There are certain authors who make for great film adaptations, and almost all the others make for miserable ones. The difference, as near as I can tell, is that authors who focus on plot as the primary strength of their writing adapt well to film, while authors who's main strength is their words and style make for bad films. This, then, is my main problem with Barfly and subsequently my love for Factotum.
Bukowski novels and short stories are never good for what happens. By this I mean, they're mostly about the same things--drunks, bums, sex, smoking, fighting, depression, filth, etc. It's a thousand times the same story, but the genius comes in how he tells them each time. Bukowski definitely falls into the less-is-more, use-plain-language school of writing--meaning that the brilliant lines he manages are all the more meaningful because they cut to the quick.
Barfly fails and Factotum succeeds on the basis of two things: what they focus on and what the characters are like. Barfly chooses to focus on a plot, following the main character Henry Chinaski, an alcoholic who fights to win money and occasionally writes. We see him come full circle, from having almost nothing to having slightly more by movie's end. His romance with Faye Dunaway's character feels artificial and conceited, and her fight with Alice Krige's character at the end is embarrassing. All the while, the movie completely fails to make us believe in or care about Chinaski because we so seldom get to hear Bukowski's words through him. We're told he's a great writer because Alice Krige tracks him down in order to give him money for publishing some of his work, but we're never shown that he's a great writer.
By contrast, Factotum has a plot that just kind of happens and feels natural. Events occur to move the action along, but there is no real journey or change for our hero, Chinaski. Instead, it's mainly about him trying to make money by working various odd jobs, gambling on horse races, and so forth. All the while, we glimpse him writing and drinking, and we're always hearing Bukowski's words, often spoken in voiceover by Matt Dillon, who wouldn't be my first choice for the role but actually does an admirable job of it.
Speaking of which, Mickey Rourke absolutely misses the mark in Barfly. His Bukowski is somewhere between a hunched over Russel Crowe and a less manic Rodney Dangerfield, a freak of nature more than an odd human being. Meanwhile, Faye Dunaway doesn't belong in this movie at all. She always sounds like she's just reading lines rather than inhabiting her character, and simply put, she's too pretty to seem believable. I never once for a second saw her character and not her. The other problem with Barfly is that it doesn't portray violence and alcoholism in a realistic way. The fights in the movie are bloody and meaningless because within minutes, the characters look fine. As for the drinking, it feels completely sanitized, and the characters drink like fishes while never once getting sick or looking worse for the wear.
Factotum, somehow, gets the two main characters right. Dillon's Bukowski is more patient and reserved, dignified even in his lowest moments. We see him in every aspect of his life, including a particularly funny and revealing scene where he must have his balls bandaged up so he can go to work. This time out, his main love interest is played by Lili Taylor, who you might know from Six Feet Under or High Fidelity. While she and Chinaski meet and re-meet during the course of the movie, you never get that sanitized 80s romance film feel that Barfly has because she seems real and, spoiler alert, Chinaski loses her in the end. I always saw her character and not "hey it's the crazy medicated ex-girlfriend from High Fidelity!!" Furthermore, the realism of the violence and drinking is far better in this movie. Though there are only one or two true moments of violence in it, they feel more "real" because of their awkwardness. As for the drinking, well, people who drink feel like shit and get sick, and Factotum has both.
In the end, there isn't much contest here. Barfly could be just about any movie by the time it's done, while Factotum is a much more fully realized adaptation. The fact that it ends with one of my favorite scenes from the novel, in which Chinaski and a bum are thrown out of a day labor agency for drinking, and follows it with a brilliant monologue while he drinks in a strip club, is all the sweeter.
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