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Charles Bukowski was not a beautiful man. Neither was the world in which he was raised, nor lived as an adult. There is a raw crudity which stands out. I had never heard of Bukowski, but was drawn to a film about his life: Bukowski: Born to this, by intriguing reviews. Bukowski was a poet, raw and confronting, yet insightful and disdainful of modern life. Living as he did through perhaps the most turbulent years of the twentieth century, amidst the most rapid of change, Bukowski reflected on life from the underside... a man who was harshly treated as a child, who bucked against the organising and sanitising trends of life.
The movie sets Bukowski and his works in a gentle light, giving power to the words he wrote. Although it does not ignore the seedier aspects of his journey, it utilises them to give context and power to his words. Although the movie seeks to cast him as the great American poet - and in that sense the movie is more hagiography than documentary - it sets the Bukowski image of life over against the Disney image... much more real and grounded in the struggles, seeing hope in their midst, not through denial of them.
The movie is raw, but there are the occasional apothegms amidst citings of his poetry, equally powerful. Towards the end of the movie, reference is made to the battle for a return to more formally structured poetry, over against Bukowski's own style. Together with his publisher they released a small book entitled "Art", with a single word appearing on each page: "As the Spirit wanes, the form appears".
It is a thought worth pondering.
Posted by gary at June 28, 2005 10:21 PM
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