It never seems quite right to describe a film as a “small gem”—there’s something vaguely condescending and precious about it—yet that’s exactly what writer-director Ira Sachs seems to be aiming for with PETER HUJAR’S DAY. Everything is carefully sculpted down, visually and narratively, to fit neatly and prettily into the sturdy display case that’s been built, kind of like one of Joseph Cornell’s boxes. For a sense of this, just take a gander at the still image above. Nothing wrong with this approach, and often it feels rather refreshing, with ideas and moods delivered lightly but with great precision. There’s certainly no fat on the bones here; for some, though, there might not be sufficient meat either.
Which, to be fair, may be well beside the point. Cinema doesn’t always have to be about movement defined as speed, and space defined as grand exteriors. And of course narrative cinema doesn’t always have to be about high drama. Especially when that is the point: when the effort is more about “capture,” to use a photographic term. This not only appears to be Sachs’s intention here, but is also wholly appropriate, given that the subject matter concerns a celebrated photographer. The inherent problem, however, is that a mainstream film featuring well-known stars can’t really concern itself with capturing the ephemeral nature of life on the fly, no matter how arty it is; it’s a strategy, or at least a welcome byproduct of a strategy, that's more at home in documentary filmmaking. When, in PETER HUJAR’S DAY, golden hour (which seems to stretch for several hours) is caught as if by happenstance looking radiant and soulful in multiple shots and settings, there’s clearly no happy accident at work, just an authored approximation of it. And Sachs is fine with your being aware of that. He treats the sunlight as a key supporting character in what is otherwise a two-person one-acter.
Similarly, the dialogue, taken from a 1974 audio transcript, is playfully masquerading as an unfiltered transmittal of the source text—as if there hasn’t been a ton of thought given to the individual line readings as well as everything that frames them (e.g., the immaculate production design, Rebecca Hall’s outfit and her sly, reactive smiles). In full acknowledgement of the constructed nature of what he’s presented to us, Sachs has included a handful of meta-cinematic moments in which we glimpse the crew at work. More could have been done with such interludes, with the audience privileged with the actual decision-making process on matters great or small. At a scant 76 minutes runtime, the film could have stood the addition of five more that leaned into this behind-the-scenes approach to interesting, if not startling, ends. But that’s not what Sachs wants. They instead come across as intellectually decorative at best, and cynically preemptive at worst—“Hey, I’m well aware that this is all artifice. I’m not trying to create a faux doc here, but rather a Manhattan tone poem, so bear with me.” In this way, these intrusions of the real on the imagined that are supposed to lay bare the constructed reality we’re experiencing simply come across as more bits of construction.
No doubt many will find honesty, even authenticity, in what Sachs is attempting, but for me much of PETER HUJAR’S DAY is a tad too calculated and massaged to come across as a compelling version of real life. It strains so hard to be naturalistic and matter-of-factly beautiful that it appears to be suffocating inside the very box it’s made for itself. There's little to no spark or spontaneity, a couple of hallmarks of life as we live it and lived it in back in '74, too. I admire the attempt, to be sure, as well as countless artistic choices made throughout, but am ambivalent about the resulting work of art. Yes, this is a small gem all right, but you’ll want to bring it to an independent appraiser just to make sure it’s not cubic zirconia.
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