Bloody Nose, Emp­ty Pockets

There is no equiv­a­lent to the expe­ri­ence of spend­ing the entire night – from sun­down to sun-up – in a bar. It’s the alco­holic imbib­ing equiv­a­lent of a marathon race, where it’s all about pace, recov­ery and mak­ing sure your inter­nal organs don’t pack up before you reach the fin­ish line. Plus, the ones who do make it have clear­ly spent a long time con­di­tion­ing their bod­ies for such pun­ish­ing and sus­tained phys­i­cal abuse.

Sib­lings Bill and Turn­er Ross have made a film which, on its sur­face, offers a vale­dic­to­ry salute to a musty insti­tu­tion that is in trag­ic decline: the Amer­i­can dive bar. They check any sense of judg­ment or con­ser­v­a­tive moral­is­ing at the door and trace a bac­cha­na­lian binge across a sin­gle night at a crum­my-look­ing Las Vegas snug called The Roar­ing 20s as its staff and reg­u­lars gath­er to toast this tum­ble­down tavern’s final day in operation.

The film comes across as a vérité riff on the clas­sic TV sit­com Cheers, in which patrons and drinkers all know each other’s name, and it’s seem­ing­ly rare that a ran­dom stranger would wan­der in off the street for a quick tip­ple. Osten­si­bly, it’s made to feel as if the film­mak­ers just hit the right place at the right time and that the steady con­sump­tion of booze served to sup­press any anx­i­eties that patrons may have had about ​“per­form­ing” in front of the camera.

Michael Mar­tin, a washed up actor who is first in and last out, is our unof­fi­cial guide through this long night, as the film opens with him wak­ing up at the bar and then chin­ning a break­fast shot before hit­ting the restrooms to shave a fresh­en up. With his sunken jowls and wiry frame, he cuts some­thing of a trag­ic fig­ure, and through his var­i­ous con­ver­sa­tions across the night you nat­u­ral­ly acquire a sense of his sor­ry pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al situation.

The hushed pre-show even­tu­al­ly hits the lev­els of mild­ly rau­cous when the first guests arrive and every­one is still able to con­verse with a lev­el of non-slurred flu­id­i­ty. Lat­er on, the stag­ger­ing and swag­ger­ing begins, sur­faces are awash with spilled liquor and the in-house juke­box blares out toe-tap­ping hits from across the decades. The Ross­es imbed them­selves with­in the mêlée and cap­ture con­ver­sa­tions, alter­ca­tions and nos­tal­gic remem­brances, as tem­pers appear to flare and recede – a lapel grab turns into a hug with­in a mat­ter of seconds.

Now, all the descrip­tions above are based pure­ly on a sur­face lev­el read­ing of what the film appears to offer the view­er. Tak­en at face val­ue, it’s a very enter­tain­ing and immer­sive look at work­ing class bar cul­ture and alco­hol as a cat­a­lyst for per­for­mance and truth­ful expres­sion. If you dig a lit­tle deep­er, you’ll dis­cov­er that there’s an illu­so­ry aspect to the film, and that its appar­ent rela­tion­ship to the doc­u­men­tary form is – despite appear­ances – by no means a given.

It would be fas­ci­nat­ing to delve into ques­tions of whether the envi­ron­ment we’re see­ing has been manip­u­lat­ed in any way, but they should be ques­tions that come after expe­ri­enc­ing the film know­ing as lit­tle about it as pos­si­ble – tak­ing this roller­coast­er out­pour­ing of pure emo­tion at face val­ue. What we will say is, the more you know about it, the more mirac­u­lous the film becomes, oper­at­ing as both an impor­tant cul­tur­al doc­u­ment about Amer­i­can leisure time, and a trea­tise on the authen­tic­i­ty of any record­ed image.

Bloody Nose, Emp­ty Pock­ets is avail­able on Cur­zon Home Cin­e­ma from 24 December.