Hal Hartley is a quirky but genuine talent who has made his mark as an award-winning independent filmmaker. His films are modestly scaled, seriocomic portraits of chance encounters between disparate outsiders--characters who typically engage in elliptical exchanges, debating everything from philosophical issues to the workings of internal combustion engines, but don't always learn anything from their discourses or their adventures. Hartley's deft, offbeat comedy is highlighted by circuitous, layered bantering, with punchlines coming late, if at all. The visual correlatives to this non sequitur-laden wit have ranged from a shot of a nun wrestling a policeman to the ground to a camera pan which reveals heavy metal "soundtrack" music to be emanating from the electric guitar of a minor character. Hartley's deadpan, episodic narrative style would seem to betray the influence of Jean-Luc Godard, though his camera is less experimental, his comedy more assimilable and his politics less overt. Hartley's gallery of indecisive but intelligent characters includes an ex-convict who sets the town talking about what his crime might have been ("The Unbelievable Truth" 1989); a literature professor who spends most of a semester on one paragraph of Dostoyevsky (the PBS project "Surviving Desire" 1992); a manic, bitter electronics whiz who carries a hand-grenade in his pocket ("Trust" 1990); two very different brothers who search for their long-missing radical father ("Simple Men" 1992); and an amnesiac who enlists the aid of a former nun to help him discover his past ("Amateur" 1994).
Some critics have accused the director of making the same film again and again. With "Flirt" (1995), he did just that, depicting three love stories (including one homosexual) utilizing the same dialogue and structure. Moving from New York to Berlin to Tokyo, Hartley examines the essence of love refracted through different characters with ultimately the same results. A flirtatious lover brings about the destruction of his or her own beauty. "Henry Fool" (1997) has been lauded as his best film to date, reiterating his themes of reinvention and the serendipitous experiences that reconstitute relationships.
Profession(s):
director, producer, screenwriter, editor, composer
Sometimes Credited As:
Hal Hartley Jr
Ned Rifle
Cannes Film Festival Screenplay Award "Henry Fool" 1998
Houston International Film Festival Grand Prize "Trust" 1991
Sundance Film Festival Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award "Trust" 1991
2007 Helmed "Fay Grim," a sequel to his 1997 film "Henry Fool" starring Parker Posey as a single mom thrown into a world of international espionage
2005 Helmed the feature "The Girl From Monday" about a time in the near future when citizens are happy to be property traded on the stock exchange
2002 Wrote and directed "No Such Thing", an adaptation of "Beauty and the Beast"
2001 Debut as playwright with "Soon", produced in Los Angeles
2000 Directed and wrote and the short "Kimono"
1999 Made the short "The Book of Life"
1997 Garnered critical acclaim for "Henry Fool"; screened at Cannes where it won the screenplay award
1995 Helmed the tripartite "Flirt", which incorporated the 1993 short of the same name
1994 Wrote and directed "Amateur"
1993 Made short film "Flirt"; later incorporated into the 1995 feature of the same title
1992 "Surviving Desire", his first work made expressly for TV, broadcast on "American Playhouse" on PBS
1991 Short films, the 10-minute "Ambition" and the 17-minute "Theory of Achievement", broadcast on PBS' "Alive From Off Center"
1989 Made feature directing, screenwriting, producing and editing debut with "The Unbelievable Truth"
1985 Completed his student thesis film, "Kid"
Raised in Lindenhurst, Long Island, NY
After his mother's death, went to live with various relatives
Left art school in Boston; made eight super-8 films before enrolling in the film department at SUNY, Purchase
Began freelancing on commercials and feature films
