In 1992, I saw Hal Hartley’s “Simple Men.” Two sons of an estranged major-league-ballplayer-turned-revolutionary-anarchist father have grown in different directions: one has drifted into a career of fraud and outright crime, the other is a philosophy major intent on discovering the truth about his father, who remains missing after over twenty years. They travel in search of their father to a small town on eastern Long Island, fatefully walking into one particular bar. “… of all the gin joints in the world …”
There’s no such thing as adventure. There’s no such thing as romance. There’s only trouble and desire.
About Hartley and this film, Roger Ebert said: “… I would like to know why, with his talent, he is so concerned at keeping himself at arm’s length from his material. Why does he take such pains to let us know he hasn’t been suckered by melodrama that he obviously created for the very purpose of being able to see through. The problem with postmodern movies like “Simple Men” is that they seem to consider us fools for watching them and, on the basis of the evidence on the screen, it’s hard to disagree.”
Yes, but I loved every moment of what I took to be an inversion of Casablanca (… the problems of two people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world) — every vivid scene and novel camera angle, every awkwardly delivered, yet unconventioanlly used Hollywood cliche, every unexpected character (the gas attendent practicing his French, the exotic Romanian woman with epilepsy), the wonderfully bizarre dance routine in the bar (well before Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction), the oh-so-serious, earnest and intense dialogue, the forgotten plot (so what?) …
Long Island is a terminal moraine.
I initially thought that non sequiter to be an apt epithet for my birthplace, until I remembered my childhood geography lessons. Well, we’ll always have Long Island.
Why did I bring this up …? Oh yes, I’m very much hoping to see Hartley’s “The Girl from Monday.”
