Factotum: A man who performs many jobs
How does a director adapt Bukowski to the screen? Norwegian Bent Hamer would have us believe shittily.
The adaptation fails because Hamer tries to adapt the events of the novel, rather than the mood. "Chinaski gets drunk." "Chinaski goes to the horse track." "Chinaski gets crabs." "Chinaski gets his balls wrapped up in gauze." What happens in a Bukowski story isn't important. It's the desperate feeling of being in the gutter and not wanting to get up that makes his work so brilliant. This is, sadly, lost on the cutting room floor. Hamer clings to his subtitle, merely presenting Chinaski performing odd jobs instead of making us understand why he performs them.
Where Hamer does succeed is in Chinaski's voice overs. Dillon narrates like Bukowski reads his poetry: slow, bitter and without emphasis, with a practiced rhaspiness that reeks of Bukowski like a sweating wino reeks of alcohol.
Like a wine drunk, this movie will make you feel warmth creeping from your gut, feel creeping cold and down-and-out, and will, ultimately, be forgetable. If you've never read Bukowski, you probably won't after seeing this. If you have, you'll feel the same loss for the mood and feel of his writing.