Peter Hujar's Day

 

Director Ira Sachs

director on the set

Peter Hujar and Janet Rosenkrantz

Peter Hujar

PETER HUJAR’S DAY           B                                                                                            USA  Germany  Great Britain  Spain  (76 mi)  2025  d: Ira Sachs

His pictures are exotic but not in a shallow, sensational way.  Looking at his photographs of nude men, even of a naked baby boy, is the closest I ever came to experience what it is to inhabit male flesh.  His photographs of animals have that same rare empathy, they are like highly personal portraits.          —Nan Goldin on Peter Hujar

I often have the feeling that in my day, nothing much happens... That I’ve wasted it.                     —Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw)

A memory-play counterpart to Nan Goldin’s blustery female portrait of the underground scene of New York City’s vibrant, gay subculture of the late 1970’s, as depicted in the brilliant Laura Poitras film 2023 Top Ten List #2 All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), as this quiet conversational interview of gay portrait photographer Peter Hujar and journalist Linda Rosenkrantz covers much of the same territory, but in a vastly different style, creating a tribute to a forgotten artist, choosing intimacy, authenticity, and the power of personality in capturing the spirit of the times.  Based on recently rediscovered transcripts from a lost 1974 taped interview by nonfiction writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall, who played Vicky, very much resembling Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, 1977, with her pretensions to art and intellect in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, 2008), in which she asked Hujar (Ben Whishaw, who, lest we forget, played doomed English poet John Keats in Jane Campion’s Bright Star, 2009) to narrate the events of the previous day in minute detail, a project she hoped to expand to other artists, creating a series of these “day in the life” artistic portraits, but it never materialized, yet there’s something subversive and refreshingly experimental about it.  As he recalls the seemingly trivial details of what happened in Rosenkrantz’s Yorkville, Upper East Side apartment, it amounts to a film-long monologue, a rare illustration of how cinema accentuates the written word, fully embracing the power of language in a tightly compressed cinematic space, working in “portraiture,” much like Hujar, creating a representation of a character always questioning his work, mostly taking place in single rooms, moving from a kitchen to a living room to a bedroom, occasionally venturing onto the roof to have a smoke, seen incessantly smoking cigarettes (only 56 cents a pack at the time, complaining that it went up a penny), often engulfed in a cloud of everpresent cigarette smoke, with the sympathetic ear of Rosenkrantz listening intently to every word, projecting a warm, empathetic presence.  Having known each other since their early 20’s (now in their 40’s), a central aspect is having complete trust and faith in one another, coming at a time when photography was not yet recognized as a serious artform, with few gallery sales or exhibits, and artists barely able to eke out a living, but the published success of Diane Arbus quickly changed that.  In Ira Sachs films, artists and their perception play a role, with Hujar realizing that he lies more often than he thinks, creating a narrative that he thinks makes things easier in developing relationships, while also offering a few casual observations about the sexually permissive subculture of the New York art scene, exposing tenderness, pain, frustration, fear, and love, so there are a lot of feelings bubbling beneath the surface.  Stripped of everything except the bare essentials, this short 76-minute excursion into the bohemian art scene reminds us that Sachs is a quintessential New York City filmmaker, capturing a specific moment in New York queer cultural history and a still-influential art scene, filled with name-dropping some of the more iconic artists of the time, yet to him they were friends and contemporaries sharing the same orbit, revealing a completely different, more intimate side of their lives as he photographed them, offering astute takes on the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Susan Sontag, Fran Lebowitz, Robert Wilson, Vince Aletti, Janet Flanner, Glenn O’Brien, William S. Burroughs, Peter Orlovsky, Ed Baynard, and Maurice Hogenboom, who are just a small sample size.  Perhaps most compelling is his visit to the “dismal” Lower East Side home of Allen Ginsberg, which he describes as “the most run-down tenement,” surprised by the dilapidated apartments and burnt-out buildings in the neighborhood, sent on assignment to photograph him by The New York Times, but an uncooperative Ginsberg completely ignored him and instead sat on the floor and chanted, something she describes as “ohm-land,” with Hujar refusing to interrupt, claiming, “I can’t interrupt God.”  Later Ginsberg went on various rants about corrupt corporate powers, insisting upon being photographed on the exact site where he was recently mugged.   

Hujar died of AIDS in 1987 at the age of 53, mostly penniless, with his on-and-off again lover and artist David Wojnarowicz (who was 20 years younger) at his bedside in the hospital documenting Hujar's final moments, known only among a certain group of people, yet his individualistic personality shines through.  He left behind a complex and profound body of photographs, where he was a leading figure in the group of artists, musicians, writers, and performers, documenting the 1970’s and 80’s East Village scene in a pre-gentrification world of cultural, sexual, and artistic revolution before the AIDS crisis in New York during the tumultuous Reagan and Bush eras.  A film that Sachs describes is “about what it is to be an artist among artists in a city where no one was making any money,” all underappreciated at the time, yet Hujar was enormously admired for his completely uncompromising attitude towards his life and work, a consummate technician, exercising meticulous control in the darkroom, where his portraits of people, animals, and landscapes, with their exquisite black-and-white tonalities, were extremely influential, receiving only marginal public recognition during his lifetime, but he has since become recognized as one of the most influential photographers of the latter half of the 20th century.  Highly emotional yet stripped of excess, Hujar’s photographs are always beautiful, although rarely in a conventional way, but he was never as famous as Nan Goldin or Robert Mapplethorpe.  His extraordinary first book, Portraits in Life and Death, with an introduction by Susan Sontag, was published in 1976, but did not sell well, as his “difficult” personality and refusal to pander to the marketplace insured that it was one of the last published works during his lifetime, as his ambivalence toward success, commerce, and the art world at large often led him to shun the limelight.  An exercise in minimalism, an ode to the banality of everyday life, much of this feels like flipping through the pages of someone else’s diary, where even the smallest details feel significant, as they are attributed to this single personality and no one else, yet Hujar is very much in his element among this extraordinary group of artists, who are never seen, but spoken about in a very matter-of-fact manner, allowing us to briefly hang out with them, reminiscent of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011) as he namedrops his way through art history, while at the same time this is a portrait of an extraordinary artist as an ordinary person, featuring just a camera and the sound of a man’s voice recalling what happened the day before, from the time he woke up until the moment he went to sleep, with no rehearsals prior to the filming, which is rare for an actor with this amount of dialogue.  Sensuously shot in mostly natural light by Alex Ashe (who is himself a photographer) on Super 16mm, creating a grainy, analog texture to match the 1970’s setting, fresh off filming Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s dreamy, yet inspired The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (2024), this offers a masterclass in composition, capturing the changing light as the day turns into night.  Equally compelling is the exquisite editing by Affonso Gonçalves, who just happened to work on Chloé Zhao’s 2025 Top Ten List #4 Hamnet (2025), while also a frequent collaborator of Todd Haynes, Jim Jarmusch, and Ira Sachs, where in a spontaneous moment the extended microphone attached to a boom is seen as a shadow on the wall.  Never attempting to hide its artifice, what comes as a surprise is the use of Mozart’s Requiem, which is almost shocking in its over-the-top grandeur, yet it adds an operatic grandiosity to small, ordinary moments that become elevated with an extraordinary touch of artistry.  Equally revelatory is a liberating moment of just the two of them dancing around the dining room to the rockabilly sounds of Tennessee Jim - Hold Me Tight YouTube (2:16).

Discovering the 36-page book credited to Rosenkrantz (Linda Rosenkrantz - Peter Hujar's Day) of the missing interview transcripts (Peter Hujar's Day - Read The Screenplay) in a gay Parisian bookstore while shooting 2023 Top Ten List #8 Passages, Hujar was a pioneering queer artist, a man whose presence was so calming that Nan Goldin once called him as “human Valium,” turning away from commercial work early in his career to focus on subjects of his own choosing, including his circle of friends and lovers, landscapes, nudes, and animals, looming large as both a brilliant artist and valuable mentor in the Lower East Side avant garde arts/cultural scene of the 1970’s and 80’s.  Evoking a feeling of time and place, with both Hujar and Sachs using the camera as an instrument of intimacy, capturing a surprising amount of emotional depth without resorting to any form of intellectualism, as there is no plot or conflict in the conventional sense, nor are any changes in the characters’ lives depicted, yet in the mind of the filmmaker, the book was radical in its honesty, providing a cinematic landscape of what constitutes a queer artist, where the idea of just two people talking in a room, with no romantic intentions, has perhaps not been done since Louis Malle’s MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (1981), Jonathan Demme’s one-man autobiographical monologue by Spalding Gray in SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA (1987), or James Ponsoldt’s The End of the Tour 2015), a fictionalized account of successful American novelist David Foster Wallace recounting his heavily dialogue-driven reflections to a young Rolling Stone reporter.  Having worked with Whishaw before in PASSAGES, both share a deep curiosity about art and beauty, life and queerness, and an interest not limited to movies alone, but including all the various art forms, where the simplicity of the film speaks volumes, as Hujar’s unsparing comments are so authentic, unguarded and raw, filled with moments of self-doubt, spoken so naturally, where his artistic insecurities are on full display, worrying about the high costs of everything, with nothing showy or melodramatic, receiving a barrage of phone calls, spending a lot of time in his darkroom developing pictures, with the names of fellow artists flowing off his lips with ease, where it helps to be well-versed in the New York literary scene of the 1970’s, as otherwise it becomes confusing why these names are given so much screen time.  What these people have created, nobody does anymore, so it feels really distant, a portrait of a lost time, a culture that has disappeared, just like the neighborhoods being discussed which have been razed over from gentrification.  It may be lost on viewers that both actors in front of the camera portraying American artists happen to be British, which you’d never know, rendered beautifully by both, with Hall breaking out some variation of a Bronx accent, but the onscreen presence of Whishaw, in particular, is hypnotic in its subtlety, arguably the actor’s finest hour, as he lures viewers into his highly personalized world and somehow makes even the smallest details matter, as if he actually possesses a photographic memory, like waiting in line the day before, yet recalling the exact price of someone else’s Chinese takeout order.  Literally immersed in a communal art world that has long since passed, this period may be a renaissance heyday of underground New York artists, seen in a totally different light than their public personas, told from a perspective of someone who knew and worked with them all, offering a stream-of-consciousness portrait of a moment in time and the kind of tiny events that make up a day in the life of these iconic figures, some of it amusing, some demeaning, actually sounding more like friendly gossip, yet what crosses Hujar’s mind offers insights into how artists see themselves, as they’re just ordinary people who can produce extraordinary moments that can become timeless.  Sachs was able to collaborate with a 90-year old Rosenkrantz, from sharing photographs to describing in detail her friendship with Hujar, making a film about what amounts to two people talking while sharing their insights, leading to an intimate relationship between the camera and its subject, including a scene that was edited out of the book, KVIFF.TV • Peter Hujar's Day (clip) • Video online YouTube (1:33).

The History of Sound

 

Director Oliver Hermanus

Director on the set with actor Paul Mescal

Hermanus, Mescal, and Josh O'Connor

Author and screenwriter Ben Shattuck

writer's studio

THE HISTORY OF SOUND            B+                                                                                  Great Britain  USA  Italy  Sweden  (127 mi)  2025  d: Oliver Hermanus

The history of sound, lost daily.  I’ve started to think of Earth as a wax cylinder, the sun the needle, laid on Earth and drawing out the day’s music – the sound of people arguing, cooking, laughing, singing, moaning, crying, flirting.  And behind that, a silent sweep of millions of sleeping people washing across the Earth like static.                                                                  —The History of Sound, by Ben Shattuck, 2018

Among the better films at making us feel what the characters are feeling onscreen, yet what’s most surprising is how this is communicated — through listening, through singing, and through silences.  Emotionally compelling in a very unorthodox way, an extremely delicate and quiet picture that wanders endlessly, taking many detours along the road before a stunning finale that is simply outstanding, making one realize that the entire film has been about collecting moments and personal experiences, which are simply a reflection of what we were doing at the time, but they are substantially more than that over time, as they become the defining moments in our lives, precious and unsullied, where a collection of small, seemingly insignificant points in time amount to so much more upon reflection, when we’ve had a chance to evaluate how much they mean to us.  Death can be a trigger, as it mercilessly cuts us off from these moments with a brutal decisiveness, where the lingering sadness has decades-long consequences.  We’re so accustomed nowadays to accessing any song at any given moment, it’s easy to forget there was once a time when songs existed only in memory or on paper, passed from generation to generation as oral or written histories.  It’s amazing the power of this picture, which is not for everyone, as it may be too slow, quiet, and introspective for some to actually connect, as no one is making films like this these days due to shifting attention spans, where people who are on their phones all the time may simply not appreciate what it offers, as it requires patience, and represents actual human contact with all that entails, trusting the audience’s imagination and intelligence without over explaining anything, so it’s like a time traveling trip into an old-fashioned past, allowing us to draw our own conclusions.  Made by a gay South African filmmaker, where it must be noted that South Africa is not exactly a juggernaut in the film industry.  Raise your hand anyone if you can name even a single South African filmmaker.  Most cannot.  Cape Town-born Oliver Hermanus is a filmmaker acclaimed for his sophisticated, character-driven films that are thought-provoking, richly textured, and visually striking, exploring themes of identity, repression, sexuality, and the essence of longing.  So this is an unexpected pleasure, as this film is more than the sum of its parts, a poignant reminder of lost love, reminiscent of Brokeback Mountain (2005), where it makes you wonder how do you tap into that same depth of feeling?  Offering a poetic reflection on the ephemeral quality of sound and how our experiences, even the most impactful ones, are constantly fading into the background, leaving only a faint trace behind.  This encourages us to appreciate the present moment and the sounds that surround us, as they are constantly being lost to time, exploring the passing of youth, “I always feel like I’m at the end of something,” and the deep regret of not staying with your first love, examining how the past is often misunderstood and how history can reverberate in our lives.  While many may not agree, perhaps feeling the material is overly constrained, arriving in mostly empty theaters with little fanfare, this is actually one of the better films of the year, transporting us to New England, Rome, and the English Lake District of the UK, where the finale is poetically sublime, with soaring, elegiac orchestral music that plays over the end credits.    

Adapted from a superlative short story by Ben Shattuck, The History of Sound, part of an interconnected anthology of short stories that are an ode to New England, rooted in New England landscapes and culture, where each story has a companion story that contains a revelation about the previous, paired story, winner of the Story Prize Spotlight Award in 2024, with the director claiming he “was drawn to the wisdom of it.”  Shattuck also wrote the screenplay for the film which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025, where it received a nine-minute standing ovation, yet it was among the lowest rated films in competition, Cannes Film Festival 2025 jury grid.  Described by the director as “a love letter to the films of the ‘90’s,” featuring intelligent yet accessible romantic epics, like Robert Redford’s A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT (1992), Edward Zwick’s LEGENDS OF THE FALL (1994), or Anthony Minghella’s THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1996), films that he acknowledges “don’t exist anymore,” yet older viewers may appreciate.  This is a story of first love, with an early scene in 1917 before the war setting the stage for what follows, as music student Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal), who discovered he had perfect pitch and music-based synesthesia where he could see colors as a child while growing up on a dirt-poor farm in Kentucky, earns a scholarship to the prestigious New England Conservatory in Boston where he meets fellow student David White (Josh O’Connor) in a crowded pub.  Lionel is seen leaving the table of friends he’s with after hearing the soft voice of someone sitting at the piano, quickly introducing himself, discovering both share a passion for folk music, with Lionel recognizing the song David was singing, which takes him by surprise, as David is a collector of obscure songs, quickly turning the tables by asking Lionel to sing a song that David had never heard of, which turns out to be Silver Dagger, Joan Baez - Silver Dagger (live 1965) YouTube (3:02), immediately falling in love with him right there on the spot, leading to a passionate yet carefully concealed affair, The History of Sound Movie Clip - Singing Love Songs (2025) YouTube (2:11).  There’s never any building tension or suspense about whether or not it might happen, as right from the start we know that this is happening.  Initially we might think this is an Andrew Haigh film, the gay British-born maker of Weekend (2011), 45 Years (2016), Lean On Pete (2017), and 2024 Top Ten List #2 All of Us Strangers, as it has that lustful male stare that leads to gay sex, but this filmmaker is not interested in that, showing nothing sexually, instead expressing the intimacy of the aftermath, content to show the couple snuggling, where he’s fond of filming bare backs, and the many questions asked the morning after, Love Songs Scene | THE HISTORY OF SOUND (2025) Movie ... YouTube (3:52).  Then it veers in a completely different direction, one that few could see coming, becoming, in a sense, a historical road movie, wandering between different spaces and time periods, as it recalls the exploits of Alan Lomax, an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music during the Depression and throughout the 20th century, songs existing in many versions, passed down orally through generations rather than written on paper, sung and written by everyday people, songs that are part of a living culture, where Lomax was the leading expert in the important role of preserving folk music traditions, which he obtained by traveling around the country with his portable recording device and taping obscure artists that represented different geographical regions of the United States, recording songs that might otherwise be lost, much like Béla Bartók did collecting old folk melodies in Hungary, or the chronicling of Polish folk music in Pavel Pawlikowski’s Cold War (Zimna wojna) (2018).  

David is marked by the early loss of his parents, growing up with his uncle in England, but he refuses to speak about the pain, and instead sings a ballad, explaining the song is a story of two lovers lost in the woods on a January night, having run from their homes to meet by an oak tree to then elope.  A blizzard comes, and they can’t find each other.  In the chorus they call each other’s names, but the wind shakes the trees so loudly that they can’t even hear their own voices—so they die alone, huddled under separate trees:

Over snow’d floor two tracks did mark                                                                          One going west, the other east                                                                                    Two still figures at trees’ roots                                                                                      On a dead winter’s night, they never meet.

There is a literary aspect to the film, complete with an eloquent narration that cuts in, which turns out to be the voice of Chris Cooper, an older version of Lionel looking back at his life with a melancholic nostalgia.  This film is only as good as the actors who carry it, and they are both superlative in their roles, Mescal (doing his own singing while evoking a Kentucky accent) from 2023 Top Ten List #7 Aftersun (2022) and 2024 Top Ten List #2 All of Us Strangers, O’Connor from 2024 Top Ten List #5 La Chimera (2024) and Challengers (2024).  It’s surprising the effect the deep past has on the present, as the farther back in time you go, the more contemporary life you have to strip away.  Gone are the cell phones, emails, and cars, trains, lightbulbs, antibiotics, newspapers, and so on, where what it comes down to is two people sitting in a room, exploring their relationship and the feelings they have about each other and themselves.  Yet people from the past, are very much like ourselves in the present, not that distant or far away, as we’re all part of the shared human experience.  What this film does is strip away everything else, and leave it down to these two main characters, following their routines at different periods of their lives, which has a profound effect on viewers sitting in a theater, as the emotional sweep of their lives leaves an impact.  It’s almost a musical, based upon the massive amount of songs that are sung, but these are academics intent on recording the indigenous songs passed down by families through generations, preserving their authenticity before being forgotten in the dustbin of history, taking us on a journey we might otherwise miss.  For a queer love story, this is an unexpected way of going about it, as it perversely denies our expectations of what we think a gay romance could be, as the grand sweeping gestures combining societal repression and latent desire of Brokeback Mountain are nowhere to be seen, and anyone expecting to find it will be disappointed, as this is not that film, where the lack of explicit sex has drawn criticism, but the filmmaker is instead far more concerned with the artistic connection and the private, almost sacred interiority of desire as we follow these two young lovers through America’s hidden regions and eventually into Europe for much of the atmospheric expanse of the movie.  Though never as easygoing with people as David, Lionel has a deeper inner resilience, featuring plenty of hiking and backpacking together through Maine, following Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, collecting songs from local people that they record on wax cylinders while camping under the stars, becoming a masterclass on understated emotions.  What’s missing are the stories of the voices they are hearing, whether it be Irish immigrants or descendants of black slaves, such as Thankful Mary Swain (Briana Middleton) on Malaga Island singing Here in the Vineyard YouTube (3:37) as their small, biracial community is about to be forcibly evicted by authorities ("Malaga, revisited: On a Casco Bay island, a shameful incident in Maine's history comes to light"), yet those lives remain invisible, even as we see them onscreen.  Equally mystifying is how Lionel is blind even to the needs of his own family, who he’ll leave in an instant, irrespective of the consequences, as the music he hears in his head seems to simply be plucked from any given moment.  Away from the rest of the world, there’s nothing outwardly that suggests these men are gay, as they’re extremely careful about not revealing too much about themselves, even to each other, as they part with awkward difficulty, unable to convey how they really feel about each other, and end up spending far less time together than they do apart, each filled with suppressed longing.           

“My father said it was a gift from God that I could see music,” opines an older Lionel played by a wistful Chris Cooper in 1980, delivering a searing emotional monologue in the film’s final scenes, as he transforms Lionel’s ear for sound and music into a kaleidoscope of internalized emotions.  What’s clear about this film is that it’s seen through Lionel’s eyes, the emotional center of the picture, almost like an Éric Rohmer film, as the David we see is how Lionel remembers him, a young kid going off to war, coming back without much to say about it, filled with hidden secrets that he only later learns about, where the trek through the woods to collect songs one summer unites them for a brief moment in time before returning to their normal lives in the fall, as they’re off again in pursuit of different careers, Lionel to Rome and then to Oxford as an established professor of music, while David has a position at Bowdoin College in Maine, with Lionel staying in touch through letters, but eventually stops as he receives no response.  He pursues a few relationships, a young European protégé in Rome and a girl in Oxford, Clarissa (Emma Canning), who brings him home to meet her parents, but in each case he leaves unexpectedly on bad terms, consumed by an aching loneliness with memories of David swirling in his head, always viewed as that special someone who got away, perhaps more than he could contain, yet David’s absence is especially noticeable.  While there are brief glimpses of his life in rural Kentucky, with its vast landscapes, beautifully shot by Paul Schrader’s regular cinematographer Alexander Dynan, it’s not really a place he would call home, as there’s nothing left there for him after his parents die.  With a musical score composed by Oliver Coates, who also composed the music for 2023 Top Ten List #7 Aftersun, arrangements by Sam Amidon, perhaps the most riveting musical moment, purely by the contrast it offers to the wall-to-wall folk music, happens when a brief snippet of Joy Division’s Atmosphere (2010 Remaster) YouTube (4:09) can be heard, like the voice of David calling out for him, “Don’t walk away, in silence,” beckoning him to return back to America, which he does, but things have changed more than he anticipated, as what he discovers adds to the layers of mystery that envelop this film, like low-lying fog, where it’s hard to see through the mist.  It’s beautifully rendered, a quiet portrait of love steeped in regret, filled with all the yearning, joy, and pain that love entails, keeping an emotional distance from its own heart, where few films offer the gravitas of this film, with a grown-up Lionel acknowledging he was “never happier than when collecting songs,” painfully evoking a time when gays living in the closet was the norm, where you couldn’t just come out and acknowledge that, though Lionel remembers “I didn’t experience the guilt that some men in my time would have.  I just loved David and I didn’t think much beyond that.”  Painfully reflecting on his own interior life, where the sting of David’s haunting absence only makes the heartache grow larger over time, having difficulty emotionally connecting with the world around him, the film is a brutal reminder of the past, as so much has simply vanished over time, including a huge part of himself, enveloped by tender memories that disappear all too quickly as well, playing out like a ghost story, urging viewers to connect with the small beauties that exist everywhere.