Gay filmmaker Ira Sachs never ceases to surprise us. With movies such as the period infidelity drama “Married Life” to his New York real estate trilogy – “Keep The Lights On,” “Love Is Strange,” and “Little Men” – to his bisexuality exploration “Passages,” Sachs has kept viewers engaged since the late 1990s.
His latest, “Peter Hujar’s Day” (Janus Films), based on the book of the same name by Linda Rosenkrantz, is easily his most intimate. A two-person film set in 1974, it is basically, as the title suggest, the late queer photographer Peter Hujar (out actor Ben Whishaw, who also played one of the leads in “Passages” and is the voice of the stuffed bear in the Paddington movies), recounting the events of the previous day to his friend, the writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall).
The movie plays out like a kind of audio/video journal entry. Linda sets up her reel-to-reel tape recorder and microphone, and Peter starts talking. The idea was related to a book concept Linda had about the daily lives of artists. She was interested in how people “fill up their day,” because she felt like she wasn’t doing much.
What might be considered name-dropping was simply who they were at the time: a photographer and a writer in New York at a pivotal time. Hujar talks about meeting with an editor from Elle Magazine about his photos of Lauren Hutton, having lunch with Fran Lebowitz, the time he was in one of drag legend Hibiscus’ Angels of Light shows, photographing William S. Burroughs, and so on.
There is a lengthy section in the movie about Peter’s experience photographing the gay poet Allen Ginsberg for the New York Times. Ginsberg, who lived with his lover Peter Orlovsky on the Lower East Side, in what Peter Hujar described as a “run-down tenement with tenement furniture,” linoleum, a mattress on the floor, and a Bob Dylan poster on the wall, was initially cold and unreasonable towards Peter. However, he eventually won over Ginsberg. Peter also doesn’t hold back when disparaging others and even tells Linda to use their real names in her book.
There’s a lovely scene in which Peter puts a record on the turntable, and he and Linda dance to the song. Linda also expresses her concern for Peter. A heavy smoker with a questionable diet, Peter also occasionally comments on his physical condition. Remember, this was in the early days of the Castro clone/pre-gym bunny era, when being thin was a sign of attractiveness.
If this movie were about two other people, it might seem humdrum. But Linda, in her inimitable New York style, not only knew how to keep Peter talking, but would also comment, as necessary, making the experience as much a dialogue as a running monologue. Sachs also deserves credit for making a movie about photographer Hujar, who died of AIDS complications at 53 in 1987, and creating tableaux that could easily pass for photographic art.
Rating: B
