Photographer Peter Hujar was one of many gifted artists this world lost to AIDS. He died in 1987 at the age of 53. Hujar received scant recognition for his work while he was alive, but has since been heralded as a major portrait photographer of his time.
The openly gay Hujar was a part of the NYC ‘70s-‘80s circle of artists and intellectuals like Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol and two of his lovers, political activist Jim Fouratt and protégé David Wojnarowicz.
In 1974, nonfiction writer Linda Rosenkrantz was planning a documentary on her artist friends and audio recorded one conversation with Hujar for the ill-fated project. The tape is assumed lost but a transcript survived and, using that document, filmmaker Ira Sachs (Passages) has fashioned a curious, compelling new film that captures that specific moment in time—the life of a creative wanting to achieve a kind of acceptance—fame—that was elusive to him.
The 76-minute, two-hander centers on the financially struggling Hujar (Ben Whishaw) conveying to his friend, Linda (Rebecca Hall), the mundane details of his uneventful day (at least he thought so) where he met with and photographed the poet Allen Ginsberg, who wasn’t interested in Peter sexually.
Peter Hujar’s Day is a queer cultural recording and that alone makes it significant. And Sachs goes to great lengths to capture the period. Whether it’s great cinema is an entirely different question. It’s certainly an intimate filmic experiment that simultaneously maddens and mesmerizes.
The chief reason the film captivates is Whishaw’s fully-committed performance. He makes it seem like he’s coming up with the lines himself, never diving into any kind of manipulative emotion but, instead, simply blathering away about his health, eating habits, cost of food complaints—and occasionally name dropping a Susan Sontag, Fran Liebowitz or William Burroughs (who Ginsberg apparently told Hujar to blow, to make the best impression). Whishaw appeared in Sachs’s stirring Passages, opposite Franz Rogowski in 2023.
Hall must mostly react, which she does well.
Peter Hujar’s Day is a work that should come with footnotes and a glossary. Based on the few notes I scribbled down, I later found myself Wikipedia-ing the shit out of certain people mentioned in the movie as well as Hujar himself. And it made me want to discover the man’s work—which is always a good thing.
After its NYFF Main Slate showing, the film will open November 7 at Film at Lincoln Center, accompanied by a selection of Hujar’s portraits on display in the Furman Gallery at the Walter Reade Theater.
