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DVD Amateur
Filmmaker Hal Hartley is something of an acquired taste. But if you can get on his oddball, deadpan wavelength, you can't help but enjoy his films--and this is one of his best. Isabelle Huppert plays a former nun who now works as a pornographer. She connects with Martin Donovan, playing a fellow who's lost his memory, but whose past may contain particularly nasty stuff. As they look for a way to get away from that past (which includes a couple of hit men who look like stockbrokers), the two discuss the meaning of their lives in hilariously vague ways. Hartley's dialogue is tart and concise, filled with acidic but low-key humor. And Donovan, who also starred in the director's equally good Trust, has just the right downbeat affect to give the film an unusual spin. --Marshall Fine
One of Hartley's best, why still not priced for retail?
To his typically perceptive mix of quirky character-based comedy and drama, writer/director Hal Hartley adds a wry, clever, and offbeat noir style crime drama plot, though ultimately the film is still an exploration of identity issues, with Martin Donovan's amnesiac character serving as the focal point. The cast is superb, particulary Donovan in the lead, and Isabelle Huppert in the co-starring role of a pornography-writing ex-nun who decides to help him on his quest to find out who he is. Elina Lowensohn is, as always, wonderfully strange, haughty, beautiful and offbeat as someone who was an important part of the Donovan character's pre-amnesia life. To give away more would be to spoil somewhat the experience of seeing this delightful small-scale film for the first time.
It's astounding, though, that of all of Hartley's films, this is the ONLY one that has not been priced for retail sale. 96 bucks is simply an absurd price to have to pay for this, especially considering it's been 5 years since this film was released! Considering Hartley's loyal cult following, and the difficulty in finding a film like this for rent in a typical video store, this is definitley exactly the sort of film that would tend to lend itself to purchase rather than rental. Columbia/Tri-Star is stupidly missing out on sales opportunites for this film by refusing to price it for retail. It's no wonder that, in spite of Hartley's following and how good this little film is, that it ranks very low on Amazon's sales rank. Thank goodness Hartley's other films have ended up in the hands of smarter and more savvy distributors.
A Masterpiece
Restraint wrings our emotion. Jumping up and down can express joy, but a perfect ballet segment will convey ecstasy so complete the dance pratically creates it. Subtlety often can explode emotions larger than realism.
Hal Hartley understands this. The characters in his film do not talk like real people. Their speech is subdued, flat, and usually bluntly honest. Their small words carry mountains of meaning.
Most mystery films focus on the identity of the bad guy. This film instead chooses to explore the bad guy's identity. The film opens with him laying unconscious on a cobblestone street. He awakes but has no idea who he is. With this premise, the audience always knows who the bad guy is. He is in almost every frame of the feature. The rest of the film sets about discovering who the bad guy is.
I'm avoiding the film's plot. Telling too much about this film steals many of its pleasures, although I have enjoyed it each of the ten times I have seen it. Most scenes are arranged as artfully as a painting, the actors understand and enlarge Hartley's vision, and the music, ranging from Liz Phair to Pavement, is excellent.
This film may well be the best the ninties have to offer. Hartley's own Simple Men is one of the only other real contenders.
Best Hartley Ever
This is my favorite Hal Hartley film, several of the scenes do not fail to bring a tear to my eye or give me a feeling of frisson and I saw it for the first time in 1995. I think that should say it all.
Purist Hartley fans seem to believe that Trust is the quintessential Hartley, and while I agree that the film is great, Amateur has a much more complicated plot and explores more complicated issues.
The film is all about ontology. What is the nature of being? Can one change? What is memory? Is there an essential nature to existence or is existence mutable depending on experience?
Don't think, however, this is some weird indie/foreign flick heavy on the meaning. Hartley manages to pose all of the above questions within a film that is quirky and funny and deadpan and sad and wonderful all at the same time.
Simple Men opens with small-time hood Bill (Robert Burke from RoboCop 3) asking a bound and blindfolded security guard if he can have the guard's Virgin Mary medallion. "Be good to her and she'll be good to you," says the guard. Immediately after, Bill is double-crossed by his girlfriend and his partner. From there, the plot goes off in a completely different direction: Bill and his younger brother Dennis (William Sage, High Art), a philosophy student, go off in search of their father, a former star shortstop who may have committed a bombing many years ago. Their only clue is a phone number on Long Island; they end up at a cafe run by Kate (Karen Sillas, Female Perversions), which is also the hangout for Elina Löwensohn (Nadja) and Martin Donovan... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Robert John Burke - Bill Sage Director(s): Hal Hartley DVD Release Date: Released the 27 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Simon (James Urbaniak), a shy garbage man, lives with his sister (Parker Posey of Party Girl and Waiting for Guffman, among dozens of other movies) and mother, who both treat him with minimal respect. Into Simon's life comes Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan), a heavy-drinking self-proclaimed great writer who goads Simon into writing an enormous poem. The poem becomes the source of great controversy, proclaimed by some as a great work of art, denounced by others as perverse trash. As Simon's star rises, he tries to draw attention to Henry's work as well, to little avail. Though the premise seems simple, Henry Fool takes on something of an epic sweep as it follows the effects of fame on Simon's and Henry's lives. This rumination on art and inspiration was hailed by some... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Thomas Jay Ryan - James Urbaniak - Parker Posey Director(s): Hal Hartley DVD Release Date: Released the 16 December 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Surviving Desire is actually three short films, two of which--"Theory of Achievement" and "Ambition"--demonstrate writer-director Hal Hartley at his most quirky and abstract. They consist mostly of a series of dialogues, presented out of context, about things like Brooklyn real estate, nonlinear art, and contrasting male and female approaches to suicide. Fans of Hartley will enjoy them; newcomers will probably find them baffling. The third film, however--"Surviving Desire," from which the collection takes its title--is one of the most charming pieces Hartley has made. This hour-long story follows Jude (Martin Donovan), a college teacher obsessed with a single paragraph from The Brothers Karamazov, who's fallen in love with Sofie (Mary Ward), one of his students who's... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Hal Hartley DVD Release Date: Released the 09 April 2002 Usually ships within 24 hours
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The films of Hal Hartley, New York's modern beatnik cinema laureate, are not for everyone. His self-consciously clever ping-pong dialogue sounds like a cross between song lyrics and Samuel Beckett, while his deadpan direction gives a wry cast to it all. It's romantic comedy skewed through a thoroughly modern perspective, and it sprung fully formed in his debut feature. Gloomy redheaded pixie Adrienne Shelly, a neurotic high school student fixated on doomsday scenarios, falls for the tall, dark, and mysterious Robert Burke, a black-clad, philosophy-spouting mechanic who is constantly mistaken for a priest and rumored to be a convicted murderer.
An enigmatic, intellectually playful farce played with ironic understatement, Hartley's austere film was shot on the cheap with a handsome,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Adrienne Shelly - Robert John Burke Director(s): Hal Hartley DVD Release Date: Released the 13 March 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This is a superb film by Hal Hartley. Part of a European project on views of the millenium, Hartley submits a film that only an American could make. It is very slick, due in part to his use of digital film. The music complements the scenes perfectly (and the soundtrack makes a great CD too!). The movie traces an introspective Jesus on New Years Eve trying to end the world (think of it as the old black and white The Horn Blows and Midnight redone for the 21st century). In presenting the story the movie is a travelogue for NYC- and has an excellent NY feel- from the hotel bar, to the times square music store, to the Russian restaurant (note that the lights say TRUTH and FAITH in Russian) and in the street. It is uniquely American (in the millenium film group) in that it plays off the city,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Hal Hartley DVD Release Date: Released the 07 November 2000 Usually ships within 24 hours
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