Hal Hartley Is Still Figuring It All Out Onscreen

In Hal Hartley’s new film Where to Land, a 58-year-old director of romantic comedies applies to become a groundskeeper at a graveyard. The director, played by frequent Hartley collaborator Bill Sage, is putting together his last will and testament, taking stock of his life in both the material and metaphysical sense. Joe, Sage’s character, must make a list of his belongings—his kitchen table, the china from his first marriage, the rights to his films—while looking to contribute something more “useful and perennial” to the world. 

Hartley burst onto the independent film scene in the early 1990s with films like The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, Simple Men, and Amateur. Those films contain many conventional Hollywood narrative techniques, but they are full to the point of bursting with philosophical discussions of love, politics, family, and religion, all addressed at a pace and in ways that rarely appear in traditional studio films. Hartley’s status as a filmmaker springs from those abrupt changes of pace and his uncommon, uncanny comfort with contradiction.