30: The Unbelievable Truth

            Indie-darling Hal Hartley shot The Unbelievable Truth (1989), his debut feature, in only 11 days, primarily using locations in his hometown on Long Island.  These details, which I learned after viewing the film, shed light on the director’s ability to create, but not overstate, his setting.  It feels like a real place because it is, and Hartley isn’t overly concerned with shoving its quirks down his audiences’ throats.  They are there simply as background for his characters, whose own idiosyncrasies speak for themselves. 

            We are introduced to Josh (Robert Burke), a man dressed all in black, who is hitchhiking into town.  He carries with him a black tote, and is often asked if he is a priest.  “No, I’m a mechanic,” he always replies.  He’s good with engines, but he doesn’t drive: “I don’t have a driver’s license.”

Josh openly admits to those who pick him up that he’s just been released from prison, and when he says so he speaks with the calm sincerity of someone who expects for his word to be taken at face value.  He’s honest, subdued, and polite.  He’s dropped off in a vacant lot that borders the overpass leading to New York City, and we get the sense that everyone in town wishes they were taking a road to anywhere else.  A waitress walks by, dressed for work.  “Hi Pearl,” he says.  The woman recognizes him and faints.  

Elsewhere in town we meet Audry (Adrienne Shelly), a teen too preoccupied with the nuclear threat to think about school.  It isn’t that she’s not bright; she’s gotten an acceptance letter from Harvard.  Her father (Christopher Cooke) means well, but he’s always saying the wrong thing.  “Do you know what this is going to cost me?” he says when he sees the letter, before even thinking to congratulate her.  Audry spends most of her time reading and listening for the plains that she’s certain will drop the bomb at any moment.  She too dresses in all black, and it feels inevitable that she and Josh will meet and be attracted to one another.  In other films this would be an almost unbearable predictability, but Hartley is wise enough to let the various other characters in his story have their time before anything can happen between his two main characters.  He allows for the reasons that Josh and Audry shouldn’t be together to surface, before insisting upon the reasons that they should.

Rumors about Josh seem to intrigue everyone in town.  It’s seems he killed Pearl’s sister, or her father, or both, but everyone seems to be confused about the order of events.  In any case, the phrase “mass murderer” is intentionally overused to comic effect by nearly every character.  

This is a claustrophobic film in many respects.  It feels like the same ten or eleven people keep bumping into one another, which is unlikely even in small towns.  Josh comes to work at Audry’s father’s auto shop despite all of the speculations, and a photographer who becomes interested in shooting Audry seems to turn up everywhere, as does her ex-boyfriend.  This gives the movie the hint of being forced, but I don’t suspect that Hartley much cared.  I think he means to insinuate that it often feels like we can’t escape the same small groups of people, and that’s what makes most of the film’s funniest scenes memorable.  Characters act the way they do to save face, because it seems unlikely that they will ever take the highway out of town.  They accept that they can’t escape the people who they will be surrounded by for the rest of their lives.  Only Audry seems to be immune to this complacency. 

Hartley, working with mostly novice actors, manages to create a sense of place and of people that are both unique and common.  They work well for this film, and at some moments I got the feeling that this was the director’s love letter to his home.  But at the same time, this could be any small town, anywhere, roamed by people afraid to admit that there is anything beyond its borders.  The film captures these characters in this place with love and with humor, managing to make both their flaws and their eccentricities real.

Language: English

Runtime: 90 Minutes

Available @veoh.com

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off