‘Peter Hujar’s Day’ Viennale Review: A Quiet, Minimal Portrait of an Artist and a Vanished New York

Minimalist in both form and narrative — so much so that it could easily be staged as a short two-person play — Peter Hujar’s Day tells exactly what its title promises: a day in the life of the photographer who gives the film its name. Hujar, a deeply connected photojournalist and artist, captured New York’s downtown scene of the 1970s and ’80s with rare intimacy. But in this film, that day in his life unfolds only through his own words, drawn from a real conversation he had with journalist and friend Linda Rosenkrantz over the course of another single day, seemingly in her apartment.

Ben Whishaw plays Hujar, while Rebecca Hall takes on the far less active role of the interviewer. With a tape recorder and microphone on the table, Linda conducts an experiment — asking her friends to describe an ordinary day in their lives. This time it’s Peter’s turn, a slightly melancholic thirtysomething gay photographer who seems to know everyone in New York’s art world. The film follows that premise literally, presenting their exchange over the course of a day, often blurring the lines between reality and re-creation. The setup is openly theatrical — the illusion even breaks at one point — but it works as a window into that long-gone world.

What Hujar recounts isn’t especially revealing in a social, emotional, or political sense. Still, it offers a fascinating miniature portrait of a time and place, filled with name-dropping (Hujar loves mentioning his famous acquaintances, often by first name only) and glimpses into the art circles of the era. Director Ira Sachs — of Passages and Frankie — bases the film on Rosenkrantz’s actual recording, recently rediscovered and presented almost verbatim, giving the project a kind of documentary authenticity, or at least the feeling of it.

Over the film’s brisk 76 minutes, we listen to Peter recount his December 18, 1974: waiting for an editor to choose photos of the actress Lauren Hutton, chatting with his friend Susan (as in Sontag), and attempting — between naps and a run for Chinese takeout — to track down Allen Ginsberg for a portrait The New York Times had commissioned. The task proves unexpectedly complicated (Ginsberg, it seems, was not the easiest subject), and much of the conversation revolves around that frustrating back-and-forth. The day drifts into night, bringing dinners, phone calls, and small encounters with other semi-famous figures from 1970s New York’s artistic underground.

There’s no dramatic arc or emotional crescendo here; the conversation doesn’t build like a play. On the contrary, it meanders through the everyday: what he’s paid for assignments, how expensive everything’s become, gossip about mutual acquaintances, and the detailed saga of his less-than-satisfying session with Ginsberg — which nevertheless leads, indirectly, to his later work photographing William S. Burroughs.

Peter Hujar’s Day is, in the end, an exercise — nothing more, nothing less. It might have worked better as a medium-length film, but thanks to its performers, that seventy-minute conversation remains engaging and surprisingly charming. More monologue than dialogue, it rests entirely on Whishaw’s shoulders, while Hall listens gracefully, contributing just a few words here and there. Still, Sachs captures something delicate and true: the intimacy of friendship, the rhythm of conversation, and the texture of a world that no longer exists — that bohemian New York where time seemed slower, phones didn’t buzz, and urgency hadn’t yet taken over.