DON'T IT MAKE YA FEEL?
Wednesday. Hump Day. Here’s what I’m hot for…
Revisiting HAL HARTLEY MOVIES.
The signs have been accumulating for more than a year.
The in-crowd millennials of The Drift wrote a squib on their Instagram about discovering Trust. Gawker founding editor Elizabeth Spiers deployed “Theory of Achievement” in the New York Times to shame Gen X bros who had careened to the right. I even heard the filmmaker is blurbing a friend’s novel. Is the Hal Hartley revival finally afoot?
Yes and probably—ultimately—no. (It’s been tried before). But in case I’m wrong I want to get down what Hal Hartley was before it arrives and everyone has their own ideas. Such an exercise would be possible for other ’90s auteurs, of course. What did it mean to see Reservoir Dogs (1992) the week it opened or to see Rushmore (1998) before Wes Anderson became an adjective? But Hartley has managed to remain that most important thing to Gen Xers: a shibboleth. A secret handshake exchanged by those in on the bit. To persist as shibboleth is not easy. (Maybe Jim Jarmusch has succeeded?) One must avoid dated irrelevancy on the one hand (has anyone heard from Neil LaBute?) and commercial self-parody on the other. (Pick an Anderson.)
Hal Hartley does have a new movie out. His first feature since Ned Rifle (2014), the conclusion of the Henry Fool trilogy. Did you know that? I suspect that either you did not know that or have known it for so long that you now suspect I am a poser. (That’s what shibboleth-speakers call people who have gained, but not earned, access to the shibboleth. Tedious, but it comes with the territory.) It’s called Where to Land, he paid for it via Kickstarter—as he has for his projects since Ned Rifle—and I doubt a large audience will see it. Hartley produces and sells his own box-sets and offers his movies via streaming on his website, but the new one isn’t there yet. It had a handful of screenings at the Roxy Cinema in New York, which is where I saw it.
I loved it, and you if you like Hal Hartley, you will too. Hartley is an acquired taste, and seeing the new movie made me recall the experience of first seeing Trust (1990) and Simple Men (1992), the final two movies in his so-called Long Island Trilogy. Actors don’t exactly act in Hal Hartley movies. They say their lines and are. Robert Bresson, who preferred the term “models” to “actors” is often brought up in connection with Hartley, and while that is a good starting point, Hartley has a much lighter touch. He calls his preferred delivery “without interpretation” in a nod to (known Bresson stan) Susan Sontag. The spine of Benjamin Moser’s Sontag biography also seems to appear on every bookshelf in Where to Land.
Read the rest…
I love Hartley’s work. I ordered his LONG ISLAND TRILOGY a couple of years ago from HIS SITE. When I’m feeling down about the Indie Film Scene, I always pull it out and watch. It’s the Gen Xer in me.
OPERATIONS: scripting day, converting development notes, listening to OLD Canuck Rock.
STATUS: it is sunny and cold, went for a long walk and bought razors at Shoppers.
READING: Cinema Sewer
Let’s end this with some Canuck Rock that tickles my taint…I still have a crush on Darby Mills. I feel like she’d get me in trouble.
Later,
TC.