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March 29, 2024, 12:20:07 AM

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Watching Hal Hartley films

Started by Gregory Torso, March 15, 2018, 12:46:53 PM

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Gregory Torso

Hal Hartley, eh? Remember him. Remember seeing his films in the 90s, late night channel 4, back when that meant something.
I used to love Hal Hartley. Trust, Simple Men, The Unbelievable Truth. I was fresh out of the grease-trap of art college, just a young ankle-snapping whippet-biter, and these films with their stylised theatrical performances, cool detached dialogues, grimy indie soundtracks, they enraptured me.
Adrienne Shelley, beautiful. Martin Donovan, cool as fuck. Yo La Tengo in every film. Boom mike bobbing into shot, fuck it. America, in its mystery to a young midlands nothing teenager.
But it's been so long since I watched anything by him. I saw Amateur at the cinema (1996?), and I vaguely remember watching Henry Fool years later. And... that's it.
So my plan is to watch all of Hal Hartley's feature length films, in order, if possible, and see if they've aged well with me. I might cringe, I might sleet tears into a bucket called "Nostalgia", I might delight in the tape hiss.
And there are loads I've never seen, as well.

Anyone else want to talk about Hal Hartley?

I must have seen Trust and Simple Men about five or six times each, the others I don't really remember well.



Gregory Torso

These are the films I have lined up:

The Unbelievable Truth*
Trust*
Surviving Desire*
Simple men*
Amateur*
Flirt**
Henry Fool*
The Book of Life
No Such Thing
The Girl From Monday**
Fay Grim
Meanwhile**
Ned Rifle

* Seen before
** Not sure if I can track these down.

Glebe

[tag]Oh you do have my film? That's wonderful![/tag]

itsfredtitmus

Book of Life is a complete pisstake of the trendy war kai slow shutter speed mtv thing. because why not make an entire film with that?
Thomas Ryan is a joy to behold in Book of Life as The Devil

you'll love it, promise

Shit Good Nose

Love Hal Hartley's films.  Very very few duds.  Got to be Simple Men at the top, for me.

Always really liked Fay Grim too, which most Hartley fans don't.

Only ones I don't like at all are The Book of Life, The Girl From Monday and Amateur.  Book of Life just because it's not my cup of tea, The Girl From Monday cos it's shit, and I've never understood the attraction to Amateur, but I know most people love it.

Dr Rock

I'm the same as you, watched and liked them all in the 90s, Adrienne Shelley*, cor, never rewatched them. I'll be following your reports of rewatching with interest.


*brutally murdered in 2006, in case anyone didn't know.

Gregory Torso

Quote from: itsfredtitmus on March 15, 2018, 12:57:34 PM
Book of Life is a complete pisstake of the trendy war kai slow shutter speed mtv thing. because why not make an entire film with that?

That sounds great. Looking forward to it.

Quote from: Dr Rock on March 15, 2018, 01:01:44 PM
I'll be following your reports of rewatching with interest.


I'm a lazy procrastinating bastard but I hpoe by making this thread I'll force myself to do this. Planning to watch The Unbelievable Truth after work.

itsfredtitmus

Hal Hartley should make a soap opera

itsfredtitmus

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on March 15, 2018, 01:00:57 PM
Love Hal Hartley's films.  Very very few duds.  Got to be Simple Men at the top, for me.

Always really liked Fay Grim too, which most Hartley fans don't.

Only ones I don't like at all are The Book of Life, The Girl From Monday and Amateur.  Book of Life just because it's not my cup of tea, The Girl From Monday cos it's shit, and I've never understood the attraction to Amateur, but I know most people love it.
BoL is mint
Impossible to watch it without thinking of 9/11

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: itsfredtitmus on March 15, 2018, 01:29:21 PM
BoL is mint
Impossible to watch it without thinking of 9/11

As I said, it's just not my cup of tea.  I know it's not an objectively shit film, unlike The Girl From Monday.

itsfredtitmus

Haven't seen that one (have it on dvd though) I hear it's a straight up Alphaville Godard tribute

Shit Good Nose

He "borrows" bits from all sorts, but my immediate thought was he was trying to emulate Chris Marker.

Its main problem is that it has about the same budget as his earliest films (where a small budget didn't really matter cos it was mainly just people talking), but he's trying to make a sci-fi action film with it.  And everything else suffers as a result.

phantom_power

I had pretty much the same experience of the OP of seeing them on late night Channel 4 and loving them. I am a bit scared to revisit them in case they don't hold up

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: phantom_power on March 15, 2018, 02:54:21 PM
I had pretty much the same experience of the OP of seeing them on late night Channel 4 and loving them. I am a bit scared to revisit them in case they don't hold up

Well, considering we're now in a post-Tarantino world where, thanks to Tarantino, over-written "cool" dialogue that no one would ever speak in real life is now generally frowned upon, then that's likely to be the thing that lets Hartley's films down in modern cinematic eyes.

But, having seen a few fairly recently, I still think his best films stand up, in a 90s time capsule way.

Small Man Big Horse

I love Hal Hartley and have rambled on about him here in the past, the only real let down for me was The Girl From Monday, and everything else I like / love at various levels. Really enjoyed Ned Rifle too, which proves he ain't lost it!

Quote from: itsfredtitmus on March 15, 2018, 01:18:46 PM
Hal Hartley should make a soap opera

He directed about six episodes of Red Oaks recently, but didn't have anything to do on the scripting side of things. Which is a shame as if he did it might still be on the air.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on March 15, 2018, 04:50:39 PM
Which is a shame as if he did it might still be on the air.

Either that, or it would have been taken off even sooner...

purlieu

Henry Fool is wonderful.
The Book of Life is decent. Makes me think of a film-length Jam sketch.
No Such Thing is one of my favourite films.
The Girl from Monday is fucking appalling.

I need to revisit his earlier ones, but I'm going through all my downloaded films chronologically and I'm still in the '70s at the minute, so it'll be a while.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I think Book of Life is the only one I've seen. I can't remember much about it, other than the fact that PJ Harvey was in it and that it looked very student film like. If it had a shoestring budget, it was a tatty shoestring, with no aglets.

Quote from: purlieu on March 15, 2018, 05:11:57 PM
The Girl from Monday is fucking appalling.
They really shouldn't have pressed ahead without Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

mothman

I'd be up for a shared rewatch. How would one go about locating these films?

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: mothman on March 15, 2018, 06:50:40 PM
I'd be up for a shared rewatch. How would one go about locating these films?

Some of his films used to be http://halhartley.com/ but I'm not sure if that's the case anymore. Otherwise a lot of his dvds are surprisingly cheap on ebay, and there's always pirate bay if you're a monstrous cunt. (Like me)

phantom_power

Try searching for Amateur on  Pirate Bay though

13452334 hits

purlieu

Searching for Amateur 1994 should help, as well as confining results to video.

Gregory Torso

Alright. I watched The Unbelievable Truth last night and really liked it, from a totally non-emotional objective point, I mean it was probably twenty years since I last watched it. It does feel like a dry-run for Trust, but still a lot to like here.

Robert Burke, handsome as all hell, comes out of prison and back to his hometown where everyone thinks he's a mass murderer. Adrienne Shelly, absolutely smouldering, thinks the world is ending but still wants to go to college.

It's beautifully shot, it's funny, and all the Hal marks are already there: characters smoking, moving like they're in a play to their marks, sudden bouts of cartoonish violence, quick-paced Marx Bros/His Girl Friday type dialogue, cyclical dialogue as well, repeated phrases. Blue-collar philosophers.
Regarding the dialogue, it struck me there's a strong 40s/50s influence here - it's very quick back and forth and biting. Feelings aren't considered. Audry's (Shelly) character is quite unsympathetic and her treatment of her ex boyfriend is played for laughs but it's' pretty cold. Also there's zero chemistry between her and Robert Burke, but I quite like that, it's a sort of anti-romance romance.

Vic and Mike the mechanics are great - they later turn up in Simple Men which is weird because Robert Burke is in that too but playing a different character.
I loved the scene where Pearl and Audry are cycling through the night and it cuts to them lying down on the grass, just like the end scene in the factory in Trust, stylised and posed. And the scene where Josh is explaining car transmissions to Audry as her lipstick is smeared up her cheek and she's just thinking fuck me. I mean yeah its problem-o-matic because like she's 18 and he's in his 30s but w/e they don't do it (the Hal Hartley films I've seen are without sex scenes, right?).

I had a weird false memory with this film. I remembered it being literally about the end of the world, and that that was represented by a sound that builds throughout the film to the end scene on the beach, but that is completely wrong. Audry hears planes from time to time and asks Josh what the sound is but he can't hear it. I wonder what that means.

Anyway. Liked it a lot. The dialogue is presented in such a way that it doesn't feel "hip" (yuck) like Tarantino or Kevin Smith - it's there like a radio play or something in the theatre, and I'm really glad I enjoyed this - I'm looking forward to the others.


Ja'moke

Love Hal Hartley. Trust, The Unbelievable Truth, and Henry Fool probably my top three. I really want a network to throw money at him to make a TV show like Showtime did with David Lynch last year. Although Hartley doesn't have the name value of a Lynch, so that's unlikely to happen, but I can dream!

itsfredtitmus

didn't hal hartley direct a tonne of eps of an amazon tv show a while back?
he also did an episode of Homicide in the 90s I wonder if that has Hartleyian flourishes lol

Gregory Torso

I liked it when Martin Donovan turned up in Homeland with Claire Danes (my teen stick crush from My So Called Life plus man crush trust fund).

itsfredtitmus

I was watching Simple Men a while back and I kept noticing how much Martin Donovan looks like M1ll3nn14l W03S

Nobody Soup

what's the one where they dance about to Kool Thing by sonic youth in a bar?

itsfredtitmus

Quote from: Nobody Soup on March 16, 2018, 04:41:18 PM
what's the one where they dance about to Kool Thing by sonic youth in a bar?
pulp fiction

Z

For whatever reason, I've encountered more people talking about Hal Hartley this year than I have in the rest of my life. Maybe it's just a certain wave of 90s nostalgia finally kicking that's been honestly overdue. I really love the look of all the more competently made indie films from the period just before Tarantino/Miramax totally took over the idea of what US indie was up to digital film coming along.

He's good, big fan of the Adrienne Shelley films in particular, but I can also see how he fell by the wayside a bit, just can't imagine he's in very many people's top 5.