In 1974, famed photographer Peter Hujar describes the routines and rituals that define an artist's life, capturing a single day's activities from interactions with cultural icons of the day, including Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Susan Sontag, and the texture and energy of downtown New York in its heyday.
Elegant and intimate - and a dazzling showcase for the two performers at its center - Peter Hujar's Day is both a masterful portrait of a time and place, and a captivating film about the way art emerges from the intimate details of everyday life.
The Garden Cinema View:
This touching, free-flowing, chamber piece is a tight actor’s showcase for Ben Wishaw and Rebecca Hall, and is moreover an uncanny reconstruction of a particular time and artistic scene (think Patti Smith’s Stray Kids). Ira Sachs, to a degree, encapsulates the experimental drive of ‘70s NYC, with an exploration of mundanity that might be profound, or pretentious, depending on your mood. While a single New York apartment might conjure the spectre of structuralist film, Sachs does aim for something more humane, especially with the hindsight of Hujar’s tragic AIDS related death. Wishaw hints at sadness and suffering in subtle intonations and glances. This may just be one day, but it encapsulates a career, a life, and a city.
