Taglines: What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
Don Anderson is the Mickey’s hamburger chain marketing director who helped develop the “Big One”, its most popular menu item. When he learns that independent research has discovered a considerable presence of fecal matter in the meat, he travels to the fictitious town of Cody, Colorado to determine if the local Uni-Globe meatpacking processing plant, Mickey’s main meat supplier, is guilty of sloppy production. Don’s tour shows him only the pristine work areas and most efficient procedures, assuring him that everything the company produces is immaculate.
Suspicious of the facade he’s been shown, Don meets rancher Rudy Martin, who used to supply cattle to the Uni-Globe plant. Rudy and his Chicana housekeeper both assure him that because of the plant’s production level, several safety regulations are ignored or worked against; workers have no time to make sure that the manure coming from the intestines stays away from the meat. Don later meets with Harry Rydell, executive VP of Mickey’s, who admits being aware of the issue, but is not concerned.
Amber is a young, upbeat employee of Mickey’s, studying for college and living with her mother Cindy. While her life seems to be set, she continually faces the contrast between her current career and her own ambition, emphasized by her two lazy co-workers, Brian and Andrew, who, having heard of armed robberies at fast food restaurants in the area, start planning their own.
Based on the acclaimed second novel by Charles Bukowski. “Factotum” was published in 1975. The character of Henry Chinaski is widely known to be Bukowski’s alter ego. With exceptional performances that capture the intoxicated journey though life and art, “Factotum” is the story of a man living on the edge; a writer who risks everything, tries anything, and finds poetry in life’s pleasure and pain.
Factotum is a 2005 French-Norwegian drama film co-written and directed by Bent Hamer, adapted from the 1975 novel of the same name by Charles Bukowski. It stars Matt Dillon as Bukowski’s alter ego, Henry Chinaski. Although events in the book take place in Los Angeles in the 1940s, the film has a contemporary setting.
The script also makes use of Bukowski’s poems published in What Matters Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire and The Days Run Aways Like Horses Over the Hill, and some of Bukowski’s notebook entries published in The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship. For example, Matt Dillon reads the poem “Roll The Dice” (from What Matters Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire) in a voiceover at the end of the film.
Awards
Nominee Best Director – Norwegian Academy Awards (Bent Hamer)
Winner Best Director – Copenhagen International Film Festival (Bent Hamer)
Winner Best Actress – Copenhagen International Film Festival (Lili Taylor)
Winner Best Supporting Actress – San Diego Film Critics Society (Lili Taylor)
Nominee Golden Spike – Valladolid International Film Festival (Bent Hamer)
About the Story
Henry ‘Hank’ Chinaski (Matt Dillon) is working toward becoming a writer while struggling with alcoholism and holding various menial jobs. The film follows Chinaski as he works at, and gets fired from, various jobs, which include cleaning a massive sculpture, delivering ice, working at a pickle factory, and in a bicycle shop. In the course of sampling the smorgasbord of short-lived occupations, he meets up with assorted eccentric, frequently alcoholic characters.
The first woman Chinaski meets in a bar becomes his most consistent companion throughout the film. Jan (Lili Taylor), like Chinaski, is an alcoholic. He moves in and becomes her lover and drinking partner. They co-exist comfortably in languid squalor until Chinaski becomes upset after an altercation where he beats a wealthy man at the racing track who refuses to give up his seat. Initially polite, Chinaski assaults the man after Jan challenges his behavior. Soon after, Chinaski leaves Jan.
Unemployed again and scoring his next drink, Hank meets another female barfly, Laura (Marisa Tomei), who feels sorry for Chinaski and helps him procure alcohol with the help of her wealthy “sugar daddy” Pierre, an eccentric older man. After a strange misadventure on Pierre’s boat, Chinaski briefly returns to Jan, who is now working as a chambermaid at a hotel. A pivotal scene occurs with Jan after Chinaski discovers that he has caught a case of the “crabs” from her. Chinaski gains work but quickly loses his job after deciding to drink instead of completing cleaning a large statue.
Chinaski and Jan again break up after realizing their relationship has become boring and predictable and that they no longer really need each other. Jan moves in with a wealthy man who was the person assaulted before by Chinaski. By the film’s end Chinaski finds that he is most comfortable being alone with just his alcohol and his writing to keep him company.
In the final scene Chinaski justifies his lifestyle. While drinking, and watching a topless pole dancer, he describes the costs, persistence needed, and rewards of writing. In voiceover he says, “If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind… You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
Factotum (2006)
Directed by: Bent Hamer
Starring: Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Fisher Stevens, Marisa Tomei, Didier Flamand, Adrienne Shelly, Karen Young, Tony Lyons, Dean Brewington, James Michael Detmar, Kurt Schweickhardt
Screenplay by: Jim Stark
Production Design by: Eve Cauley
Cinematography by: John Christian Rosenlund
Film Editing by: Pål Gengenbach
Costume Design by: Tere Duncan
Set Decoration by: Sarah Kruchowski, Kate Sheeley
Music by: Kristin Asbjørnsen
MPAA Rating: R for language and sexual content.
Studio: IFC Films
Release Date: August 18, 2006
Visits: 57
