You probably have to be as old as I am to remember Hal Hartley and what a bright light he was way back in the 1990s, back when I wanted to be a filmmaker and tried to go to school to do that, then dropped out and ruined my life. Good times. Hartley was known as an auteur back then, which was more rare than you’d think. Now, there is an abundance of filmmakers who are considered “auteurs,” in fact, most of them are. Gone are the days of great screenplays that find great directors (but for every once in a while). The old joke used to be, “everybody wants to direct.” That’s still true even if the joke has gone extinct. But also, everyone wants to write and direct.
Well, Hal Hartley was one of the first of those. The movie most people remember is Trust, from 1990. I might have to go back an watch that movie again just to remember what life was like before the internet ruined everything.
Anyway, Hal Hartley has a new movie called Where to Land:
It’s very Hal Hartley, if you know, you know. And it’s a good question to ask for the modern American white male. Where to land indeed when there is no place for you. I’ll be watching.
“A farce about a renowned director of romantic comedies who, in his senior years, applies for a job as assistant groundskeeper in a cemetery. Because he does this at the same time as meeting his lawyer to address his last will and testament, his family, friends, and neighbors assume he is dying and crowd into his apartment to express their farewells.
The film features actors long familiar to Hartley fans, such as Bill Sage, Robert John Burke, and Edie Falco, but also includes less frequent and seasoned collaborators as Gia Crovatin, Joe Perrino, and Obie Award winner Kathleen Chalfant. Finally, the film introduces the talents of a younger generation of actors freshly tackling Hartley’s much-noted musical dialogue and graceful physical slapstick: Kim Taff, Katelyn Sparks, Jeremy Hendrik, Jay Lenox and Aida Johannes. Opening in theaters September 12, 2025.”
So, brand new, blitzed-out, hollowed generation, meet Hal Hartley. Sort of like discovering a great burger place off Route 66. You didn’t even know what you were missing.
Fuscia lipstick, so caught in that moment between the 1980s and the 1990s.
Trust so captures what things were like before the self-help/therapy revolution of the 1990s. We were lost and borderline hopeless. After therapy we became a weird euphoric, utopian cult. I think I prefer the 1990s.
I don’t think she’s a high school aged-student. But I don’t remember it very well. At any rate, there isn’t dialogue like that or characters like that or writing like that anymore.
So welcome back, Hal Hartley. You have been missed.
