Simple Men

“There is no such thing as adventure. There’s no such thing as romance. There’s only trouble and desire. And the funny thing is, when you desire something you immediately get into trouble. And when you’re in trouble you don’t desire anything at all.” Simple Men

To mark the release of Hal Hartley’s first film in a decade, Where We Land, we’re showing his 1994 cult favourite Simple Men (his third film) as well as Ned Rifle, from 2014. Hartley has always been a paragon of independence. When most of his indie peers were kowtowing to Harvey Weinstein in the 1990s, Hartley was storming the red carpet at Cannes with Godardian-inflected, anarcho-mannerist comedies like this one.

Two brothers — a criminal (Robert John Burke) and a bookworm (Bill Sage) — search for their father, a 60s anarchist on the run, finding few answers, but more trouble and desire. Hartley’s most Godardian film plays with convention to exuberant effect.

Hartley’s instantly identifiable style based on laconic, yet highly polished repartee delivered in a disaffected, deadpan monotone by a repertory company of fashion plate bohemians including Bill Sage and Robert Burke (both of whom are also in the new film), Martin Donovan, Parker Posey and Aubrey Plaza.

Likely reflecting his own experience as a working class artist and intellectual, Hartley gets comic mileage out of the contrast between his quotidien settings, melodramatic plot twists, and his characters’ bent for intense philosophising, as well as their matter-of-fact approach to vaguely taboo topics like abortion, pornography, rebellion and non-conformity. This paradoxical disconnect extends to his penchant for tragi-comic farce, and to his eccentric, schizoid characters.