy and activity within the bars than without.  Accordingly, the smaller sounds of the alcoholic’s lifestyle are accorded great stature – the rustling of paper bags containing bottles of booze, the flow of booze poured into glasses.  Drinks swilled and foods chewed also have resonance as these everyday physical details are rendered with textured precision.  Likewise, the sound of a radio playing in Rourke’s personal environs parallels the use of the jukebox in the bar, the different musical selections adding to the small contrasts within an established routine.  Indeed, the soundtrack is surprisingly diverse, from the jazz of Booker T to more classical selections, all used to create an evolving flow of moods.  Despite the ritual qualities of this life it is far from stagnant within its own operations.

Special Features

Sadly, special features are minimal: with the original trailer (in widescreen) and a photo gallery of movie stills being all there is on offer.

Copyright (C) Robert Cettl All Rights Reserved Last modified: June 20, 2009