Theory of Achievement

Theory of Achievement is a great little film where about a bunch of down and out college educated Brooklyn residents who clearly desire more to life. They mope around and spew out their anecdotal existential philosophies. It all revolves around the price of rent in NYC and their attempts at making something out of themselves and their modest lives. It's funny, the dialog is great, the Hal Hartley style music is there and it all wraps up quite nicely into this little short. Charming and well worth a watch. This was Elina Lowensohn's first film and she's a pleasure to watch as always. Available on video with Hartley's Surviving Desire.

In this 1991 two reeler writer/director Hal Hartley does a great big fat steaming pile of Godard all over the screen. In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York various characters including a 'landlord' (Bob Gosse), a struggling 'musician/artist' (William Sage), his girlfriend (Elina Lowensohn), and people at a local cafe (including M. C. Bailey and Naledi Tshazibane) talk about love, death, art, life, meaning, and all in an existentialist way. And there's even a Jean-Luc figure (Nick Gomez) in the cafe spurting crap, as well as some boring music, Ingrid Rudefors, and the odd poetical and philosophical quote.

Its a disconnected series of electric scenes, interspersed with pretentiousness for comic purposes, mainly in the form of quotes read out loud.

I love the peculiar reality we get in Hartley's work. I think the style is funny, but I reinforce what i felt after Ambtion, that the joke is in danger of wearing very thin. The style calls more attention to itself and detracts from whatever version of his same old message Hartley is trying to express. And don't ask me whether there was a particular philosophical standpoint which emerges from this film - maybe if i saw it again it would be obvious - but after a while all the banal philosophy just becomes a mindless hubdrub, which i think is Hartley's intention. Only problem with that is - I create a piece of art where I poo in a public place, and am applauded in France for my originality, but a few weeks later I do the exact same poo in the exact same public place... but this time half as many art critics applaud...

Hartley gets big Kudos for thinking up this tone for cinema - but when you've seen it once, you've seen all there is to it.

Whichever Hartley film is the first one you see, you'll be impressed probably (unless you don't get it and think he didn't get the actors to talk like this on purpose!), and while this one is better than Ambition, i get less impressed the more I see.