"The modern fact is that we no longer believe in this world. We do not even believe in the events which happen to us, love, death, as if they only half concerned us. It is not we who make the cinema, it is the world which looks to us like a bad film." --Gilles Deleuze from Cinema 2
Hal Hartley films suggest the feeling that life is bad acting. Perhaps this is how to best think of Hartley's direction. The acting is stylistically presentational and the audience will make no mistake that the act of acting is contrived. To put it more clearly, it is not that the actors are bad. Far from it, they are superb. But the world they create is one where life itself is bad acting.
Hal Hartley films suggest the feeling that life is bad acting. Perhaps this is how to best think of Hartley's direction. The acting is stylistically presentational and the audience will make no mistake that the act of acting is contrived. To put it more clearly, it is not that the actors are bad. Far from it, they are superb. But the world they create is one where life itself is bad acting.
Many reviews of the film were disparaging, probably missing the point that the world is a sort of bad acting. Roger Ebert gave the film one out of four stars saying, "It doesn't even rise to entertaining badness." Ebert is unable to accept Hartley's aesthetic at face value. Too bad, because once one accepts the possibility that life is bad acting, the other elements of Hartley's film turn to genius.
For example, the Monster (played by Robert John Burke) is not only superb acting insofar as it gets to the point that life is bad acting, it is right for him to make almost no effort. He is surrounded by contingent people who come and go and he cannot get attached since he is immortal. Another example of superb acting is the monster's pseudo-philosophical monologues. They are ridiculous, but isn't philosophy worked out in monologues? Philosophers seem less to speak with others than just think out loud.
The role of Beatrice (Sarah Polley) is equally absurd. She brings the Deleuze quote to the screen by acting as if life only half concerned her. After all, she doesn't bat an eyelash at the opportunity to take the news job her boyfriend is killed doing. She even befriends the Monster who has killed her boyfriend and she does so with little to no reticence.
The Deleuze quote is not only more elucidating than most critics, it is oddly tied up with No Such Thing in other ways too. The quotation from Deleuze is in a section on French playwright Antonin Artaud. In No Such Thing, the scientist who knows how to kill the immortal Monster is named Artaud as well.
Lastly, the ending captures the feeling Deleuze expresses only a few lines later when he says, "The reaction of which man has been dispossessed can be replaced only by belief. Only belief in the world can reconnect man to what he sees and hears." In No Such Thing, Beatrice makes a similar transformation from "dispossessed" to "belief," precisely to the extent that she believes in the Monster.
For example, the Monster (played by Robert John Burke) is not only superb acting insofar as it gets to the point that life is bad acting, it is right for him to make almost no effort. He is surrounded by contingent people who come and go and he cannot get attached since he is immortal. Another example of superb acting is the monster's pseudo-philosophical monologues. They are ridiculous, but isn't philosophy worked out in monologues? Philosophers seem less to speak with others than just think out loud.
The role of Beatrice (Sarah Polley) is equally absurd. She brings the Deleuze quote to the screen by acting as if life only half concerned her. After all, she doesn't bat an eyelash at the opportunity to take the news job her boyfriend is killed doing. She even befriends the Monster who has killed her boyfriend and she does so with little to no reticence.
The Deleuze quote is not only more elucidating than most critics, it is oddly tied up with No Such Thing in other ways too. The quotation from Deleuze is in a section on French playwright Antonin Artaud. In No Such Thing, the scientist who knows how to kill the immortal Monster is named Artaud as well.
Lastly, the ending captures the feeling Deleuze expresses only a few lines later when he says, "The reaction of which man has been dispossessed can be replaced only by belief. Only belief in the world can reconnect man to what he sees and hears." In No Such Thing, Beatrice makes a similar transformation from "dispossessed" to "belief," precisely to the extent that she believes in the Monster.
IMDb rates this film 6.2 out of 10
Film 101 rates this film 2.5 stars out of 5
A selection of other films directed by Hal Hartley:
Trust, Henry Fool, Fay Grim, Simple Men, and Amateur
Trust, Henry Fool, Fay Grim, Simple Men, and Amateur
