Surviving Desire

Tight, intelligent, witty, original. One of Hartleys very best films perfectly executed.. The culmination of his craft.

As Hartley goes through and destroys most of the cliches of traditional love stories, from Shakespeare (with the drunken KATE scene, ref. The Taming of the Shrew) to the musically challenged dance number by Donovan and two extras (a gem which turns all those Hollywood musical numbers on their head. What happens when you're in a funk about a frustrating and failing relationship and you don't feel like singing in the rain?)

For me this one stands out of other work I have seen from Hal Hartley to date (5 films including Trust but not including Unbelievable Truth). This one left a much warmer feeling inside me than his other films. It had less black humour in it, but the characters were more open, warmer, became closer somehow.

Its actually surprising that I liked this film that much as after finding Hal for myself, I have watched 5 cassettes worth of his films in a few weeks timeframe (one of them contains 3 of his short films including this one). I was actually afraid that I might get bored of his style, his means of presenting a story and characters, as the means, style change only a little from film to film. He has so many "trademarks" about his filmmaking.

I needn't have been afraid. I can feel this one.

Surviving desire was made for American Television and is only about an hour long. Despite the limited running time, Hal Hartley has produced in this film his best work. Using his trademark non-naturalistic dialogue and intellectualism, Hartley builds odd, but very believable characters. This is a touching film, expertly made and contains Martin Donovan's finest performance as the frustrated Jude. Matt Malloy is also fantastic as Henry. The mixture of high art, the emotional, the bizarre and the mundane make this often ignored opus a must see for anyone interested in cinema. An understated and ever-fresh film full of brilliance. Not the best film ever made, but absolutely one of my favourites.

I've found that with any director with a very unique but overtly quirky vision (Anderson, Jarmusch, and now Hartley) I'm at first immensely charmed by them but my enthusiasm wears thin with time as the quirks begin to feel less like quirks and more like cliches of the auteur's own creation; it's somewhat ironic that filmmakers who once felt so original can begin to feel more and more like caricatures as they further emphasize what made them original. The films from them that I take to most are likely to be the ones I see first, which might mean that my ambivalence towards this movie is more my problem than it is Hartley's. But I also still love Trust, so there must be something that connected with me there that's absent here- and I think this kind of auteur often forgets what it is that made their films connect with people and an over-reliance on their established style can become a copout, especially the quirky styles that have a tendency to undercut emotionally resonant moments (there are moments however where a film's quirks can allow it to express something in a purer way than a more grounded film is capable of; Jude's dance scene after he realizes he's in love was wonderful).