If our waking hours are a canvas, then art is how a person fills it: tightly, loosely, a little of both. At a time when they were both in their 40s and New York's '70s art scene was in thrall to street youth of all stripes, real-life writer Linda Rosenkrantz asked her close friend, photographer Peter Hujar, to record his activities on one day—December 18, 1974—and then record the details on her tape recorder the next day in her apartment.
The goal was a book about the great ordinary, about the essence of life as experienced by its talented confidants. In the case of Hujar, an unusually observant queer artist and key figure in the gay liberation movement planning his first book, the result is a tongue-in-cheek tale of phone calls (Susan Sontag), freelance problems (will this gig pay off?), celebrity encounters (he's shooting for Allen Ginsberg for the New York Times) and chance encounters (some guy waiting for food at a Chinese restaurant). Hujar's transcript, discovered without tape in 2019, was eventually published as “Peter Hujar Day”.
Now director Ira Sachs, who came across the text while filming his previous film. “Aisles” gave this quiet, mesmerizing, diary-like conversation cinematic life as a sort of filmed play, with Passages star Ben Whishaw playing Hujar beautifully and Rebecca Hall filling the tone of the room as Rosencrantz. (They also go up to the roof a couple of times, which gives enough of an appearance to remind us that New York is the third character undergoing treatment in the time capsule.)
From the whistling of the kettle in the daylight as Hujar amusingly grills Rosencrantz for what is required of him, to the more honest self-assessments of twilight and the recumbent embraces between friends who have spent many hours together, “Peter Hujar's Day” captures something of a beautiful articulation of the human experience and the comfort of others. For each of us, any day—perhaps especially a day devoid of anything unusual—is the culmination of everything we have been and everything we hope to become. This has hidden significance considering that Hujar would live only 13 years and die from AIDS-related complications in 1987. There was a loss of mentorship, aesthetic polish and camaraderie felt throughout the art world.
In addition to not explaining Hujar to us (or explaining his many names), Sachs also doesn't hide the meta value of his concept, offering occasional glimpses of a firecracker or a crew, or allowing us to hear beeps when a reel appears to be ending. There are also jump cuts and close-up interludes of his actors, which could be color screen tests or just a nod to Hujar's penchant for portraits. It's playful without being too intrusive, approaching the idea of how art and film play with time and can create their own reality.
The simple, subtly elegant duplex apartment creates the perfect authenticity for Alex Ash's textured 16mm cinematography. The internal play of light, day and night, on the faces of Whishaw and Hall presents its own dramatic arc, and Hujar's detail becomes an intimate testament to humor, rigor and reflection. It doesn't have to be all Whishaw's show: fair as he may be, Hall turns the act of listening (and sometimes commenting or teasing) into a sustained, enveloping warmth. The result is a window into the joy of friendship and those days when the little things about your loved ones seem like what a real connection is built on.
“Peter Hujar Day”
No rating
Opening hours: 1 hour 16 minutes
I play: Opens on Friday 7 November at Laemmle Royal.
