Simple Men

It's like somebody took a piece of classic cinema and emphasized just how ridiculous and surreal every cliché and stereotype really is. Hal Hartley does a masterful job of giving a classic film narrative a fresh perspective with a hilariously sharp, convoluted, wild and gripping screenplay directed in a style that appears reminiscent of the French New Wave. Loaded with unabashedly random monologues, hysterically quotable moments and a beautifully chaotic plot, this film is certainly a classic in its own right.

What would Hal Hartley's movies be without the eccentric characters? Here is the ex-baseball player hiding in a boat quoting Proudhon to a religiously following Romanian epilectic girl less than half his age that definitely has her own way of dancing to Sonic Youth. Referencing here and there, many lost on me I guess, but the way everything is downplayed makes it so funny at times.

Hal Hartly is so good in casting. I think I liked every actor and actress he has chosen. Here, Elina Lövensohn shines, Karen Sillas is so natural and Robert John Burke is highly dramatic, like he was as the monster in 'No Such Thing'. The rest is seriously deadpan, which is a good thing.

This is one of my favorite HH movies, by far. This, Trust, and Undeniable Truth are I think his three best. This is a total dialoge movie, and HH does a great job in setting moods and playing with settings and music.

Usual cast of characters, and a strange plot, and a surreal setting, make for a moody movie, for sure this is not an 'up' movie but it IS very funny. Very quotable. The first HH movie I ever saw, and still by far my favorite.

And the Kool Thing Dance is funny and bizarre, not a pointless attempt to show his taste in music as the previous comment stated. We all know HH works brilliantly with music in his films, he does not do things to show off.

This movie is amazing. In a lot of ways it is an extremely painful movie to watch, watching people create their own destruction, watching the action play out a certain inevitability. But it's different also from a lot of stories, in that this kind of arc does not just continue on to its logical conclusion. The characters do not simply hurtle forth, but are always capable of thinking, changing. Really, really good.

Hartley has here created a near masterpiece; a wonderful, autumnally atmospheric and deeply human film. The usual quirks are there (the cyclical dialogues, the silences) but it is imbued with a warmth and love that makes the film unmissable. The fragile nature of relationships comes under the directors scrutiny as two brothers spend a couple of days in Long Island. The all night drinking scene complete with a dance routine to Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing" captures that dusk to dawn and too much Jack Daniels feel as well as any film I have ever seen. But, it is the closing scene which clinches it, a heart stoppingly romantic yet equally depressing end which asserts that through the pains of life, through the "trouble and desire" there is always a belief in other people that can keep us going. Life affirming (without being a saccharine "feel good" movie) and truly wonderful