Hal Hartley:
In a Hal Hartley Picture
by Jamie Jobb
As an independent filmmaker who stands alone, Hal Hartley has evolved his own uniquely absurdist comic style and pace as a New York-based writer-director-producer-composer. Indeed, a solid argument could be made that he’s the American Jean-Luc Godard. (See “The Last Cinéaste”)
However, most American film fanatics have never heard of Hal Hartley who is probably more popular in Europe or Asia than he’s ever been in his native United States – hailing from the lost suburbs of Lindenhurst, Long Island. After absorbing a couple Hartley films, something slowly starts to dawn upon the viewer as his characters dance, chat, shake, wax philosophic, fall silent and occupy the frame in odd arrangements with one another.
They might be expected to do almost anything next … but nobody is smiling.
Before he ever appeared in print in the USA, Hartley found a British publisher to produce three books of his screenplays, including interviews. One of France’s leading actors, Isabelle Huppert, wrote Harley and demanded to appear in his next film. He gave her the lead in “Amateur”.
Most American actors also have never heard of Hal Hartley. One reason for that is he tends to work with an ensemble cast of regulars, like Godard or Preston Sturges.
Although he has a solid Euro-centric fan base, Hartley is nothing if not quintessentially All-American. Graham Fuller, editor of Hartley’s books of screenplays, compares his work to that of Buster Keaton, another All-American moviemaker:
“In its meditativeness, its bitten-back romanticism, its inherent fatalism, and its casually seismic actions – a daughter’s tantrum causes her father to drop dead in the kitchen, a disgruntled man in a bar laconically punches one man in the stomach and shoves another off a stool – Hartley’s work raises the specter of a 1990s Buster Keaton. Where Keaton’s aesthetic was technological and tempestuous, Hartley’s is suburban and quotidian, but it is no less poetic or dramatic for all of that.
“Deadpan to the maximum, ‘The Great Stoneface’ never smiled in his films; Harley’s characters seldom smile. Harley shares with Keaton the knowledge that emotional precision and serene self-abnegation, not selfishness, self-pity or sentimentality, are the correct responses to the random cruelties and injustices of the world, as well as to one’s own negative impulses.
“Like Keaton, too, Hartley is a thoughtful – if less spectacular – manipulator of space, the prosaic geography of his films punctiliously harnessed to the concentrated minimalism of his muse-en-scene.”
Fuller’s observations are insightful, but Hartley’s work also recalls two other Twentieth Century artists – as if Eugene Ionesco and Pablo Picasso had merged into one storytelling soul. Hartley’s films have the tone and feel of any painterly playwright cast from those two immense talents.
And of course that doesn’t even being to account the music in his films! Under the pseudonym of Ned Rifle, Hartley scores his own soundtracks. So the sound of a Hal Hartley film is singularly unique. Within his own cosmos, each Hartley film becomes a supernova unto itself.
Harley’s loopy “narratives” seem particularly influenced by French filmmakers Godard or Bertrand Blier or Robert Bresson – particularly his films “L’Argent” and “Le Diable Probablement”. Although hardly a comic director, Bresson’s worked outside the mainstream of French cinema to develop a precisely sparse style which resonates today in Harley’s oeuvre. Obviously influential on the American are Bresson’s tendency to concentrate on significant sounds (“The noises must become music!” as he says), treat actors as “models” and to lurk off-kilter visually, focusing on legs and backs and other body parts of his actors arranged in painterly compositions, rather than standard two-shot talking dummies.
Hartley’s work feels further inspired by American contemporaries on the East Coast: Jim Jarmusch (“Strange Than Paradise”, “Down by Law”), Kevin Smith (“Clerks”, “Dogma”), Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan, Barcelona) and Richard Linklater (“Slacker”).
But eventually, any comparison with other filmmakers become pointless because Hartley’s style is so unique and he creates so much with so little – which also aligns him with the Italian master, Michelangelo Antonioni. Critic Derek Hill notes in his 1961 Art Film article on Antonioni’s “L’Avventura”:
“Two kinds of compositions have become characteristic – long shots where the characters appear on two, three or more planes in a significant setting, often with an almost three-dimensional effect, and close up shots of two characters turned away from one another, even while in conversation. Even more typical is the haunting melancholy of the mood. In an Antonioni film, everything seems to be happening for the last time; it is as the world might end the next day.”
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A Crazy Style
Evolving seemingly from absurdist Euro-centric roots, Harley’s films have these essential ingredients:
Crazy Love: A Hartley hallmark. In “Trust”, his second feature, Maria Coughlin is an unmarried teenager, pregnant and unhoused. Matthew Slaughter is an unemployed twenty-something, tough and alone. He is not the source of Maria’s predicament. They meet in an abandoned house. He has a hand-grenade. She thinks she killed her father by merely slapping him. They have a strong attraction to each other, but it’s mostly mental. They do not touch, until the end.
Crazy Characters: Hartley’s characters are nothing if not “crazy” or “funny”, in the broadest sense of those words. In “Amateur”, Isabelle is an ex-nun who writes trash novels and, although still a virgin, believes she is a nymphomaniac. When confronted by the complete illogic of her self-contradicted condition, she merely smokes her cigarette and says: “I’m choosy.” Matthew Slaughter, electronics wizard who walks into a bar and punches someone off his stool in “Trust”. Dad, the Radical Shortstop in “Simple Men”.
Crazy Plots: Hartley is less plot-oriented than traditional cinema storytellers. But strange twists and turns roil under his looping narratives. Pacing is determined by character and mood. Suddenly his characters will start dancing for no apparent reason (“Simple Men”). His work is not “told” in any traditional sense. His stories amble toward epiphanies and odd punctuations, more like Bresson or the UK’s Mike Leigh.
Crazy Families: Crazy characters breed crazy families. In “Trust”, the mother tries to encourage Matthew to sleep with her older daughter just so he won’t sleep with her younger daughter. Meanwhile, Matthew’s own father is a fanatic who insists that his own son constantly “Clean the bathroom!” In the search for their father in “Simple Men”, two brothers realize that he was indeed The Radical Shortstop. In “Unbelievable Truth”, a young woman stunned by the potential of nuclear holocaust decides to take her father’s deal and work as a model to support her Harvard education.
Crazy Dialogue: Although he has strong ties to Ionesco and other playwrights of the absurd, Hartley creates unique post-absurd cinematic dialogues. His vocal tone and style stand out: staccato, clipped, tongue-in-groove. But it isn’t patter. Characters speak their minds in a Hal Hartley picture. Here is Isabell in “Amateur”: “I’m coldly intellectual. Too pale. Altogether too ethereal. And my feet hurt from wearing these stupid shoes!” Indeed, Hartley’s characters are far more straightforward that people in real life, speaking directly from the subtext of the moment. Often this results in unpredictable consequences. (See “A Perfect Hal Hartley Scene” below).
Crazy Pictures: Hartley cinematically expands his horizons of comedy by framing very tight two-shots jammed together at screwy odd angles, like Miro or Picasso portraits or Antonioni compositions. Hartley believes that the traditional over-the-shoulder framing where both actors look across at each other, is not true to life. Often when people talk to one another, one may be looking at the sky, the ground, a car passing, anywhere at all. So Hartley frames his films as crazy two-shots – a pair of faces fractured by light into odd shapes and sizes, relative to each other. Or he avoids the actors’ faces altogether, like Godard, so we only see the backs of heads and are forced to concentrate on the words spoken, instead of the appearance of the actor.
In all but one category, Hartley’s works also fit the more general definition of absurdist or “screwball” comedy, that 1940s cinematic expression of “lunacy, speed, unpredictability, unconventionality, giddiness, drunkenness, flight and adversarial sport”. What’s characteristically NOT screwball about Hartley’s films is their total lack of speed, bound as they are to their totallybrimful and quirky tensions.
His films have lunacy, unpredictability, flight, yes! But they are not frantic, like most screwball classics. Unlike the Keystone Kops but more like Keaton, Hal Hartley can create humor out of deliberate distractions and everyday slow-motion calamities. And that’s funny in the fullest sense of the word.
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A Perfect Hal Hartley Scene
Hal Harley takes common movie cliches and flips them on their noggins. In his films, small ironies spill over larger ones until entire scenes cascade into huge pools of paradox. Below is the opening scene of “Simple Men”, which is set on a loading dock in the morning. It’s the middle of an armed robbery …
VERA holds a gun to GUARD’s head, which is blindfolded.
VERA: Don’t move.
GUARD: OK.
VERA: Did you just move?!
GUARD: My foot’s asleep.
VERA: I said Don’t Move!
BILL McCABE enters, takes Vera’s gun, grabs her chin
and kisses her passionately.
BILL: Alright good-lookin’, get in the truck.
VERA: But, Bill …
BILL: Come on. I’m right behind you. Come on Frank, what are you waiting for?
Vera starts to exit, reconsiders, and returns to kiss Bill again.
BILL: What’s wrong?
VERA: Do you love me?
BILL: Yes.
VERA: Am I beautiful?
BILL: Yes, you’re beautiful.
Vera exits to truck. Bill jams gun into his pocket, lights cigarette and waits for truck to be loaded.
BILL: Don’t move.
GUARD: OK.
Bill pulls out flask and takes drink, then offers flask to Guard.
BILL: You want a drink?
GUARD: No thanks.
BILL: You sure?
GUARD: I’m not allowed to drink on the job.
Bill notices medallion Guard is wearing.
BILL: Hey, that’s nice.
GUARD: It’s the Virgin Mary.
BILL: She’s good lookin’, huh?
GUARD: She brings me good luck.
BILL: Can I have it?
GUARD: But she keeps me out of danger.
BILL: You’re not in danger.
GUARD: Is that true?
BILL: Sure, it’s true. My gun doesn’t even work.
Guard nods and Bill removes medallion from around his neck.
Bill puts it on himself.
BILL: Thanks.
GUARD: Be good to her and she’ll be good to you.
Bill jumps off loading dock, heads toward truck.
FRANK is standing with Vera at truck.
Frank’s gun is aimed at Bill.
Bill is stunned and confused.
He takes a step toward them.
BILL: What is this?
FRANK: Vera’s with me. I got ideas of my own on how to run things.
BILL: Vera?
VERA (turning away): I gotta do what I feel. I gotta be happy!
Bill pushes aside Frank and his gun, confronts Vera.
BILL: Since when are you unhappy?
VERA: You deserve better than me, Bill.
Bill is dumbstruck. Frank comes between them.
Vera runs to truck and Frank hands Bill an envelope.
BILL: What’s this?
FRANK: It’s three grand.
BILL: Three grand! I put this whole thing together.
Frank ignores him and heads toward Vera and truck.
Still confused, Bill turns to face Guard whose voice blends into the wind.
GUARD: Be good to her and she’ll be good to you.
END OF SCENE
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Below are brief condensed reviews of a half dozen Harley films, using dialogue and situations from each film to create an impression of the work:
Simple Men (1992)
“Just because a girl slaps you for making a pass at her doesn’t mean she’s a member of some terrorist organization.” Jilted burglar Bill McCabe (Robert Burke) and bookish brother Dennis (Bill Sage) search for their missing father, ex-Brooklyn Dodger and alleged Pentagon bomber – “The Radical Shortstop” – William Sr. (John MacKay), who’s hiding out somewhere in Sagaponeck, Long Island. “He was a radical. That doesn’t make him a fanatic.”
“Now just hold on. Jack may be dangerous, and maybe even psychotic. But I don’t think he’s angry.” En route, they encounter lone tree-planter Kate (Karen Sillas) who wants to know “Why are all the men in my life criminal?” and mysterious Elina (Elina Lowensohn), The Epileptic Romanian.“Jumpy women are great!”
“You don’t have to have an ideology to knock over a liquor store!” Hartley undercuts absurd plot tensions when everyone dances sudden frug in Homer’s Oyster Bar, cop-wrestling nun sneaks smoke before boarding Our-Lady-of-Grace bus, and backroad pump-boy scratches out “Greensleeves” on yellow electric guitar while teaching himself French. “There’s nothing like a machine to make a man feel insignificant”.
“And the funny thing is when you desire something you immediately get in trouble. And when you’re in trouble, you don’t desire anything at all.” Harley’s red-white-and-blue Long Island one-liner look at “the dirt dumped by a glacier when it melts” is odd cold heap of laughs, recalling Godard’s “Band of Outsiders”. “Not only is she pretty, but she’s got a nice personality. AND she’s the mother of God.”
“Who wants a government that’s gotta obey the law?” Written and directed by Hartley. “Be good to her and she’ll be good to you. (USA)
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Trust (1990)
“A family’s like a gun. You point it in the wrong direction, you’re gonna kill somebody.”
Teen dropout Maria Coughlin (terrific Adrienne Shelly) believes she murdered her father with one simple five-dollar slap. “No one dies of a heart attack. They die of disgust, disappointment.”
Gen-X dropout Matthew Slaughter (Martin Donovan) has “dangerous but sincere” reputation, reads books on “Information Theory” and knows he can never keep a bathroom clean enough for his abrasive father (John MacKay).
Matthew “doesn’t have any friends” and goes “through jobs like most people go through underwear.” So when Maria leaves home ashamed and pregnant, Matthew also leaves home – with one Korean War hand-grenade. Matthew understands that more than Maria needs a husband, she needs a thesaurus.
Lindenhurst Long Island is chaotic set of Neo-Absurd sight gags: Kidnapped bus-stop baby with plastic red gun, blackened game hen and Beethoven bar brawl, Cape Holiday bumperstickers and storefront que of busted tv sets.
Meanwhile Matthew doesn’t trust the world, and the world reciprocates. “Don’t ask him, he thinks TV gives you cancer.” Maria wants home of her own, but her mom Jean (Rebecca Nelson) knows“you’ll have to type faster than that to keep us out of the poorhouse.” Written and directed by Hartley. “Some things shouldn’t be fixed.”
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The Unbelievable Truth (1989)
“No man is like a priest. PRIESTS aren’t even like priests when it comes to women!”
Although strangers deem him reverend, rumor has it that ex-prisoner/hometown auto mechanic Josh Hutton (Robert John Burke) either: a) raped and killed his girlfriend, then shot her father; or b) shot girlfriend’s parents at her request, then ran off with her before shooting her too; or c) killed girlfriend’s father because she asked him to, then she “flipped out and killed herself”; or d) killed her dad then murdered his own father after girlfriend committed suicide because they wouldn’t let her marry him.
These implausible truths unfold when Josh returns home to Lindenhurst Long Island to face this old hometown mystery. “You can’t have faith in people, only the deals you make with them.”
Befriending Josh is spooked-student, fashion-model and ex-Burger World girl Audry Hugo (Adrienne Shelly) who admires Founding Father George Washington, fears nuclear winter and sleeps with Josh’s crescent wrench. “Be careful of men with histories.”
Audry’s dad Victor Hugo (Chris Cooke) hires Josh then regrets it, although he sends him off to wine-and-dine Audrey in Soho. “Last time I took a drink I got into a car crash and killed a girl.”
“No! That’s enough to drive you to drink.” Written and directed by Hartley, his first commercial feature has elements of all his later comic themes. “They wouldn’t drop a bomb this weekend, would they?” (USA)
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Henry Fool (1997)
“Opportunity will step out of the way to let a man pass it by.” Gotham garage man Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) knows neighbors and family consider him “retarded”. So simple Simon plays that part by heart. Then one day he drops his ear to pavement. Suddenly, on hazy horizon appears world-wise ex-convict and janitor-savant Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan), a “sort of what you might call an exile” who believes “an honest man is always in trouble.”
Forever composing his “Confession … A Pornographic Magazine of Truly Comic-Book Proportions”, Henry squats in hellish red-glow of blue Grim basement, servicing Simon’s muse – not to mention Grim’s medicated mother Mary (Maria Porter) and insatiable sister Fay (Parker Posey). “You can’t put a fence around a man’s soul!”
Fool helps Grim learn to write. “Bad move, Simon. A poet’s gotta be able to contemplate anything … You need to do something to be ashamed of, every now and then. You need experience.”
Simon composes his own “sort of iambic pentameter” confession, but publishers reject his tome with rejection notes: “Drop dead. Keep your day job.”
Then one day school board censorship, unlimited Internet access and media adulation set Simon free, transforming his ramshackle Queens World of Donuts corner general store into laptop latte cafe. “When noble minds shrink, scoundrels will rush in to fill the void.”
Hartley charts new territory of ironic inner-city farce with blitzkrieg street campaign for Senate conservative candidate Owen Feer and offal commodious proposal with gasket wedding band found in garbage truck. Written and directed by Harley. “Having a good friend isn’t always easy.” (USA)
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 |
| Amateur (1994) |
“I feel things, but I don’t know what they mean.” Thomas (Martin Donovan) awakens on hardcobblestone – without memory of how he arrived, beaten and confused, in New York gutter.
Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert) is aspiring porn-writing nymphomaniac ex-nun who rescues him. Q: “How can you be a nymphomaniac and never had sex?” A: “I’m choosy.”
Sofia Ludens (Elina Lowensohn) is “most notorious porno actress in the world” who fears she has killed Thomas, “a very dangerous man”, and wants to escape her lost past. “I’m going to be a mover and a shaker. You wait and see.”
Caught inside this triangle is zany accountant Edward (Damian Young) who is dogged by “a highly respectable yet ultimately sinister international corporation with political connections.” Trying to help him is Patsy Melville (hilarious Pamela Stewart), the compassionate cop. “God, I can’t take this job!”
Visually engrossing ice-blue comedy-thriller exposes cinematic sex, violence and “the disease of bad intentions”. Stewing and brewing Harley’s plot are hard and square floppy discs, worthless cell phones, and ridiculous gun-play scene that mocks Hollywood’s escalating addition to cool-chic violence as a fashion statement.
Written and directed by Hartley. “Of course it’s a rough time to be a human being.” (USA)
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The Book of Life (1998)
The Hour of Trial: 31 December 1999. New York City. “I like this city. Call the lawyers.” And verily He sayeth unto them: Christ has Lucifer’s smart phone on his speed dial! “So what if it’s the last day of the world?”
As Biblical Revelations foretold, Mr. and Mrs. D.W. Griffith – aka Jesus Christ (Martin Donovan) and his trusty sidekick Magdalena (P.J. Harvey) – touch down at JFK for Millennial Doomsday retreat in Gotham.
Christ could be “a victim of my own history” but he knows God’s love “was a burden” because “my father, he’s an angry God!” Still, Jesus has “my doubts” because he’s “addicted to humanity” and wonders aloud: “Who do these Christians think they are?”
Lunatic Lucifer (Thomas Jay Ryan) can’t pass up unattended microphones and dreams of teaming with The Savior to form new wired religion of “instantaneous total world-wide belief”.
Meanwhile, gambling “less than reliable” Everyman Dave (Dave Simonds) drinks with Devil and wagers away his “terminally good” girlfriend, barmaid Edie (Miho Nikaido). “They don’t teach ATHLETES stuff like that!”
Hartley’s jerky, off-kilter video bleeds from absence of his customary tight cinematography, but still short-crops his wacky world of gun-toting receptionist, intra-office shootout, Seventh-Seal floppy disc, bowling alley safe-deposit box, Flatiron Salvation Army Band, “144,000 good souls”, Egyptian Powerbook that won’t open but runs Mac OS.
“Those bastards in heaven, they think of everything.” Written and directed by Hartley. “I don’t give a damn about the prophets.” (USA)
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FURTHERMORE
Bresson, Robert. Notes of the Cinematographer. Copenhagen: Green Integer Books, 1997.
Hartley, Hal. Simple Men and Trust. London: Faber and Faber, 1992.
The films of Hal Hartley are available exclusive through his website:
https://www.halhartley.com
Or on recycled DVDs …
