Peter Hujar’s Day
Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall light up a day in the life of the eponymous American photographer.
Rebecca Hall and Ben Whishaw
Image courtesy of Picturehouse Entertainment.
by MANSEL STIMPSON
My relatively low rating for this unusual piece is in no way to be taken as a criticism of the quality of the filmmaking involved. Peter Hujar’s Day is a two-hander enacted by Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall and directed by Ira Sachs and all three live up to their fine reputations. Nevertheless, the chosen material is so unusual that the film can only be recommended to audiences of a highly specialised kind. To the extent that this group will include people interested in acting for its own sake I can include myself in, but the actual subject matter is such that I found it to have such limited appeal that it would be misleading if my star rating did not recognise that fact.
As it happens, we know to some extent how this film came about because Ira Sachs has referred to two key factors involved. One was that having worked with the actor Ben Whishaw on his 2023 film Passages he was keen to do so again. The other came about because of the existence of a transcription of an interview that had taken place in New York on 19th December 1974. The interviewer in question was Linda Rosenkrantz who at that time had in mind the idea of interviewing friends and acquaintances and asking them to describe in detail what they had done on the previous day believing that this would provide a book of interesting insights. Nevertheless, it would be a day which had not been for them anything special or out of the ordinary that being central to her belief that the everyday lives of people when recorded would reveal much about how we pursue our daily lives. But in the event she did not follow up on the long interview that she did with her friend the gay photographer Peter Hujar and instead abandoned the project. The audiotapes of that interview were themselves lost but quite recently a transcription of them came to light in a New York museum. It was on coming across a published version that Sachs as a gay artist himself felt that this was something which should be given new life by turning it into a film – and here it is with Ben Whishaw as Peter Hujar and Rebecca Hall as Linda Rosenkrantz. Shot on 16 mm. it is a short feature lasting some 76 minutes and, save for the odd musical interjection, devoted exclusively to what was said on those tapes.
I do not know if we have the full transcription here, but there is certainly no attempt to give what was said a dramatic shape. As requested, Peter Hujar describes exactly what he did the day before and, while he himself wonders if he is being just too detailed, Linda assures them that it is exactly what she wants. By chance it does include one event that stands out because in the middle of the day he had undertaken for the first time a photographic shoot for the New York Times and had called on the beat poet and writer Allen Ginsberg finding him initially unwelcoming but then winning him over. Ginsberg, of course, is a name we know and there are several references to another well remembered figure, the author William S. Burroughs. More briefly we hear of Fran Lebowitz who is still with us and of the celebrated Susan Sontag, but other names that come up although part of that scene at the time mean little to us now. How many people today are familiar with such names as Vince Aletti and Glenn O’Brien? It seems likely that viewers with existing knowledge of this particular art world and its frequently gay character will be ready to savour the mood of the times and will find interest in any little asides or gossip. But for the general public this is not a film which contains much of informative value even if one does get an impression of the struggles that Peter Hujar himself experienced as he sought to build a career and yet to keep true to his artistic instincts.
Although the interview is in Linda's apartment in Manhattan, the film does find a variety of set-ups by moving from room to room and even on one occasion ascending to the roof. Whatever the precise location Alex Ashe’s colour photography is finely considered throughout. The editing by Affonso Gonçalves adroitly offers a variety of shots without drawing attention to itself and what little music there is is intriguing. At one point, whether invented or not, Peter and Linda dance to a pop record and there are also short soundtrack extracts of classical choral music which make this evocation of these two people (Hujar was gay and would die of AIDS at the age of 53 in 1987) a work which in passing almost becomes a requiem for them.
If what is contained in Peter Hujar’s Day sounds appealing to you, you should certainly not miss it. But otherwise the reason for going is to see a perfect rendition of an acting style that is unlike anything that I have come across before. Despite a few shots indicating that this is indeed a film recreation, the aim here is to have both players perform their roles so naturally that, regardless of Ben Whishaw being required to reel off pages and pages of words as recorded in the transcript, you have the sense that you are eavesdropping on a real and spontaneous conversation. The main focus is on him, but the task of Rebecca Hall, no less attuned to just what is needed, is to express her passing comments in a mode that is as unactorly as his and at the same time to establish unemphatically but deeply the friendly rapport shared by this straight woman and this gay man. If you are a connoisseur of acting and interested in a performance style as distinctive as this then Peter Hujar’s Day will fascinate you on that level for both players are first-rate. But I don't see this as something that can make the material really valuable in its own right. Because the film takes place on a single day at least one critic has compared it to Virginia Woolf’'s Mrs. Dalloway, but that is a work which touched on much of real significance ranging from class issues to the personal cost of being caught up in the First World War and that makes it quite different from this. If what you really want is, indeed, the everyday made riveting and involving then what you need are films by Ozu. Nevertheless, whatever the film’s limitations, Whishaw and Hall have done something extraordinary here.
Cast: Ben Whishaw, Rebecca Hall.
Dir Ira Sachs, Pro Jordan Drake and Jonah Disend, Screenplay Ira Sachs, from the book by Linda Rosenkrantz, Ph Alex Ashe, Pro Des Stephen Phelps, Ed Affonso Gonçalves, Costumes Eric Daman.
Jordan Drake Productions/One Two Films/Complementary Colors-Picturehouse Entertainment.
76 mins. USA/Germany/UK/Spain. 2025. US Rel: 7 November 2025. UK Rel: 2 January 2026. Cert. 12A.
