Customer Reviews

Simple Men

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Hal Hartley never fails to entertain, never fails to engage my mind and emotions on a parallel level. Simple Men is no exception. The seemingly simple plot - two brothers in search of their missing dad - provides so much room for character growth that I wish there were an entire series of films centered around them.

With a hard-edged view of the world as: "There's no such thing as adventure. There's no such thing as romance. There's only trouble and desire" (actually from a Fritz Lang movie of the 1920's) there's plenty going on to both prove and disprove Hartley's ambivalent theories.

Simple Men also formally introduces us to the absolutely delicious Elena Löwensohn. In one of the coolest and hottest scenes in all of cinema we get to watch her bizarre 50's beatnik-style dance to Sonic Youth's "Kool thing." Then joined by the two lost soul brothers it turns into an unlikely production number.

Many dismiss this film, and Hartley as unwatchable or trivial and miss the point. What is amazing about Hartley is that he takes the seemingly trivial and elevates it to a level of art that, once seen, reflects our lives on every level from brilliance to the inane.

Simple Men is pure cinematic delight.

Hooray for Hartley!

A few years ago I was looking for some movie in TV when in wrong move I put one of this channels you never watch cos the quality of the image is bad and the movies are in my spoken languaje (spanish, I prefer with subtitles). I don't remember what scene but I remember the face of Robert John Burke from Robocop III, talking some very clever dialogues. After just a few minutes I couldn't change the channel till the movie ends leaving me absolutely impress.
Just a few weeks later by the same reason I catch "Trust" and from this same moment I became fan of Hal Hartley.
Why?
Because after years watching more than one hundred different movies of any style and director, Simple men and the rest of the Hartley's work show me another vision of life and another way to make movies, thinking more in a good and very deep script with a few good actors than a good budget with great special effects.
It reminds me the movies of Terrence Malick, because in the chaos of the existence both directors show the path of the real survivors, not those guys who are born to be heroes, just those one only wanna some moment of peace and true love, that's it's more than all the glory of the universe.

First thing's first, Hal Hartley's films will probably never be everyone's "cup of tea." That said, he is one of the most gifted film-makers to emerge in the past decade or so. In the same year that yielded such wonderful American movies as "Bob Roberts," "The Player," and "Night on Earth," "Simple Men" stands tall as a wonderful contribution to world cinema.

In an interview, Hartley once said that he disputed people saying he wasn't a traditional fim-maker. He argued that he was a traditional film-maker, but that his tradition was people like Bertolt Brecht and Andy Warhol. Evolving from that (alternative) tradition, Hartley is a master of understatement, both as a writer and a director. Because of this, he is often able to reveal simple truths with more emotional impact than many more superficially passionate films. While some of his subsequent films have been more ambitious (and in some ways even better) than this one, "Simple Men" is the one that sticks with me like no other.

The film is many things: a road movie, a quest, a love story. It begins as a bookish and somewhat naive son's quest to learn the truth about his father (a noted short-stop and political fugitive). He is accompanied by his older brother, who joins his quest for more material reasons. The quest takes them to a place which feels both completely concrete yet somehow divorced from reality. In this place, the younger brother learns a great deal more about life, while the older brother discovers depths of feeling and commitment within himself that he never imagined he had.

Trying to give a literal description of this film's plot would do it an injustice, because that plot is ultimately a means to explore the intriguing characters who make their way through it. Suffice it to say that after watching it, you will be surprised at how moving this film is and how honest it is about the relationships which bind men and women together.

Perfect in it's balance of unnatural dialog and incredible insight into life and relationships, this is a fabulous movie. As surreal and funny as Raising Arizona, Simple Men's subtle humor isn't quite as redundantly over-the-top. If you appreciate dry wit and intelligent rapport, you are in the right vicinity.

Although I love his films, Hartley isn't for everyone. The obscure dialog and sparse camera work is tailored for artistic sensibilities.

When i bought my DVD player two years ago, I was desperate not to find the three first movies from Hal Hartley. Those are my absolute cult movies with a couple a Takeshi Kitano movies. I hope that "Trust" (my favourite) will also be available very soon... Thanks to whoever is responsible for this !!

This is one brilliant film and, like some other reviewers, I must say that it is my favorite film ever. Contrary to other reviewers, I would not dismiss the plot. The plot of two young men, one an "experienced" criminal and one an "innocent" student, searching for their "heroic" but "outlawed" father, is fundamentally mythic, in a way necessarily ironized by the beautiful paradoxes of the film's characters: the older brother's ultimate innocence in his rawness, the young brother's sophistication in his cool rationality -- perhaps most powerfully, the revelation of the father as disappointingly banal and extremely self-absorbed. (A scene near the end in which he reads aloud from a rebellious manifesto of Count Malatesta and has everyone around him repeat the words in unison brings this out in the film's most keenly satirical moment.) Every single character embodies the simultaneous pain and joy of life in an unusually poignant way -- and, by the way, Karen Sillas's performance as Kate is heartrendingly compelling in this regard.

A feature of Hartley's ingenious conception is the juxtaposition of two sharply opposing genre elements. The dialogue is stylized and beautifully rhythmic, very much in the tradition of modern stage drama -- Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Sam Shepherd, John Guare. But the cinematography -- far from "washed out" as one reviewer says -- is rich, with beautiful compositions, dynamic angles, and gorgeous colors in a poignantly bare East Long Island landscape. Thus the dialogue tends toward abstract and stylized art, the cinematography toward realistic or naturalistic representation. The dialogue is "theatrical," the cinematography ... "cinematic." This tension brings out the ironies in the plot and characters, so that every aspect of this work of art corresponds to its overall theme. At every moment, the viewer is simultaneously quite absorbed in the emotional turmoil of the characters and their plot-driven pursuits, while also ironically hanging back and viewing the whole as something of a caricature of "the mythic plot" or "the telling character." It is this play of irony and emotional engagement that makes _Simple Men_ a crowning achievement of art and one that should far outlast its own time.

I should mention that performances of subordinate figures are also quite splendid, including those of the police chief, the auto mechanic's assistant, the Catholic high school girl who helps the younger brother find the address that goes with the phone number, and even the security guard at the beginning. None of these actors are named in the Editor's Review, so I don't know who they are.

I very much hope that this film will come out in DVD to help ensure the shelf life of its physical medium that its artistry deserves.

I'm not one to go in length about films on Amazon, but I'll write a short little bit for this amazing film. I first saw this 10 years ago when I was in my teens and have never forgotten it, it really touched something inside of me, much like a great piece of art would affect you after seeing it up close for the first time.

Hal Hartley's ultra clever, purposely stylized, dialogue driven "Simple Men" seems like an exercise in clever wordplay. The characters appear to be mainly props or mouthpieces for Hartley's witty and caustic repartee. If that was all there was to this perceptive film, one could admire the words but dismiss the film as one would a puppet show. Paying close attantion to what is being said, however, will reveal that the film has great heart and depth and is a mediatation on relationships and the pain of lost love.

Two brothers are on the trail of their outlaw, left-over-from-the sixties- radical, father. Along the way, a multitude of serious subjects from politics to sexual exploitation of women to the nature of right and wrong are humorously bantered about by the characters. What truly drives these characters, however, is their utter loss to explain why their relationships constantly fail and cause them so much pain and heartache. The sheriff sums up most of the characters' feelings in a brilliant, stream of consciousness, monologue and says that "love is like sticking an ice pick through your forehead...Why do I do it?"

Hartley's question is what most of us have asked ouselves after a failed relationsship. Why do we keep coming back for more when the result is always pain? One is reminded of a similar theme and question in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall". The answer, of course, is that we need it no matter what the cost; just like we need original filmakers like Hal Hartley who are willing to experiment, take risks and present ideas in innovative and creative ways.

I don't know how he does it but Hal Hartley makes moving, funny, thought-provoking films out of stilted dialogue, deadpan delivery and washed-out cinematography. Martin Donovan does his typical extraordinary job of conveying utter innocence in a strangely sinsister way, and Burke and Sage (a sadly underrated actor, by the way-- why is he not a leading man????) are enthralling as brothers who are opposite sides of a coin. The dance scene hommage to Godard's Band of Outsiders is worth the purchase price.

As a film fan with a brand new DVD player, my first priority in begining my movie library was to obtain a copy of 'Simple Men', and another Hal Hartley film, 'The Unbelievable Truth'. I have been unable to track down the latter, but was happy to find more Hartley films available. I believe fans of 'Repo Man' and 'Clerks' would be very pleased with 'Simple Men'. I just hope Hartley's great films make onto the more durable DVD format. Hartley fans need to unite!