{"id":119,"date":"2002-04-30T06:46:46","date_gmt":"2002-04-30T13:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/?p=119"},"modified":"2008-06-16T06:47:44","modified_gmt":"2008-06-16T13:47:44","slug":"simple-men-surviving-desire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/?p=119","title":{"rendered":"Simple Men \/ Surviving Desire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Video Magazine, May 1993<\/em><br \/>\n<strong>Simple Men \/ Surviving Desire<\/strong> By M. Faust<\/p>\n<p>Like that of Bill Forsyth or Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley&#8217;s quirky humor is impossible to explain.              He explores his perennial subject (described with tongue in cheek as &#8220;the mechanics of emotional              capitalism&#8221;) with the most wonderfully droll dialogue in American movies today. His regular              players speak in a terse, deadpan style that brings to mind Howard Hawks, David Mamet, and              Abbott and Costello. Obsessively structured (which can be a great source of humor), his films              serve as frameworks in which he can bounce characters with different perspectives off each other,              just to see what happens.<\/p>\n<p>Hartley calls &#8220;Simple Men,&#8221; his most recent film, &#8220;a romance with an attitude problem.&#8221; It would              take too long to describe the shaggy-dog plot, which is, after all, only an excuse for the              characters to talk. And Hartley&#8217;s dialogue is at its sharpest here, particularly in the              laugh-out-loud first half. But &#8220;Simple Men&#8221; is also his most accomplished film, with a grace of              design and structure that stays with you long afterward.<\/p>\n<p>Made for PBS&#8217;s &#8220;American Playhouse,&#8221; &#8220;Surviving Desire&#8221; takes the element of talkiness to an              extreme: A literature professor, so obsessed with a passage from &#8220;The Brothers Karamazov&#8221; that              he devotes every class to discussing it, has an affair with a student who is only after              background for a novel she wants to write. The tape also features two witty short films,              &#8220;Theory of Achievement&#8221; and &#8220;Ambition&#8221; (Hartley&#8217;s personal favorite).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Video Magazine, May 1993 Simple Men \/ Surviving Desire By M. Faust Like that of Bill Forsyth or Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley&#8217;s quirky humor is impossible to explain. He explores his perennial subject (described with tongue in cheek as &#8220;the mechanics of emotional capitalism&#8221;) with the most wonderfully droll dialogue in American movies today. His [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}