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Real Life of an Ex-Con In 1990, Hal Hartley wrote, directed, edited, and produced his first major motion picture, The Unbelievable Truth. Hartley may have done all those jobs because his budget was so small, or he may have just cared about his work, like that of an painter with each brush stroke. The cinematography exhibited in this film is rather startling; the variation of camera work and group shots seen in this film is similar to the 1960’s French new wave cinema seen in Breathless. The approach Hartley takes in this film involves creating a real world environment, filled with ordinary everyday people, and then adding a bunch of bizarre and uncanny events. The Unbelievable Truth is both a realistic and formulistic film that keeps the viewer wondering what will happen next. Upon further examination, one can discern that this movie has a tone that tilts more towards the realistic side of the scale. Formalistic filmmaking is when beauty takes precedence over the subject matter, and the content self-heightens the style calling attention to it as value for its own sake. Hartley uses many examples of his formalistic views to approach specific scenes in the movie. Vic Hugo, Audry’s father, is always making deals with her; he is always scheming to make more money so he won’t have to pay for Audry’s college education. One of the themes of the movie is that, “people are only as good as the deals they make and keep.” This is evident throughout the movie within Vic and Audry’s bargaining’s. Audry fights with her father about giving up literature at Harvard to study communications at a local community college. She even goes as far as having Vic send a thousand dollars a month to her anti-nuke charity as part of the bargain.
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