BUKOWSKI: BORN INTO THIS (2004) (***1/2)

Director John Dullaghan (feature debut) uses archival interviews with poet Charles Bukowski and new interviews with his friends and admirers to create this complex character study of arguably the most successful modern poet.

Bukowski has become a cult figure for his raw and direct style of writing. He was an angry alcoholic who for a good portion of his life worked at the post office at night, slept minimally then woke up to drink and write. No one would describe him as attractive with his long face, large nose and scarred face from awful acne during adolescence.

Bukowski lived in poverty for a good portion of his early career as a writer. Then businessman John Martin started Black Sparrow publishing, specifically to publish Bukowski’s work with the promise to pay the writer $100 a month for the rest of his life as long as he quit his regular job to write. This proposition would bring success to both men.

Dullaghan does a good job of effortlessly chronicling Bukowski’s life from his childhood under an viciously abusive father to his efforts to work where ever he could in an effort to make just enough money so he could write, to his success, which brought him women that previously would have never given him the time of day.

Because Bukowski is uninhibited to talk about the most sensitive of issues, we learn first hand many things from his life. Watch as he talks about his first sexual experience with a 300-pound prostitute. He blushes. That’s Bukowski. The most interesting part about him is that his hard living persona is only a thin veil. A wounded child lurks just under the surface and he’s not afraid to explore that side as well. His honesty to express his feelings no matter how it might make him look is what makes his art so powerful.

In the film, many of his famous admirers and friends are interviewed including Bono, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Harry Dean Stanton and RAY director Taylor Hackford. Many of his former lovers are interviewed giving the flip side of what it was like to live with a brilliant, but difficult artist. He could be sweet, but when he was really drunk his insecurities bubbled to the surface. There’s one unnerving scene in the film where during an interview Bukowski gets into an argument with his wife Linda Lee, which ends in violence.

Dullaghan doesn’t just tell a story about Bukowski, highlighting his accomplishments, but draws a portrait of where Bukowski’s need to write came from. The close of the film ends with Stanton reading one of Bukowski’s poems. It’s the perfect note to end on. Bukowski writes about a blue bird that lives inside him that he won’t let out. He describes himself with succinct honesty that’s quite touching.