The Unbelievable Truth
Josh Hutton hitches a lift back to his hometown, a small community in Long Island. Dressed all in black, refusing drinks and exuding a sombreness tinged with serenity, more than one person takes him for a priest.
But the facts about his past – which may not even be known entirely to him – prove to be one of many unbelievable truths courted by this beguiling melodrama.
Gathering around a small cast of characters affected by Josh’s return – the car mechanic who hires him, and his daughter; an old flame; her boyfriend; a waitress who bears more than a passing resemblance to Carm from The Sopranos – Hal Hartley’s film is a study of small-town paranoia and the persistent absurdity of everyday life.
While it might at first seem like a homely potboiler told at small-town scale, Hartley’s film is in fact replete with suggestions of grander preoccupations – evocations of tragic theatre, religious overtones, and most of all, the looming threat of nuclear apocalypse.
Hartley depicts the various “truths” of life – spiritual, mundane, social, economic – in their awkward, intimate coexistence.
YOU'VE HIT THE WALL.
YOU'VE READ YOUR LAST COMPLIMENTARY ARTICLE.
More text here
More text here