Peter Hujar's Day (2025) review

Writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) invites her friend, photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw), to come to her apartment and describe into a tape recorder every aspect of his day (with the intent of making a book out of the conversation), and so he does just that, mentioning numerous phone calls he received (and naps he took), visiting poet Allen Ginsberg to take his picture for The Times, planning to photograph William S. Burroughs and fretting over his weakening eyesight.  By using the actual transcript, Sachs is committed to accuracy and moves his performers around to different areas to try to mask the inherent staginess, except its appeal might be limited since it features two members of the very elitist New York art world gossiping and name-dropping.  It's fine as a historical artifact (and was even shot with 16mm film to replicate the 'look' of 1974), although its purpose is up for debate: is it trying to argue that the majority of days go by "wasted?"  Or that artists should not feel guilty about not maximizing every waking second?  Perhaps, most realistically, it could be about being more focused on getting those cheques in the mail: life isn't free, and the price of cigarettes does keep going up.