Peter Hujar’s Day

In 1974, writer Linda Rosenkrantz worked on a collection of interviews, in which she asked her artist friends to recreate an ordinary day in their lives. The book she intended to write never saw the light of day and original tape recordings were lost over time, but fortunately, a transcript of her conversation with photographer Peter Hujar was re-discovered and published in 2022.

American independent filmmaker Ira Sachs (Passages) has taken the transcription and re-imaged the words spoken around drags of a cigarette, casting two British actors as quintessential New York figures in a romantic character study, celebrating the freedom of the East Village art scene.

In discerningly intimate fashion, Ben Whishaw embodies Hujar, wholeheartedly engaged in conversation with Rebecca Hall’s Linda Rosenkrantz, but with the occasional faraway look in his eyes as he recounts happenings of the day before. After waking early, Peter says, he went back to bed to finish his sleep, a little later he took a nap. He insists that there is a difference between the two. Then he met Allen Ginsberg to take his picture, and they briefly discussed William Burroughs, whom he had seen the previous day. When his interlocutrice prompts clarification, he corrects himself on the sequence of events.

While Hall is mostly off-screen, her presence is felt, as her character is the primary receiver of his soliloquy.

The decelerated tempo is a welcome surprise, both of the film itself and of the life one witnesses unfolding within it. There is productivity, but it comes at its own pace. The same uncertainty over which jobs will get him paid, also allows Hujar to stay independent: make his own schedule, work on his own terms.

While Peter Hujar’s Day merely consists of two people conversing, with no outside driving forces dictating action or conflict, the 76 minutes of runtime fly by, as Whishaw and Hall absorb the viewer into their world. Despite making for an immersive and convivial watch, its minimalist form designates Ira Sachs’s latest project an accomplished artistic experiment, rather than a full-blown piece of cinema.

Selina Sondermann

Peter Hujar’s Day does not have a release date yet.

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