The Hal Hartley thread

I also like Surviving Desire for the opening bit as his most sharp.

Surviving Desire: Best thing in the world, ever, or just best film?

Flirt and Surviving Desire are perhaps the most inventive of his features, in terms of his staging/framing and the lovely symmetric logic of the plots.

I think Henry Fool was a selfconscious retreat on those terms; it was more novelistic in its approach.

I was first exposed to Hal Hartley via Flirt, which I hated with a passion. It wasn't until about two years ago, just before the aforementioned Hartley retrospective in Boston, that I really warmed to him and then some. I saw Flirt in that retro and my opinion was completely revised. The last third of Flirt, for one thing, is absolutely gorgeous on the big screen.

The earlier stuff had this balance between formalism and storytelling which the good new wave stuff had too, and by henry fool it seemed like it was sublimated into the story -- you could see it if you wanted to but it didn't need to announce its presence.

This is why Rivette got better with age and Godard worse, by the way.

(re the last part: Trilateral symmetry!)

I had the chance to see a few recent shorts--The New Math(s), The Other Also--in Boston last year and they are a far cry from the feature films.

Do you mean the thing at the Harvard Film Center, where Hartley introduced his films? I was at that show too! I liked the one short where he just filmed two people moving in slow motion with the camera out of focus. It was so completely controlled and perfect - I enjoyed seeing his obsessiveness get full play like that.

But the best part of seeing Hartley speak was when the local pinkos harassed him for using violence in his movies. Someone who had only watched one of his films (Amateur) thought it was shocking that he would allow someone to get shot in his movie. Hartley just seemed to think it was really cool how the scene looked.

(And it was the fakest-looking violence in film history, too - they didn't even spring for blood packs.)

My favorite Hartley movies: Trust, Simple Men, Henry Fool. And The Unbelievable Truth isn't as great but it really does it for me. The scene where the two girls are just riding around on the bike is perfect.

If you look at "the new math" on imdb, it says "If you like this film we also recommend "The Best of Borat"", which seems wildly incongruous.

"No such thing" is set in Iceland and that can only be wonderful.

Kurt: Do you resent your position as a woman in the motion picture industry? I'm sorry. I find you very attractive, and I'm interested in commodities.

Sofia: What are you talking about?

Kurt: A commodity is an article of trade. A product in the purest sense.

Sofia: What has this got to do with me?

Kurt: You're a product.

Sofia: I am?

Kurt: You're a commodity. Thomas tendered your body in exchange for money.

Sofia: So I'm an article of trade?

Kurt: Yes. A useful thing, in terms of classic capitalism. I studied economics. I know what I'm talking about.

sorry. been a while.

i'm making dumb snafus all over the place.

huppert was the nun. sofia was the amnisiac.

Sorry...don't mean to be a smart-arse. But I do so love that film.

Let's make lots of money.

My concern nowadays is that many reviewers feel that Hartley has had his day -- the hostile or indifferent reviews to No Such Thing (the Village Voice review was close to both!) suggest as much. I suppose this is only natural. I was always skeptical of the critics that said something like "Hartley's next film will be his breakthrough," whether that meant commercial-breakthrough or artistic-breakthrough; so perhaps what we're witnessing is his settling once and for all into a niche, like Philippe Garrel in France say.

Trust I liked becuz it was all in the dialogue and not in the framing except for the end -- the flat affectless acting had the effect not of schamaticizing the characters -- aka american beauty et al. -- but romanticizing them in a very NON condescending fashion.

I just bought the Surviving Desire DVD. (Everyone should check out http://www.deepdiscountdvd.com. I got the aforementioned DVD plus the double DVD of Lang's Nibelungen for $34 including shipping, and it arrived within 48 hours.)

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to write songs. Love songs. Really beautiful, timeless love songs. But I can't sing and I don't know music."

???

.....

Some more good news off the back of the lovely Olive Films blu-ray for Trust - The Unbelievable Truth and Amateur are now scheduled for blu-ray release by Artificial Eye on 13 May this year.

good news everybody! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260302407/ned-rifle

Anyone see Meanwhile?

yeah, i liked it.

i kickstarted the crap out of this latest btw.

cool to see martin donovan in Homeland

he had a great role on boss, even after they killed off his character. was bummed that show was cancelled.

(3 days left in the kickstarter btw -- hal sez even if they don't hit the target he'll use the pr momentum built up to fund the film another way)

roundup on Ned Rifle

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-toronto-2014-hal-hartleys-ned-rifle

it's interesting that the only projects he gets more than a few thousand bucks to make are part of his henry fool/ned rifle/fay grim franchise.

i wonder if hartley has actually picked up new fans in the past decade or so, folks who not only like his new films but have been rediscovering the older ones via DVD/Blu-Ray/etc. i discovered hartley pretty early in his career (ca. simple men/surviving desire) and like a lot of other folks sort of got off the bus during his dry spell in the early 00s. i have a grudging respect for no such thing, but the ones he's made since then have mostly lost me -- the particular kinds of formal/visual and verbal play i admired in the early seems to calcified into a few oddball gestures. i'm probably being unfair, and i admit i skipped "meanwhile" which some people i know liked a lot. in any event, my own solipsistic perspective would lead me to think he's a guy who has just flat out lost his audience, but the continued attention paid to him by film blogs/websites hint that maybe he's actually picked up some new fans. anyone here in that camp?

btw i started this thread 11.5 years ago! when i was young!

i mean, his films used to be chock-full of inventive and unexpected bits of staging, framing, etc. whereas some of the more recent ones seem to be content to set the camera on an angle and run through a few permutations of angular compositions. i guess i feel like even though certain aspects of his writing have gotten if anything more refined, his camera style seems to have gotten coarser. and when you're talking hartley you're talking 80% camera style (for me anyway).

actually, i lie: as i state way above, my first encounter w/ hartley was flirt. i didn't like it. i think i also saw trust in the mid-1990s and was a little ho-hum. but i watched them all again in the late 90s/early 00s and was impressed. just about the time his career took a kind of critical nosedive. so i guess i'm actually in the 2nd generation of hal hartley fans.

btw this aspect of a mid-2000s hartley film now seems a little prescient, maybe?:

Resembling the hectic stylization last seen in The Book of Life (1998), Hartley’s newest digital feature invites us to consider a world where citizens are actually proud to be stock options whose market value goes up or down depending on their sexual activity. A world where having sex just because it feels good is against the law. A world where one’s credit rating determines everything.

just farsighted

it's funny that he stuck w/ the same kid to play Ned Rifle

actually now that i think about it, i did see meanwhile! and forgot i saw it! i can't remember a thing about it, but i say it was terrible above. L:(

He should make Simple Men II

Simple Mens

HH and the gang look back at Henry Fool (and earlier) upon the release of Ned Rifle

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/03/hal_hartleys_epic_oral_history_the_henry_fool_trilogy_parker_posey_and_the_real_sage_of_90s_indie_film/

Saw Ned Rifle in the theater today. Only two other people in there. Aubrey Plaza kind of runs away with this every chance she gets. And HH plays up her looks and body every chance he gets. Urbaniak is really funny.

God, I forget this guy is out there still making movies. He's so synonymous with the 90s for me. Henry Fool (which is great ) was the last movie of his I've seen. Ned Rifle worth checking out then?

Mini review:

This is a sequel to a sequel to Hartley's biggest movie, "Henry Fool." Or as he puts it, the third in a trilogy. Regardless, this offers more of the familiar Hartley-isms we've come to expect. Literary monologues, dramatic pauses, sudden turns of the head, musical interludes, attention to the body. Speaking of bodies, Plaza plays up hers and Hartley takes advantage of it. A couple of gratuitous shots but hey, this modest movie has to sell some aspect of itself to someone, right? James Urbaniak is deadpan great reprising his role as Simon Grim, a garbage man turned poet. Even Hartley veterans from his salad days show up: BIll Sage, Robert John Burke, Martin Donovan, and Karen Sillas all put in appearances. No Elina Lowensohn or Adrienne Shelly though : ( Ultimately something about this film seems like a swan song for Hartley, maybe because of the extended cast. The protagonist of the movie's title, a long haired college student, is tolerable, as is the plot, which hinges on the drama inherent in father / son and mother / son relationships when the father is absent.

Ned Rifle is pretty great. There's hartley-being-experimental stuff like girl from monday, meanwhile, etc where he's trying ideas and experimenting with the medium, then there's hartley-doing-hartely, and this is the latter. blocking, dialog, etc. very mannered and very seamless. the plot feels like it has less heft than the first two in the series, and the characters don't carry the same heaviness and emotional weight. partly i just don't think aiken and plaza can handle it, and partly everything in the film moves a bit too quickly and neatly compared to something like amateur, where the lines get room to breathe. this plays more like period farce, nods to his-girl-fridayisms.

i mean... i liked it at the time too... and maybe i still would? it just has like NO inheritors at all. hartley at his peak seemed as popular as jarmusch/lynch/other amerindie 80s/90s guys but has had any detectable influence on anyone?

― Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Sunday, October 28, 2012 10:40 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's the same with Peter Greenaway IMO. Both of them at their peak made truly great work... does it detract from their achievements that their DNA did not get passed down? (Sincere question).

even if he had an influence on someone would we see it as "hartley-like" or would we see it as "godard-like"?

It's the same with Peter Greenaway IMO. Both of them at their peak made truly great work... does it detract from their achievements that their DNA did not get passed down? (Sincere question).

I don't think so. Greenaway, at least, is great regardless. But, it's interesting you bring him up! Because I think a case could be made that both Hartley and Greenaway made their way into Wes Anderson.

both Hartley and Greenaway made their way into Wes Anderson

now that you say it, i see it

Wow... Yeah!

Good thing: Hal Hartley's (@PossibleFilms) Kickstarter for an HD boxed set of the "Henry Fool" trilogy: https://t.co/Uy6dOjoeie

— James Urbaniak (@JamesUrbaniak) June 23, 2017

I was a huge Hal Hartley fan in high school and college, but hadn't watched any of his movies in ages. (I did check out "Ned Rifle" when it premiered, and quickly bailed... more recently, it was nice to see the episodes of "Red Oaks" he directed.)

Realizing that some of his stuff was spread across a hodgepodge of streaming services, I decided to revisit his first few films. I thought they might feel dated to me after such a long time, maybe stilted or "cute," or like old records I loved as a teenager that just sound corny now. But I was very pleasantly surprised.

I didn't have strongly specific memories of "The Unbelievable Truth" -- at the time, I think I regarded it mainly as a warm-up or rough draft for "Trust," given the similarities in plot, setting, characters, etc. Turns out it was an absolute pleasure to watch, and a great film on its own. Contrary to my expectations, its stylistic "moves" still felt fresh and effective (even as I found myself half-remembering how many scenes would play out). This is sort of the "purest" Hartley film, in a way?

I laughed a lot, at all those moments of odd theatricality that I thought may seem stiff and obvious in retrospect, but instead put me right back in the moment. The scene at the diner table with the repeated, circular dialogue... the dejected boyfriend, still standing in the same spot hours later... the borrowed socket wrench pulled from a purse as an improvised weapon... this is all great stuff. Even the slightly overdone final scene -- last lines of dialogue straining a bit for thematic resolution, a final shot that could maybe have been tightened up -- was endearing, like a virtuosic amateur finally hitting a few wobbly notes.

Getting into "Trust" a few weeks later, I didn't have the same positive feeling at first -- I watched this one SO many times back in the day, I thought for sure I wouldn't be able to view it with fresh eyes. It's also a somewhat heavier movie than "The Unbelievable Truth," with a tighter plot... while the debut sort of meanders amicably along, jumping ahead in time every so often, "Trust" is tight and precise, taking place over just a few days. But I was quickly drawn in, and realized why I loved it so much in the first place.

I think "Trust" is even better and more accomplished than "The Unbelievable Truth" -- even though it lacks the first movie's shaggy charm, and takes place mainly indoors, and a somewhat "real"-feeling Long Island; instead of "T.U.T."'s appealingly desolate suburbia, populated by a small group of characters who keep encountering each other, like in a play.

"Trust"'s screenplay is incredibly good -- so well plotted, each scene leading inevitably (and precipitously) to the next, hardly ever feeling forced or "written." Each character wants something, in every scene, and that "motivation" constantly drives the dialogue and action (it feels silly to write that out, but you forget about how it works until you see a movie that really does it). What really carries it over the top, though, is the acting -- by the whole cast, but especially Adrienne Shelly and Edie Falco. They're just so good.

I came away from both these movies, particularly "Trust," feeling like I appreciated them on an even deeper level than I did as a young person -- which was extremely welcome. I wasn't expecting these re-watchings to trigger much more than stale nostalgia, but instead I found these movies are the real deal, their clarity undimmed by the intervening decades.

Sorry to write so much, I got carried away...

I just saw Martin Donovan in an episode of Another Life last night.

I am fearful of watching Trust again because of how much I loved it in college. Also I totally forgot about the Surviving Desire shirt I made once (re-reading through this thread).

I haven't seen any of Hartley's work since Henry Fool -- Amateur/Flirt/Fool all felt like a dropoff from the first films, and then the reviews scared me away from everything after Henry Fool. Presumably it can't all be bad.

He's one of those people where you think, "I'll catch up on his work eventually" and then twenty years pass all of a sudden.

Although I'm excited to rewatch Trust after what you've written, Morris

Bill Sage is in American Psycho as one of Bale’s office buddies comparing business cards,,, great scene

Also I totally forgot about the Surviving Desire shirt I made once

I tried to find a way to watch "Surviving Desire" (it was the first Hartley thing I ever saw, when it aired on TV), but had to settle for some key scenes on YouTube. Without wanting to judge the whole hour by those scenes, I'll just say my reaction was more in line with what I had been expecting. It's cute....

I haven't seen any of Hartley's work since Henry Fool -- Amateur/Flirt/Fool all felt like a dropoff from the first films, and then the reviews scared me away from everything after Henry Fool. Presumably it can't all be bad.

I liked "No Such Thing" when it came out, and tried revisiting it as part of this rewatch, but wasn't feeling it (especially in contrast to those great early films). I still think it's worth checking out, you probably need to stick with it and let it do its whole thing.

Trust was one of my favorite films in my college years as well. I haven't watched it in a long time. I think the last one I watched was Fay Grim, which is worth a watch just for Parker Posey's performance, and the fun of watching a sequel to a movie that most people didn't watch or like (I liked it tbh).

Is Thomas Jay Ryan any more bearable in Fay Grim? His scenes in Henry Fool are up there with Treat Williams in Prince of the City for sheer unwatchability.

Henry Fool was a complete mess from my memory of it.

That... was not my experience

I just rewatched the trailer. Yeah, Thomas Jay Ryan is unwatchable in this. It looks like it was his first role.

Gotta watch that one for Urbaniak though

Interviews! Recent-ish: http://www.filmwaxradio.com/podcasts/episode-522/

Also, I forgot how handsome Bill Sage was, jesus

TJR only has a minor role in Fay Grim.

https://open.spotify.com/track/1PFMTUMiwXEQ2NATFVxhEc?si=mQIXusd6SGqrcIBwdKIvTw

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260302407/where-to-land-again

I could donate $5 but probably not $90,000
cool to see bill sage and Robert burke though, maybe Hal should make simple men II
I saw Bill walking his dog in the west village a couple years ago

The guy is truly an “independent filmmaker,” respect to that.

I know he’s done TV, but I wonder if he was ever offered the chance to direct a corny RomCom or something, and turned it down…

They reached their goal fyi

Oh cool!

Glad he reached the goal. Seemed like it raced up from 50% funded in just the last week or so, so wondering if people were just delaying their commitment? Looking forward to the 2cd package of his music.

I'm not sure if many people were aware until this week. I didn't even know the campaign was back on until a few days ago.

Wow, he was down $90k 3 days ago! Maybe Turkey was involved