Simple Men (1992)

Just perfect...

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This is one of Hartley's most successful films. Every aspect is perfect: the comedic timing, the pace, the direction, the framing, the whole thing just works. Hartley wrote the screenplay as well as directed. In trying to think what it is about Hartley's films (when they work) that seems so immediate to our lives, despite the fact that they are fantasies, I have evolved a theory. Wait for it. This is it. He is not merely filming caricatures of humans, he is filming caricatures of the human situation, and that is a different thing. Possibly the closest affinity he has within modern literature is Wyndham Lewis (THE APES OF GOD, etc.) One can go back further and think of Jonathan Swift. Hartley's tongue-in-cheek satire runs so deep, it could be called The Grand Canyon of Cartoon Land. His characters can sometimes be no closer to reality than Dick Tracy or Batman, but unlike those comic book creations, we seem to know them all too well: they are us. Every one of us has buried deep inside the capacity to become a Hartley character. That is the Hartley magic. He can see the invisible caricatures we can all become shifting around inside us like translucent leprechauns waiting to spring out of our frozen faces and commence frenetic action, action which can be catastrophic, even criminal, but certainly unpredictable. Hartley knows that buried deep within all the apparent certainties of human existence are infinite uncertainties. It is these he teases out, renders visible to us in deadpan comedic form, and wonders whether we will laugh uncontrollably or otherwise run away with the horror of recognition. In this particular film, Hartley decides to show men what they really think of women, and see if they recognise themselves. The amazing elfin creature known as Elina Löwensohn, proud as always to boast of being a Romanian ('A what??), given her chance, as always by Hartley, to proclaim her origins no matter what character she plays, is inevitably present. What actress ever born was made more perfectly for a Hal Hartley film than she? For she is both real and unreal at the same time, and apparently cannot help it. Transylvanian magic! Along the way, Hartley is able to make a sarcastic joke about the American obsession with baseball, by having a glowering and sullen character who 'is just a baseball player', having been 'the best shortstop America ever had', and now a cold and heartless criminal who does not even want to speak to his two sons who have found him at last after many years. Take that, baseball! The whole cast are superb, Robert Burke, Bill Sage, Karen Sillas, and the rest. As usual, Hartley's casting is impeccable. Watch this film, study its semi-penetrable gnomic humour, and marvel at the work of a master.

I can't imagine how people can rate this movie so high. To start with the acting is bad, I don't know where they got these actors or if it was the directors will to make them act this way, but most soap opera actors seem to have more talent than these guys. Secondly the dialog is annoying or sometimes even funny because of the nonsense the people are talking. Yet the worst thing of all is that this movie is "artistic" in the sense that if it weren't almost 2 hours long you'd believe it was written by a high school movie club. In my opinion this movie is a pure waste of time, but see for yourself. If you watch it, try not to make the same mistake as me and hope it will get better after the first ten minutes...

Boy, was I looking forward to this film. Hal Hartley was returning with most of the cast of "The Unbelievable Truth" with what sounded like an even better film. A couple of criminals go searching for their father, a former pro baseball shortstop turned anarchist. Well, all I got was boring dialogue and lots of it. And to me the impression was given that Hartley was trying to outdo himself on the screenplay but all that came out was a lot of pretension. Then to jazz up the film, throw in a lot of quirkiness which really doesn't make any sense: dancing to Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing" (hey, look at how cool my taste in music is), the guitar playing and the depressed sheriff bit. This film was definitely not one of Hartley's better moments. I have since seen, "Amateur", which is much better, so hopefully, this was just an aberration.

On first viewing, I could have sworn this was a Sam Shepard play. It has the short lilting dialogue for much of the film and sounds as though it were written for the stage. It is directed very much in that fashion and is a fascinating, captivating set of performances...understated and full of deeper meanings that don't shout at you in the more typical "Hollywood" tradition!