Peter Hujar Biopic Captures Every Artist's "Anxious, Hopeful, Neurotic, Insecure, Arrogant" Inner Monologue

""Is this boring?" Peter Hujar asked while narrating a day in his life: December 18, 1974. "No. It's not boring to me," Linda Rosenkrantz-a writer, his friend-replied as she listened to the photographer recount minutiae. In Ira Sachs's new film, we see her loving all that he is saying, knowing that one day soon he won't be here, and that all we'll have then are the photographs, the memories, the traces of what he did."

"On that winter day in 1974, Rosenkrantz recorded Hujar's quiet but compelling account: He woke up, talked to editors, tried to produce good photographs, worried about not doing enough as an artist. Rosenkrantz went on to type up a transcript up of her conversation with Hujar, who died 13 years later, on November 26, 1987, of AIDS-related complications. She left the text untouched for nearly 50 years, until she rediscovered and published it as a book, to wide acclaim, in 2021."

"Now, Sachs has made this screamingly beautiful quotidian text into the unlikely basis of an engrossing film, with Ben Whishaw as Hujar and Rebecca Hall as Rosenkrantz. All the little details of Hujar's day, as well as Whishaw's slightly nasal New York accent and lilt, will fascinate any sensitive viewer. Its proposition is the same as another of this year's cinematic successes, Kelly Reichardt's art heist film The Mastermind: What gets erased when we shackle ourselves to the Hollywood notion of "action"?"

Ira Sachs adapts a December 18, 1974 recorded conversation between photographer Peter Hujar and friend Linda Rosenkrantz into a quiet, intimate film. Ben Whishaw portrays Hujar and Rebecca Hall portrays Rosenkrantz. The film follows Hujar's mundane activities, concerns about artistic achievement, and vivid sensory details of speech and memory. Rosenkrantz preserved and later published the transcript in 2021 after keeping it untouched for decades; Hujar died of AIDS-related complications in 1987. The film privileges quotidian rhythms over conventional cinematic action, restoring idiosyncratic sounds and small gestures to emphasize memory, photographic legacy, and the artist's inner doubts.

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