“Peter Hujar’s Day” is one of those films whose title is almost humorously straightforward, yet only gives a hint of what the experience of watching it is actually like. While true that it is about a day in the life of the late photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) that he recounts to his close friend Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) in mundane, expansive detail for a book that notably never came to be, it becomes about a moment in time, their place in it, and his anxieties as an artist. Handsomely shot by cinematographer Alex Ashe, whose richly textured visuals make it entrancing to watch even when little is happening, it’s a film about both everything and nothing as Whishaw literally just tells a story to the camera for the entire runtime.
“Peter Hujar’s Day” recreates the conversation the duo had in 1974, relying on a transcript that was only recently discovered with frequent interjections and acknowledgments of the film’s artifice as Sachs gently teases out the melancholy of the entire affair. Lacking anything resembling a remotely conventional narrative, it just lets the conversation flow naturally and thus, “Peter Hujar’s Day” lives and dies based on its performances. Luckily, both Whishaw and Hall are outstanding, disappearing completely into their conversing characters. While not director Ira Sach’s best work by any means — it intentionally jettisons the depth and energy of his past films, like the poetic “Passages” that played at last year’s Sundance Film Festival — this one still casts a transporting spell.
The film starts with a slightly awkward and more reserved tone as the duo begins to settle into the prospect of talking for many hours, but each character starts to grow increasingly more comfortable the longer that it goes on. Peter does most of the talking to start, recounting every minute detail to the best of memory, or as is playfully acknowledged multiple times, based on how much he wants to be honest about. However, Hall’s Linda avoids passivity despite just sitting and listening as her eyes speak volumes on their own. When she does chime in, both with questions large and small as well as the occasional teasing of her friend, it’s like we’re just sitting down for tea with the two of them. The rhythms of the scenes defy easy categorization as some pass quickly while others carry on for several unbroken minutes.
This could easily sound wearying, and much of it is, though this is by design. It recalls the quote by the great Chantal Akerman about how she wants you to feel the time pass. Sachs wants us to feel the way the two are letting the day slip away. Of course, as Linda makes explicit at one point, the entire reason she is doing this is because she herself had grown fearful of how little she was doing with her days. This is a way to preserve a day, yes, but also to hear about how there are so many people who are also just floating through life. Peter is an acclaimed photographer, a gay man with a rich interior life, and an engaging person to sit with, though he too can also be a bit boring. For every funny moment, there are many more that feel intentionally, painfully fleeting.
As all this accumulates, the moments where Sachs pulls us away via the recurring shattering of the film’s artifice take on a greater sense of sadness. He never lets us forget that this is a set, a recreation of a time long gone, and one of these people, trying to make sense of the life he was making his way through, is now long dead. Peter died of AIDS at only 57, merely a decade after the two sat down to chat. The looming knowledge of this is not just about the immense loss of him, but the decimation of an entire community of artists and dreamers, lovers and friends. The conversation that Peter had with Linda being preserved here is a quietly radical act that, no matter how slow, is made into something eternal in Sachs’ delicate, thoughtful direction.
When we then hear Peter offering small fragments of the more vulnerable side of himself to us, it’s a precious, painful gift. The day in “Peter Hujar’s Day” was not anything special, but that is also precisely what makes it so. We never will get to fully know him or his life, but this comes about as close as could ever hope to. It’s a cinematic dream that slips away just as you try to hold tight to it, leaving us only wishing we could play the tapes once more and bring him back.
“Peter Hujar’s Day” is a sales title at Sundance.
