Simple Men | Robert John Burke, Bill Sage | "Trouble and Desire" = Another Terrific Hartley Project

Simple Men | Robert John Burke, Bill Sage | Deeply Felt

DVDs:

Simple Men

	Simple Men Robert John Burke, Bill Sage Image Entertainment, 2004 average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

What do you do if your father, a former all-star shortstop and mad bomber anarchist, breaks out of jail? Go after him, of course! Two brothers trek through the deep, dark wilds of Long Island, only to discover that sometimes even the oddest things really are just what they seem. Directed by independent film favorite Hal Hartley (The UnbelievableTruth, Amateur, Trust) Starring Robert John Burke (Tombstone, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind), Bill Sage (American Psycho, Boiler Room), Karen Sillas (The Sopranos, CSI Miami), Elina Lowensohn (Schindler's List, Nadja), and Martin Donovan (Insomnia, The Opposite of Sex).

for more information click here

"Trouble and Desire" = Another Terrific Hartley Project

Hal Hartley never fails to entertain, never fails to engage my mind and emotions on a parallel level. Simple Men is no exception. The seemingly simple plot - two brothers in search of their missing dad - provides so much room for character growth that I wish there were an entire series of films centered around them.

With a hard-edged view of the world as: "There's no such thing as adventure. There's no such thing as romance. There's only trouble and desire" (actually from a Fritz Lang movie of the 1920's) there's plenty going on to both prove and disprove Hartley's ambivalent theories.

Simple Men also formally introduces us to the absolutely delicious Elena Löwensohn. In one of the coolest and hottest scenes in all of cinema we get to watch her bizarre 50's beatnik-style dance to Sonic Youth's "Kool thing." Then joined by the two lost soul brothers it turns into an unlikely production number.

Many dismiss this film, and Hartley as unwatchable or trivial and miss the point. What is amazing about Hartley is that he takes the seemingly trivial and elevates it to a level of art that, once seen, reflects our lives on every level from brilliance to the inane.

Simple Men is pure cinematic delight.

Hooray for Hartley!

for more information click here

Deeply Felt

I'm not one to go in length about films on Amazon, but I'll write a short little bit for this amazing film. I first saw this 10 years ago when I was in my teens and have never forgotten it, it really touched something inside of me, much like a great piece of art would affect you after seeing it up close for the first time.

Intelligent and absurdist filmmaking -- you will walk away smiling and thinking

Hal Hartley's best films are intellectual candy. They are full of provocations and delights, little moments that are both enigmatic and profoundly simple and true. This one is my favorite, at least so far. Two men on a search for their father, who may or may not be guilty of a profound wrong or disastrous mistake. Two women waiting for something or someone. In outline, the basic plot sounds like any number of Hollywood dramas or romantic comedies, but in this film there is something so fresh about the dialogue with its musical punctuation and simple but unique staging. The style he employs here, of characters speaking like they were in a soap opera -- not quite acting but emoting and standing as mouthpiece for a play of ideas that is tied to the action -- works when it is subtle and simple as it is in this film (and in others like Henry Fool). Taken to an extreme it can become a bit annoying, as in Fay Grim which feels just too big and unwieldy to work. Here it is just right, and at just the right moments is broken by absurdly funny set pieces like a spontaneous musical outburst in response to the Sonic Youth or a cigarette-smoking nun who assaults a police officer. Hartley is the closest we have to an American Godard. Definitely a keeper.

for more information click here

Wonderful movie, indifferent transfer

I won't speak to the joys of this movie...others have done so here much more eloquently than I ever could. I will, however, note that there are a few technical aspects of this dvd that bothered me. First is the aspect ratio. Hal Hartley is a master at framing a shot, and there are many times in this release that his framing is ruined, because the top or bottom is lopped off. There are also scenes in which a mood was set using dark, heavily tinted light. Thanks to (I assume) automated conversion to dvd, those scenes have been altered so they appear to take place in nice, bland sunlight.

I won't go as far as recommend against buying the disc...the movie is excellent. But you should be aware that some small part of what made this such a wonderful movie has been lost.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

products you might be interested in