Notionally a loose sequel to Henry Fool, Fay Grim defies easy characterization. A Hal Hartley film, on the face of it, this is an elaborate international spy thriller. Fay Grim becomes aware that Henry Fool, to whom she was once married, was a spy working on and off for the CIA. The notebooks containing his “confessions†are then clues to his past, and every intelligence service in the world is after Fay and the notebooks. But it is clear that this is far more of a parody of spy thrillers than one itself. The plot becomes ever more elaborate and bizarre, with dead ends and twists that strain credulity.
So I’m not sure what the movie actually is, except to say that this is probably my favorite movie of the year so far. It is darkly funny, and the writing is superb. I was hanging on every word of the dialogue, especially scenes with Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) whose seriousness in the face of the absurd was a joy to watch. Almost every performance is excellent, even Jeff Goldblum. It is nice to see him not perpetually wise-cracking, and he utters the perfect deadpan line when asked by Fay why he and the US tried to overthrow Allende: “it was not appropriate for our economic interests.†Parker Posey goes a little over the top as she plays Fay, but her character grew on me as she transformed from shallow ditz to sacrificing sleuth. Fay and Henry’s son, Ned (Liam Aiken), also turns in a great performance. The movie’s tone changes in the last half hour, becoming more serious, but it is still riveting, particularly a long conversation between Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) and an Osama bin Laden character played by Anatole Taubman. Finally, the camera work is great as almost every scene is shot a little crooked and from below so that all the actors lean to one side and you get ironic detachment just from the framing. Highly recommended.
do i need to see henry fool first? i avoided it when it came out on the grounds that hal hartley is usually tedious and a very long hal hartley film was likely to be extra tedious.
No, because I have not seen Henry Fool yet either, though it went into my queue this weekend.
I just finished this and wanted to check to see if anyone had posted on this yet.
I also thought this was exceptionally good. Like Gilliam’s Tideland, it’s the work of an experienced director, no stranger to outright failure, bringing together a lot of his strengths to tell a story that on its surface will quickly alienate a huge part of his potential audience.
So it’s Harltey does espionage. And when his stories get complex they tend to lose a lot of heart. See Simple Men and Surviving Desire for Hartley movies that have plots that can be summed up in three sentences or less. Yet I have watched those two movies over and over again for more than a decade now, and still do.
Here the complexity itself is almost as much of a McGuffin as the sought-after notebooks. It’s a farce; ludicrous. For quite a while I assumed most of what was going on was only happening in Fay Grim’s head, it seemed imaginary or dreamlike. But yeah, then the gears switch – again – in the last half hour, and there’s an ending every bit as good as the ending of Simple Men.
My other favorite hartley movie ending was actually Henry Fool. In it, Fool (Ryan) is seen running in close up with a desperate look on his face. His friend Simon Grim had snuck him to the airport to get out of the country so he wouldn’t be arrested for murder. But he’d be leaving behind his wife, Fay and his son. But all you see is him running. You don’t know if he’s running to the plane, or back to his family. After being initially annoyed with it, I eventually appreciated the fact that Hartley refused to let us know which way he was running.
Fay Grim unfortuantely answers the question. But that’s a small point. People that don’t like Hartley movies won’t like this. And those that aren’t familiar with his work should rent a couple early movies, like Surviving Desire or Trust to see that 15 years ago there was something interesting going on in American indpendent moviemaking, which I’m afraid is completely gone now.
And I can’t mention those early movies without at least mentioning the late Adrienne Shelley, who appeared in a few early Hartley movies. She was murdered in NYC last year as she was completing a film she had written and directed called Waitress, which is out now.
Hartley’s regular group of actors is always one of the best things about his movies; Martin Donovan, Urbaniak, Edie Falco, Matt Malloy, Bill Sage, Elina Lowensohn, Karen Sillas, Robert John Burke… the list goes on.
to be fair, i have only seen two films by hartley: amateur, which made me want to see more, and the unbelievable truth which made me regret that i did (though i barely remember it now). i do like martin donovan though.
Yeah… The Unbelievable Truth is my least favorite of the early movies.
It’s easy I think to get annoyed with Hartley’s very particular style; the way the characters move in and out of frame (Hartley doesn’t use multiple cameras and choose the best angle during editing – he knows exactly what he’s after while shooting), the way they deliver dialogue, often repeating the lines back to one another. The music, which he composes himself (He’s better than John Carpenter). Another quirk of his was incorporating dancing into his movies. Some of his early shorts look like live action Robert Longo paintings.
The characters’ choreography was important to the movies. Sometimes it seemed to pay tribute to the dancing scene in Godard’s Band of Outsiders, other times the dancing was almost the whole purpose of his film (Theory of Achievement). Check out the excellent dance scene with no music in Surviving Desire, and the one to Sonic Youth’s “Kool Thing” in Simple Men.
Alas, the dancing is gone. So is Martin Donovan, who last showed up in the Book of Life. And I don’t know if this is really a “good” movie or not. The ciritics have been most unkind. It is however so much better than Monster and Girl from Tomorrow that I have to cheerlead it a little bit.
Mauer’s recent comment is most astute (which means good, right?). As an undergrad, Hartley came to my film production class to give a workshop, and he spent a great deal of time on blocking, the movement and placement of actors. Not unusual, I know, but I recall he treated this process as a choreographer would. He was really hands-on, sculpting the positions and poses of his actors. And later, when I had the nerve to talk to him one on one (and and try to impress him by dropping Godard’s name) I mentioned Band of Outsiders. I noted that the dance scene from Simple Men seemed to be not just an homage, but a significant gesture, a confirmation that things like this (characters breaking into dance) should be allowed in a film. He responded by saying “John, that is very astute.” No he didn’t.
I haven’t seen a Hartley film in years, but I now want to watch Henry Fool and Fay Grim back to back.
Martin Donovan is excellent in The Potrait of a Lady. I really thought his career might take off after that, but it didn’t (nor did Campion’s). It’s mostly TV these days for him.
hartley was an undergrad at the same time as you?!!
donovan was also great in the opposite of sex. suddenly i can’t remember anything else he’s been in. what tv show is he on? he’s like a more arch version of nathan fillion, or maybe fillion is the goofy version of donovan.
I once saw a Hartley play/ballet in Orange County, that he wrote and, I think, directed. (He was there sitting right in front of me. I didn’t talk to him, but his whisperings to himself of how astute the blonde undergrad boy was now make perfect sense)
The play was based on the siege at Waco Texas, and was told from POVs from inside the compound.
It was a very good performance, if very sparse, depending a lot on the dance to tell the story. Maybe with that play he got simplicity of story and dance out of his system.
The few things that do carry through from that play to Fay Grim are choosing to go against your own country for love or friendship, and horrible consequences to what was believed to be good – even heroic – intentions.
Odd, I thought for sure I mentioned this play in my post from last night, but I must have deleted it.
Isn’t Donovan in the new HBO series “John from Cincinnati”?
Arnab is an astute reader. “When I was an undergrad, Hartley came to my film production class to give a workshop.”
More about the Waco play which is called “Soon” – and hartley’s thoughts on dance –
http://www.possiblefilms.com/movies/soon/interview/
I re-watched a couple more Hartley films over the past week. Flirt, which I actively disliked the first time I saw it, came off much better to me now. It’s by no means a great movie though. It’s a half hour vignette which is pure Hartley in story, of a man who is trying to sort out his romantic feelings between the two women he is having an affiar with. He gets shot by his lover’s husband, goes to the hopital, and then misses his other lover’s departure for another country.
The trick is that the vignette is repeated three times, in different cities with different groups of people. But the dialogue remains largely the same in each.
The first is the gem. Bill Sage as the flirt, Martin Donovan as the husband, Michael Imperioli, Parker Posey… I had always thought as a stand-alone short it would have been quite good. Now I’m not so sure. The 2nd version happens in Berlin with gay men. The third is in Tokyo and is mostly silent (it’s the one that relies most heavily on dance and movement to tell the story). But in the second version a Greek chorus of construction workers talk abot the movie so far, and why it’s probably going to be a failure. They are pretty much right on the money. In the third version (which has Hal Hartley himself in the Parker Posey role) there is a different ending, and I have a much greater appreciation of the three told together now.
The thrice-told tale is a ridiculous challenge for a filmmaker to put on himself, especially at the time this was made: Hartley was at his best known, and thus had the greatest chance of breaking into the mainstream at about this time. A movie like this would guarantee not to do it though. It’s by no means the first Hartley movie I’d suggest anyone watch, but the first third is a nearly pure distillation of what he is about as a filmmaker. It also has some of his best self-composed music, at least next to Amateur, which is the other movie I re-watched and will try to write about later.
i watched henry fool a couple of nights ago and quite liked it. i’ll be damned if i can explain what it all added up to though. but dispensing with plot and “what it all means” (though hopefully mark can explain it to me) this is very good cinema: hartley’s use of music and sound to create significance, the arrangement of actors, the angular rhythms and framings–all the stuff you guys talked about upstream is in evidence here, without getting too arch or precious (my complaints against the unbelievable truth). i’m more inclined now to give early hartley another chance. i will watch fay grim for sure, which seems like it is more in the mode of amateur (a film i’d recommend strongly to chris).