Barfly

A film set in Los Angeles. Henry lives in a bar. He is there when it opens and there when it closes. He is a poet. Nobody publishes what he writes and he does not much mind. He fights the barman Eddie every night. They go into the alley. Henry loses every time. He fights anyway. One day he sees a woman. Wanda is in a bar too. She lives the same life; she drinks, attaches to nobody, and expects nothing from anyone. They go home. From there the film is a story of living together. A small flat, a bed, a refrigerator and wine. Neither works. When money comes they drink; when it does not they do not wait. A publisher finds Henry. Tully runs a magazine and wants to print his poems. She gives him money. Henry takes it to the bar. What the narrative is interested in is not alcoholism but refusal: its idea is that Henry does not live this life as an accident; he openly refuses to be saved. Tully offers him another life. He takes it as an insult. His relationship with Wanda is the same. Neither tries to be faithful and it is not treated as a problem. The narrative lectures nowhere. It neither pities nor sanctifies. The last scene is in the bar again. The screenplay is by Charles Bukowski, written from his own youth. Bukowski was on set during filming and sits in the bar in one scene. Mickey Rourke plays the part with a walk and a way of speaking he invented; Bukowski disliked it at first and later accepted it. Barbet Schroeder spent years trying to get the film made and took a hard route to get the money from a studio. Robby Müller shot it. Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway, Alice Krige and Frank Stallone are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1980s American independent cinema and characters at the bottom. Who it is not for: anyone looking for development; nobody in the narrative changes and that is entirely deliberate.