Hal Hartley Films

It was hard to resist.



A spy film with Parker Posey in a long black trench coat? Too good to pass up! But who was Hal Hartley and why had I never heard of him?

20 minutes into Fay Grim, I began to have doubts about my pick. The characters Fay Grim (played by Ms. Posey), her brother Simon (James Urbaniak) and the CIA agent (Jeff Goldblum) appeared to be straight out of a stage play, delivering dialogues in a quirky manner. I was not sure where this film was going.

But I am very glad I stayed with the film because Fay Grim is one of the most refreshing films I have seen in a long while, although there are plenty of things that require getting used to. The first challenge is getting dropped into a film which is the sequel to Henry Fool made almost a decade ago and not knowing the history of the characters. But the biggest challenge was getting used to the filming style, which included the slanted camera shots. The entire film is shot in a skewed manner and while this style works to perfection in some sequences, it does not in others scenes. Still, what is remarkable about the film is how a simple story is elevated to a global tale of espionage, which involves the CIA, KGB, French Secret Service, Israeli spies, British agents, Arab informers and even some free lance terrorists.


The overall end result is watching a precise dance between Fay Grim and the international assortment of spies. The tilted camera only allows the relevant details to filter into each frame. Never before has a film filmed in Paris and Istanbul allowed so little of the street side or a foreign city in each frame. This tactic works in Fay Grim as the real interest lies in observing the characters and listening to their words as opposed to caring for which location they are in. And the characters are quite interesting indeed. The core of the story involves the "confessions" written by Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan). Henry does not make an appearance until the final third of the film, but he does not need to because he already laid the foundations for Fay Grim in the 1997 film Henry Fool.

Henry Fool starts off when Henry rents a basement from Simon, who works as a garbage man. Henry encourages Simon to write in order to let his feelings out. But Simon's writings cause a stir. While some view it as soulful poetry, others call it pornographic. Shockingly, Simon's mother slits her wrists after she reads her son's work.

Simon manages to get published and raise the profile of the Grim family. On the other hand, Henry's diaries ("confessions"), are deemed worthless. Even Simon cannot see the merit in Henry's work. But the true value in Henry's writing is established in Fay Grim when it turns out the books contain espionage information which could be quite harmful if they fall into the wrong hands.

At the center of Hartley's wonderful universe are the three fascinating characters of Fay, Simon and Henry. But the trio are surrounded by an equally impressive assortment of characters. Overall, Hartley's two films stand perfectly well on their own, but when put together, they form a fascinating and unique story.

Earlier work:

There are plenty of Hal Hartley films out there. I decided to visit just one of them, his 1994 film Amateur, to see if it shared some similarities with Henry Fool.

Amateur also features a mysterious man, Thomas (Martin Donovan), who survives an attempt on his life but cannot remember his past. Thomas runs into Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert) who agrees to help him. A parallel story of Thomas's wife, Sofia, involves her trying to extract money from a porn film gangster. In one thread, we see Thomas go about his new life casually while on the other thread, we get to hear about Thomas' dark past from Sofia.

Even though there are some interesting elements in Amateur, including a cameo from Parker Posey, it is not as engaging as the adventures of Henry Fool.

Note: It was different to see Isabelle Huppert in a completely English speaking role.

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Ratings out of 10

Fay Grim (2007): 8.5

Henry Fool (1998): 8

Amateur (1994): 6.5

Espionage: Spies and consequences

....."blowback", the term used by spies to describe planted propaganda that filters back to confuse the country that first set the story loose. (page 47, Ghost Wars by Steve Coll)

Information and Misinformation -- both are tools which are part and parcel of a spy's arsenal. The spy on the opposing side also has information and misinformation as their tool set. Things get complicated when misinformation from one side is taken for information by the other side and results in further misinformation being generated.

Lies + Lies = Truth

At the core of Hal Hartley's inventive Fay Grim lie a collection of diaries called "Confessions" which may contain valuable government information. The information is equally coveted by the CIA, KGB, French Secret Service, Israeli spies, British agents, Arab informers and even some terrorists. The diaries might be gibberish but that does not matter as each side believe the information could help them in their nation's cause.

Fay Grim is unlike any other spy movie. The tilted camera and the light hearted background music give the film a stage/musical feel. On top of that, the lead characters (especially Fay played by Parker Posey) are busy dancing their way through stressful situations with such ease. After a slow 20 minutes, the film moves into a high energetic dialogue exchange as Fay moves effortlessly past dangerous spies and killers. The complicated plot is rendered with such ease that the real joy is in watching the characters move through each frame. The light hearted touch removes any barriers between good and evil as all the rival spies are portrayed in the same light. As a result, one can focus on watching this international espionage game at play without having to put a good or bad label over each character.

There are some scenes where the tilted camera works and in others, not so much. But having the entire movie shown in a slanted manner just adds to the story's bizarre appeal. Also, the tilted camera only allows the relevant details in each frame. Never before has a film filmed in Paris and Istanbul allowed so little of the street side or city highlights in each frame. And in Fay Grim this tactic works as the real interest lies in observing the characters and listening to their words as opposed to caring for which location they are in.

Note: I have never seen a Hal Hartley film before so this was an interesting viewing. The film continues the adventures of the characters first shown in his 1997 film Henry Fool. And from his interviews, it seems that there may be future adventures for this colorful set of characters.

Truth moves to the other side

Breach shows what happens when a spy starts working for the opponents. No concrete reasons are given for the CIA agent's betrayal even though a shroud of ethics, morality and religion are mixed in the story. Ofcourse, when it comes to selling information to the enemy, no reason is required by the government. It is 'Us' vs 'Them'. Even though governments on both sides are constantly trying to entice the enemy spy to divulge information.

When a blowback results in a violent reaction:

Newtons's third law: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction".

Spies from one nation train young men of a second nation to fight and shoot down the enemy of a third nation. Then the spies leave thinking their jobs are done. But the young men of the second nation need a new enemy. So they target the nation of the spies who taught and helped them.

Peter Berg's The Kingdom starts off with a violent act when gunmen and a suicide bomber kill innocent people in a Riyadh housing compound. Initially, there is no revenge reaction but a calm investigation into the identity of the terrorists. But along the way, the investigators come across more deadly enemies. While trying to save one of their own, the investigators end up killing the enemy leader in a defensive act. The film ends with a line that indicates that there will be further killing to avenge the leader's death, while also revealing that the investigators did not just go out to investigate the truth but went with an intention of revenge.

This was a much better film that I had originally expected. But it could have been a lot better if not for some rather cliched Hollywood elements near the movie's end. There is a climatic battle between the terrorists and the good guys which is well shot and engaging. However, the sequence falls into a Hollywood trap where despite the circumstances, the big Hollywood stars are unharmed. And then the one local native who was helping the American agents is killed. Why was this honest policeman killed? Well one reason could be that this man was closest to the enemy leader. But that is a weak excuse. The real reason is that the characters played by big name Hollywood stars in such movies cannot die as they are true 'heroes'. Whereas characters played by actors from other parts of the world are completely expendable.

Truth is a manufactured lie:

The cold war was a tense time when spies and code breakers were in high demand; there was plenty of misinformation out there which needed to be filtered through. In plenty of cases, this misinformation was manufactured in just one person's mind and then transferred to other people. But what if this misinformation never left a person's mind and continued to grow inside their head? The resulting mental 'blowback' could put that person in a horrifying mix of reality and delusion. The true story of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind is an example of a man trapped in his genius creations -- spies, 'big brother', hidden patterns all try to compete with mathematical formulas in John's mind.

Note: William Friedkin's Bug is a powerful example of how one person's misinformation can corrupt others.

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Ratings out of 10:
Fay Grim (2006, Director Hal Hartley): 8.5
Breach (2007, Director Billy Ray): 8
The Kingdom (2007, Director Peter Berg): 7.5
A Beautiful Mind (2001, Director Ron Howard): 7.5