Are substance abuse movies really all that interesting if they aren't rotoscoped?

This past weekend, I made the mistake of renting the straight-to-video Factotum. It told me on the back that it was based on a Charles Bukowski novel--a poet who I find somewhat suspect to begin with--but it was a poet movie, so I figured I should support itwith my $4.29. Plus it has Lili Taylor and Marisa Tomei in it. (OK, I have to interrupt this post just to say that I'm currently eating a bowl of mushroom soup that has, quite possibly, the largest hunk of mushroom ever known to man. It looks like a stingray in my bowl. Even MY mouth isn't that big! Carrying on...)I've generally found these actresses, particularly Taylor, enjoyable and engaging to watch. And they do their best here, but I can only stomach just so much of the aren't-we-pitiable-yet-deeply-romantic-drunks act. And that's at the heart of what I don't get about Bukowski's appeal. He's supposed to be this down-n-out, gritty, blue-collar, pickled sort of poet, but, really, his high-falutin', Romantic diction just undermines that whole persona. And he's such a sentimentalist! So what if he spouts off lines like "Jan was a good fuck. She had a tight pussy. And she took it like it was a knife stabbing her to death." Oh, I am so SHOCKED! A flippant use of the word "pussy!" I'm all aflutter. And that pseudo-shocking language doesn't make me feel that there actually IS the visceral reality in his writing that he would like there to be. And it's certainly not present in Factotum.

Okay, so maybe I'm terribly far removed. I have, quite possibly, the least addictive personality ever. I'm far far too aware of the consequences down the line to subject my body and mind and the bodies and minds of those I care about to the detriments of abuse of any vice...even food, which I love...even sex, which, well, let's face it, I seem to be wrasslin' with in my own head these days way more than I am excuting an act thereof. I'm the first to admit that I don't really understand addictive behavior because I've never experienced anything that could even come close. So, yes, it would be natural that I'd be bored by a dramatization of it. And, likewise, it would stand to reason that I'd have little sympathy for a story-teller that wants to act, all victimized-like, like he's some sort of working-class hero because he spends grand segments of time hittin' the sauce. All this I'll concede: I'm not the best audience here. But then, glamorizing alcoholism in movie form is probably never going to win me over, in the first place.

Would this movie be any good if I weren't pre-disposed not to like it? Well, the 15-year-old kid working at Blockbuster warned me that I'd hate it. He said that it moved too slow and that Matt Dillon was a lousy actor. I don't know that either of those things are really the movie's deepest flaws but I do know that this guy renders himself as unsympathetic as possible. And maybe that, in the end, is Bukowski's allure? That bravado that he just doesn't give a shit what an audience thinks? Like that's supposed to make him earn my respect as a writer? After all, he says as much in the first scene in which he's sitting, sloshed, in front of a notebook. And maybe it would if I thought he had something interesting to say-- if I thought the writing were all that engaging to begin with...

But I don't. So, I was bored.

And then I put in A Scanner Darkly. I'm aware that, like Bukowski, Phillip K. Dick has a cult following. In certain circles, he is beloved. But frankly, this story IS more interesting than that of "Hank Chinaski" in Factotum. This movie has layers of both surveillance paranoia and drug abuse that, quite simply, make it a deeper story.

However, with regard to the surveillance issues, well, this is a topic that's beginning to feel dated to me. I mean, being watched is part of the post-modern condition, right? And aren't we done being post-moder yet? I had a professor in grad school who proclaimed the Post-Modern Era over and thus dubbed all of us "the Post-Ironic generation." Well, ok, I don't know about that either but I kinda feel like I hashed through all the Big Brother, I'm Being Watched Literature 10 years ago when I was an undergrad. And it's no coincidence that this novel was written in the late 70s. It's not that this issue isn't still relevant-- it's probably moreso-- it's that I've become so innured to the notion that I'm on camera for some ridiculous percentage of my day. It's old news. Jesus. My nonchalance here suddenly feels ominious, eh?

Anyway, it's also a movie about addictions. And never have two more naturally tweak-ish actors than Robert Downey Jr. and Rory Cochrane been selected. Both have such particularized bodily rhythms that you kinda figure they're strung out most of the time anyway. And the funny thing is, it makes me like them more! What's up with that? I can't stand Matt Dillon's jerk-off drunk up there but you put a slightly off-kilter actor in a roll in which he gets to let loose with all his bodily tics and I love him? No, I don't get it either. And really, this is the genius of rotoscoping. This sort of animation that maps real filmed acting into small, flat planes of moving colors has a curious manner in which it exalts and exacerbates the ways bodies move. I mean, I'd know the way Keanu Reeves walks and moves his hands whether or not he looks like himself. And so, all the Cochrane-isms and all the Downey-isms suddenly become this amazing sculptural choreography of strung-out-edness that wouldn't be nearly so dramatic were this film not doctored up with the rotoscope.

And that begs the question with which I titled this post: would I care about the demons these folks incur were it not for the visuality (is that a word?) at play in this movie? So dazzled am I by the animation--by the way it seems to make actors even more situated in their own bodies than ever before--that I really can't tell you. Though I can say this: there is something genuinely tragic about a man who regrets the direction his life has taken because of his addictions--particularly when his addiction was unethically shoved upon him by the dictations of his job. And the sadness that pervades a story like A Scanner Darkly, despite its humor, is notably absent from Factotum, in which the so-called protagonist vehemently and defiantly, if metaphorically, thrusts his middle finger at every the more reasonable option within every choice that comes his way.

And so a verdict: Rotoscoping-->interesting, though slightly distracting. Drug movies-->jury's still out.