In January of 1992, I was an unhappy 15-year-old with a small television in her bedroom. It didn't have cable on it because cable in one's teenage bedroom was too rich for my stepdad's blood, so I watched a lot of PBS. One night I tuned into American Masters, which was showing a film called Surviving Desire, about a college professor who lusts after one of his students, gets her, and then loses her all in a span of an hour.
That was when I knew what I wanted my young life to look like: a Hartley movie. For those among the unfamiliar, Hal Hartley is a director and writer of, well, Hal Hartley Movies. They were popular on the indie circuit in the early '90s, and had a very specific look and feel to them, one that I found appealing in my teens. Trouble and Desire, rough-hewn dark colors, deliberate, even melodramatic displays of emotion, and an occasional appearance by Yo La Tengo. Hopefully, there would be a moody, troubled hottie like Martin Donovan who would show up and cause problems, but at the very least, there would be brick buildings and cloudy skies and a pall of uneasiness blanketing my days.
Anyone who has sat through a Film Studies 101 class can tear apart Hartley's auteurism, call it amateurish and simple, but hey, asshole, that's the beauty of it! I've been on the defensive about my love for Hal ever since the recently dug-up Mad Beautiful (a film major at the U of the T, of course) rolled his eyes at my choice of favorite director. "I might as well go watch a bad play," he told me, denying me his caress that night, I guess as punishment for having craptastic taste to a 19-year-old. "You had to be there!" I shouted after him, but he didn't care. Nor could I actually pinpoint where this mythical "there" was.
Recent Hartley offerings haven't exactly rocked my world, though the Henry Fool sequel wasn't bad. A little over the top, but I dig that Bert-like James Urbaniak.
Arty and cool and totally '90s, Hartley's films were an entree into the world of youthful hipsterism. And if that makes me an asshole, then I'm an asshole!!!
Posted by Zerd at November 8, 2007 11:19 AM