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No Such Thing | Year: 2001 Directed: - Hal Hartley Actors/Actresses: - Robert John Burke - Sarah Polley Hartley Tries Something New, While Staying the Same I had been eagerly anticipating this film because it featured three of my favorite film personalities... Hal Hartley, Sarah Polley and Helen Mirren. Buzz around this new film had been rather negative... largely, I think, due to the trailer on the NO SUCH THING website, that makes the film look like a mainstream film... which is certainly is not. It's Hal, through and through and I really loved it. Sarah Polley and Helen Mirren are outstanding as an innocent, waifish assistant, and her hard-nosed, cynical boss respectively, on a television news show. Robert Burke (UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH, SIMPLE MEN) plays the monster. Julie Christie also appears as a brilliant doctor in Iceland. Hartley tackles a stairical look at the media... and does so with humor and real emotion. Some of Polley's scenes as she undergoes a series of traumatic hardships are amazing. And the slow revelation about the monster while hardly unexpected is still surprising. Once again, Hartley wraps things up with a mysterious and transcendent ending. An amazing film on a modern day fable. When a true living monster (Robert John Burke) living the Icelnad Country. When a T.V. Crew from the United States are killed by this Monster, by looking for a unique story. A beautiful bright young woman (Sarah Polley) decides to go Iceland to meet the monster. Unexpectedly, they start a friendship-while she brings him to New York City for fame. She starts to take a liking to him and he feels the same way, despite his immortality. Written and Directed by Hal Hartley (Amateur, Flirt, Trust) made a unique, one of a kind film. That's a homage to Beauty and the Beast at a modern day world-which makes this film a Winner. This very underrated film has terrific performances by Polley and Burke's Best Performance since Stephen King's Thinner. This was little seen in theaters, this is actually a Instant Cult Classic. DVD's has an anamorphic widescreen (1.66:1) transfer and an fine Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. DVD only extra is Tralier. This is a film worth seeing and worth buying. Executive Produced by Francis Ford Coppola. Grade:A. Hartley's folly Hal tries to do too much here and it doesn't cohere. While all his films have disparate elements that he brings together based on his character's psyches, pulling them into converging situations, here the convergence is much too contrived. The focus is lost because of the presence of too many reasons to make the film--media satire, the stupidity of man as revealed by history, Beauty and the Beast, man's place in the universe, meaningless intellectuals and scientists, et cetera, et cetera. When a young woman reporter (Sarah Polley) finds out her fiance Jim was killed in Iceland, she travels there to find out what happened and encounters a foul-mouthed creature who admits to killing Jim and his colleagues. The monster speaks perfect English and rants and raves to the reporter about killing a lot of stupid human beings--either that or wanting to die himself. She convinces him to come with her to New York where he becomes a media darling for a day or two, then is subjected to intense scientific research. The monster is impervious to bullets and tells the reporter only one man can kill him... This is really Hartley doing a comic book version of his own type of movie. Too bad, because there are some interesting elements here. For example, a pre-credit sequence reveals the monster immediately and has him spouting his typical vitriol; this works very well. Aside from the plethora of themes tossed out willy-nilly, there are too many cliches in the film to really make it work. The dialogue thrown off by Helen Mirren's media boss is much too trite to contribute any real substance and while she's always an excellent actress, she tries hard to make this work and just can't do it. Similarly, Damian Young's research scientist spews lines that hark back to the dopiest 50s science fiction films. And the entire sequence when girl and monster first come to NY City is total cliche. Additionally, the reporter was the sole survivor of a jumbo jet crash. The only reason to include this was to, ostensibly, establish more of a link between her and the monster--i.e., she's a media star for a short time based on freakish events, and he too shares the same brief spotlight because of his freakish appearance. But this link is much too tenuous; the reporter's survival of the accident really does not add anything to the film at all. For the best Hartley film, see Henry Fool where his control is perfect. Another excellent film by him is Amateur. But this one is a misfire. 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