It was never going to be an easy task adapting Hubert Selby Jr.’s controversial 1964 novel, The Last Exit to Brooklyn into a film, but its transfer onto screen by director Uli Edel managed to remain faithful to Selby’s uncompromising stream of consciousness.

Selby’s Brooklyn of 1952 is one of lost souls struggling to survive through a factory strike that employs most of the town’s men. Money is tight, families are starving and the only release from a squalid existence is sex, drugs and violence.

Strike union leader Harry Black (Stephen Lang) keeps his workers’ spirits high with free beer and defiance and delivers the same contempt to his wife when she tries to make love to him. Harry is gay, but doesn’t understand what he feels until he becomes bewitched by the effeminate Georgette (Alexis Arquette).

One night Harry, Vinnie (Peter Dobson) and his gang of thug pals go back to Georgette’s flat and hang out with some tranny friends. Georgette is hopelessly in love with Vinnie and he finds Georgette amusing, a bit like a lame puppy amuses a bored lawless teenager.

While they get high Harry meets Regina (Bernard Zette) who becomes the procurer of his sexual enlightenment and the reason he’s late getting to the picket line at a crucial moment the next day.

Meanwhile local prostitute Tralala (Jennifer Jason Leigh – excellent) entices sailors to desolate spots so Vinnie and his mates can rob them. She briefly falls in love with a kind one who treats her right, but nothing good in this exploration of the disease of the human condition lasts for long.

Humour comes in the shape of Ricki Lake’s bullish father who’s in denial that his daughter’s huge belly has a baby inside it rather than an excess of junk food, but we’re not really laughing.

As Edel daisy chains through all the major characters, the strike is used as the backdrop underlying their pain. Despite an enigmatic score by Mark Knopfler, it’s difficult to feel any compassion for them when behaviour from nearly all involved is so unforgiving. At best everyone is self-destructive and delusional and it takes an atrocity the magnitude of a war crime for Tralala to realise she should respect her virtue more. Others fare less well by the end.

The Last Exit to Brooklyn is ugly, shocking and upsetting, which is the point. It belongs to a type of cinema determined to snap us out of the passive film watching in which we normally engage. Brooklyn looks almost Dickensian, bathed in grey shadows with the luminosity of molton ash. The only flash of colour is Tralala’s tight red pencil skirt, but it brings no light to her sorry life.

Disc 2: Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow
Narrated by Robert Downey Jr. It/ll Be Better Tomorrow is a documentary chronicling the life and art of Hubert Selby Jr, author of The Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream. It features rare footage of Selby himself reflecting on his traumatic life that inspired his work, and interviews from his admirers and friends such as Anthony Kledis, Jared Leto, Henry Rollins and Lou Reed.

The Last Exit To Brooklyn (special edition) [1989]
Label: Metrodome
Released: 2 October 2006
ASIN: B000HCO5AC

Buy the 2 Disc Special Edition DVD of The Last Exit To Brooklyn online and save yourself some money to out towards the original novel.