Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Director John Dullaghan’s biographical documentary about infamous poet Charles Bukowski, Bukowski: Born Into This, is as much a touching portrait of the author as it is an exposé of his sordid lifestyle. Interspersed between ample vintage footage of Bukowski’s poetry readings are interviews with the poet’s fans including such legendary figures such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Fante (wife of John), Bono, and Harry Dean Stanton. Filmed in grainy black and white by Bukowski’s friend, Taylor Hackford, due to lack of funding, the old films edited into this movie paint Bukowski’s life of boozing and brawling romantically, securing Bukowski’s legendary status.
A solid if conventional biographical documentary that benefits enormously from rich archival footage of Bukowski himself — raucous, magnetic, and unfiltered. The film does a decent job capturing Bukowski's legend through interviews with admirers like Bono, Harry Dean Stanton, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, but it ultimately follows a fairly standard cradle-to-grave doc structure without pushing the form. The grainy black-and-white cinematography lends atmosphere but is partly circumstantial (budget constraints). The ending feels somewhat anticlimactic, trailing off rather than arriving at a definitive statement about Bukowski's legacy or contradictions. Novelty is middling — the subject himself is singular, but the filmmaking approach is not particularly inventive.