Hartley's Image Of A Realistic Film example essay topic

Real Life of an Ex-Con In 1990, Hal Hartley wrote, directed, edited, and produced his first major motion picture, The Unbelievable Truth. Hartley may have done all those jobs because his budget was so small, or he may have just cared about his work, like that of an painter with each brush stroke. The cinematography exhibited in this film is rather startling; the variation of camera work and group shots seen in this film is similar to the 1960's French new wave cinema seen in Breathless. The approach Hartley takes in this film involves creating a real world environment, filled with ordinary everyday people, and then adding a bunch of bizarre and uncanny events. The Unbelievable Truth is both a realistic and formulistic film that keeps the viewer wondering what will happen next. Upon further examination, one can discern that this movie has a tone that tilts more towards the realistic side of the scale.

Formalistic filmmaking is when beauty takes precedence over the subject matter, and the content self-heightens the style calling attention to it as value for its own sake. Hartley uses many examples of his formalistic views to approach specific scenes in the movie. Vic Hugo, Audry's father, is always making deals with her; he is always scheming to make more money so he won't have to pay for Audry's college education. One of the themes of the movie is that, "people are only as good as the deals they make and keep". This is evident throughout the movie within Vic and Audry's bargaining's. Audry fights with her father about giving up literature at Harvard to study communications at a local community college.

She even goes as far as having Vic send a thousand dollars a month to her anti-nuke charity as part of the bargain. The thing that is odd about Audry is that she skips school and still gets accepted into Harvard. Audry's fascination with the nuclear holocaust is somewhat of an outlet for her to express her dissatisfaction with the predictability of her life. Until she meets Josh Hutton, she sees no purpose in her life because it is all going to end horribly one day.

Emmet, Audry's jealous ex-boyfriend, is on top of the world until Audry dumps him because she wants nothing to do with him any longer. Throughout the movie Emmet starts a shoving match with any man that makes eyes at Audry; he wants to win her hand back. Although, Emmet is somewhat annoying, he is a good example of a stock character that adds a formulistic approach to the tone of the film. There are a couple of other oddball events in this movie, such as the cloud that surrounds Josh's past, and the all of a sudden big time modeling career that Audry lands in New York City. All of this adds the formulistic touch that Hartley is striving for, and makes up the un believability of the movies title. On the realistic approach, Hartley intrigues his audience with oddness of ordinary life through realism.

Realism is a style of film making that attempts to duplicate the look of objective reality as it is commonly perceived, with emphasis on authentic locations and details, long shots, lengthy takes, and a minimum of distorted takes. Within this movie there lies many good examples of realism. One that stands out is the uneasy tension that Audry and Josh both share as they are attracted to each other, but are not quite sure what to do about it. For example, when Audry goes to Josh's house, he catches her fixing her lipstick in his front door window, which she smears on her face because he catches her unexpectedly. The time they spend on his front porch she asks him simple questions to make conversation.

When she asks about the automatic transmission, he explains how it works, but all she hears is the echo of his voice repeating over his speech because she has other thoughts on her mind, like her attraction for him. Another example is when Vic gets the latest issue of the New York Times from the news stand to see his daughters latest modeling add. Vic is very proud of Audry's modeling career, until he sees the jewelry add she was in, wearing nothing but the jewelry she was advertising. After seeing this, Vic freaks out, like any normal dad would do, and proceeds to rip the magazine to shreds; an odd thing about this scene is the striking resemblance it has to the breaking of the plate scene in Eisenstein's, Potemkin. The Unbelievable Truth is a fitting name for this film because of the tongue-in-cheek humor that undermines the seemingly sincere dramatic scenes. Hartley generally promotes his views through conversation, not monologue, so the film rarely feels ostentatious.

This film leans more towards the realism side than any other. Much of the focus of this film is on the real lives of people that occupy the town of Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York; where I spent about eleven years of my childhood life. That could be a major reason why I believe this movie is more realistic than formalistic. I know what it's like to be in a small town and the way gossip can get out of hand, similar to the told and retold story of how Josh ended up in prison. Throughout this movie the viewer doesn't know what to believe about Josh, he comes across very mysterious and seems to keep himself in the background, out of humility or modesty. In this movie Hartley is making fun of something, is it the reality or the fantasy of the lives he has created?

What Hartley has done is written a film essay on conventions and clich " es of small town middle-class American characters. These characters are just ordinary people, living ordinary lives of melodrama and irony. Could it be that David Lynch's Twin Peaks was a spin-off of the way Hartley's laissez-faire attitude prevails wild plot twists to make the viewer feel as if the action is inevitable and unexpected? That could very possibly be, being that Twin Peaks opening season was in 1990, just after Hartley released The Unbelievable Truth. It is also evident that after reading several critics reviews of this movie, either it was put up on a pedestal as an independent work of genius, or it was considered a used cigarette butt under the foot of a critic; there was no in between. I, for one, thought this film was of pure genius and should have had more recognition for the reality it portrayed, and for the way the actors carried out Hartley's image of a realistic film.