Ira Sachs’s Peter Hujar’s Day is crafted out of just a tiny sliver of a fragment of New York’s mid-1970s culture scene. As part of a larger project, well-connected autofiction writer Linda Rosenkrantz asked her friend, photographer Peter Hujar, to come by her Yorkville apartment on December 19, 1974 and describe everything he did over the course of one day while she recorded him. Though she meant it to be a larger project, she was never able to make the recording into anything. But the written transcript of their conversation was discovered in 2019 and turned by Sachs into an engrossingly personal two-hander.
Peter Hujar’s Day simply consists of Hujar (Ben Whishaw) talking about his day and Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) gently nudging him along, less as an interviewer and more as a curious friend. The only times that Sachs deviates from his formalist framing of this conversation is with a couple of fourth wall-breaking moments: In one, Whishaw and Hall pose theatrically for the camera as Mozart’s “Requiem in D Minor” plays loudly, and in another we can see members of Sach’s crew holding a boom mic over the actors.
The film’s scope appears small, but the tight focus helps amplify more than just the intimacy of the situation. As Hujar takes stock of his day, it’s all very casual-seeming. But his self-consciousness balances a performative casualness and habitual name-dropping with a habit of circling back and commenting on what he’s doing. At one point, after Rosenkrantz catches him making a statement that contradicts what he said earlier, she notes in an uncritical way, “You lie all the time.” He replies, “I do,” without hesitation, simply acknowledging this tendency and moving on. Whishaw acts the part with an admirably straightforward and low-key demeanor, capturing Hujar’s quietly hushed intensity without resorting to mannered anxiousness.
Except for an introductory crawl explaining the setup, Sachs lets the dialogue speak for itself. Hujar’s monologues are largely focused on day-to-day interactions between the New York cognoscenti. In many circumstances, this could present as cloyingly self-referential. But his off-handedness helps the celebrity mentions seem like the stuff of a working photographer’s day. Through it all, Whishaw keeps up the same interested yet unimpressed attitude when Hujar discusses a photo shoot with Allen Ginsberg (“He likes those WASP-y prep school boys” is the poet and writer’s advice for getting on William S. Burroughs’s good side) as he does when the photographer mentions a visit by Glenn O’Brien and a call by Susan Sontag.
Throughout, plenty is communicated as much between the lines as in them, and the sense of feeling that emanates from the film is aided by Whishaw and Hall’s real-life friendship, which one senses even before we see Hujar lay his head on Rosenkrantz during a quiet moment. Their gossipy chatter has the appeal of the dialogue in Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy; picking up on the names and placing them in this cultural historical context will just be a bonus for some. The talk flowing through this film is presented as a document of a time and place but also a way to understand the close nature of this friendship between two artists who love what they do.
Even more, Hujar and Rosenkrantz very much love talking about what they do. Hujar spends a lot of time on what he likes about certain photos and other aspects of his art. But he’s just as fascinated with the quotidian details of everyday life, giving Rosenkrantz vivid little portraits of the characters he runs across throughout his day. Eventually, it becomes clear how attentive he is to the fact of being documented for artistic posterity by Rosenkrantz’s reel-to-reel tape recorder on the sits on his kitchen table as they smoke and banter.
Besotted with art and talk, Peter Hujar’s Day has no conflict to speak of or any noteworthy stakes, except for perhaps a certain brooding realization that Hujar would be dead in less than a decade and a half. As much an art historical project as a film, it could just as easily run as a video installation on a constant loop at the Whitney as it could in a theater with soda-sticky floors. And its ability to be at home in both contexts attests not only to the breadth of Sachs’s artistry but also to Hujar’s devotion to exploring the relationship between high and low culture.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
