Barfly (1987)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio & Animation Theatrical Trailer Gallery-Photo
Rating
Year Of Production	1987
Running Time	95:51
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Barbet Schroeder
Studio Distributor	Shock Entertainment	Starring	Mickey Rourke Faye Dunaway lice Krige Jack Nance J.C. Quinn Frank Stallone Sandy Martin Roberta Bassin Gloria LeRoy Joe Unger Harry Cohn Pruitt Taylor Vince Joe Rice
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Jack Baran

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

   Written with a heavy dash of autobiography by poet Charles Bukowski, Barfly self-consciously takes us into the life of Henry Chinaski (Rourke). Henry’s a deeply self-destructive drunk – when he’s not stumbling from bar to bar and from beer to scotch and back again, he’s likely to be provoking his way into brutal back-alley fistfights. But he’s also a talented writer with a love of Mahler and Handel. He is aware of the depths to which he has sunk, and he revels in his lifestyle: “Some people never go crazy”, he writes. “What truly horrible lives they must live.” Over the course of several bleary days and seemingly endless nights, Henry’s chosen path brings him into contact first with fellow alcoholic Wanda Wilcox (Dunaway), and then with fascinated publisher Tully Sorenson (Alice Krige).

   There’s not a lot of story here, just a gradual clarification of the nature and logic of Henry and his world. Troubled-but-brilliant young men are not exactly rare in movies, but Barfly sets itself apart. Unlike, say, Good Will Hunting, the protagonist is neither fundamentally lovable, nor cleaned up and redeemed by the end of the movie. And unlike Jack Nicholson’s character in Five Easy Pieces, Henry has not abandoned his talent by fleeing into low life: poverty and violence and alcoholism are where his talent comes from. This is remarkably grim stuff, and in lesser hands might have seemed nothing more than a self-pitying pose. But Henry – and by extension, Bukowski – don’t want pity. They just want a drink.

   Both of the leads are superb. Rourke’s soft voice and stretched-out delivery, his crazy but knowing eyes, his shambling, battered presence – all these things and more make his Henry both interesting and revolting, but never safe or obvious. Dunaway is a world away from the hysteria of Chinatown or the full-blown overacting of Mommie Dearest; full of subtleties, she is gaunt yet gorgeous, and every bit the “stressed goddess” of the script. Around these two circle an array of perfectly cast character actors – like Frank Stallone (yes, the brother) as Henry’s boof-haired nemesis Eddy, or Gloria LeRoy as aged prostitute Grandma Moses. And beyond them is an army of extras seemingly pulled right off the streets and out of the gutters, whose slurred words and ravaged faces add more than enough sleazy realism to make you shift uncomfortably in your seat. In the background of every scene there’s always someone stealing, hustling, or looking for booze. Director Barbet Schroeder has, without once going over the top into caricature or dystopian fantasy, created the single most awful vision of life in America that I have ever seen.

   That doesn’t make this movie sound like much fun; and indeed, despite more than a few flashes of dark humour, I spent most of the movie in mild-to-extreme horror. Yet Barfly is certainly worth watching. Well crafted from start to finish, it seems to have left its mark on films such as Fight Club that have imitated the visceral bloodiness of its fights. It certainly left its mark on me – I doubt I’ll ever want a drink again. In fact, I think I’ll have another shower…

Video

   The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and is 16x9 enhanced.

   The image is just a little bit soft throughout; not annoyingly so, but enough that small details are muddied. A lot of Barfly takes place in darkness or dim light, but there isn’t much shadow detail. I’d guess that’s mainly a product of the source material, and you certainly don’t lose track of what’s going on. There isn’t any low level noise.

   Colours in Barfly come in two varieties – neon signs, which are numerous, bright, and clear; and everything else, which tends to look cheap and grimy. This is mostly intentional, of course, but there’s also a certain amount of subtle false colouration, as appears on the door at 10:45 and the wall at 30:25.

   Persistent, minor posterisation lends a shimmer to the image, particularly during daytime interior scenes. There was a bit of telecine wobble over the credits, as is quite common, and a gentle speckling of minor film artefacts throughout the movie.

   No subtitles are encoded on this disc. Bah!

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

   The single audio track is a Dolby Digital 2.0 job, encoded at 224Kbps.

   Allowing for the fact that so many characters are muttering, crazy, or bombed out of their minds, the dialogue was clear and easily understood. There’s a lot of background conversation going on at times, and it too can generally be picked out without any problems – like the guy wheedling his rent money over the phone at 9:05. There were no instances of hissy dialogue, or other audio artefacts, and no problems with synchronisation either.

   The music, sourced and edited by Jack Baran, is simply perfect. In bars, we’re treated to a variety of terrific jukebox music, my favourite of which was opening track Hip-Hug Her by Booker T & the MG’s. In Henry’s quieter moments we get an assortment of wonderful pieces by Mahler, Handel and Mozart. All of it sounds just as good as it’s supposed to: quite a lot is meant to be heard over in-scene radio sets, or from actual jukeboxes, and so sounds appropriately scratchy and hissy.

   Being as how this is Dolby Digital 2.0, my surrounds found themselves out of work. They took to drinkin’, and I ain’t had a decent sound outta them since…

   Subwoofer got laid off, too, on account of the same reason. Just waits around, now, for little scraps of redirected bass to earn itself a living. Shame.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Trailer and photo gallery. Snooze.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer (1:56)

Photo Gallery

   The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Commentary by director Barbet Schroeder
• Cast and crew information
• Featurette: I Drink, I Gamble and I Write – The Making of Barfly
• Excerpts from Barbet Schroeder’s The Bukowski Tapes
• English and French subtitles

• Photo gallery

   The video quality is passable.

   The audio quality is fine.

   The extras are lacking.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall