Hal Hartley’s My America | VOD Review

In a bid to establish a rather intriguing commemorative effort, Baltimore, Maryland theater Center Stage asked fifty celebrated writers to create monologues that answer one thematic question, “Who are you, America?” Obviously just in time for American’s big birthday bash, July 4th, the final product, titled My America, filmed by American indie director Hal Hartley, makes its debut via Fandor. The remnants of historical indignities still informing our fractured present collide with the unavoidably insistent dogma of hope and the elusive eidolon of the immortal American dream in a series of unique viewpoints designed for creative repartee with its central conceit.

A variety of striking characters and agendas thread together to create a quilt of varying quality. A dumb blonde beauty pageant contestant butchers her way through her mottled understanding of the world; a convict explains his unfair predicament after caught selling pot on the street; a Hmong professor attempts to explain the history of his people to a crowd obviously in need of an enthusiastic orator to hold their attention; a maker of keys shares his ignorant and bigoted views to a customer with unassuming abandon, while a black minister explains his inability to voice his differing opinion with his congregation on the notion of equal rights for the LGBT community.

At times familiar, unnerving, and even poignant, My America has its fair share of dull harangues and pointed diatribes that call attention to the obvious theatricality at hand. Some of these are handled by expert actors, such as stage alum Kristine Neilsen, while others are innovative performance art, such as one of the best segments featuring the poetic cadence of The 5th L, a Baltimore based spoken word meets poetry hip-hop soul group made up of David Ross and Femi Lawal.

Throughout the variety of voices, the disparity between the disenfranchised and the privileged couldn’t be more apparent. WASP culture still makes for an easy target, with upper middle class white females representing the dearth of ignorant venom that, at least according to this experimental film, free float through the flotsam of the nation’s conscious wreckage. Director Hal Hartley (who casts his Henry Fool actor Thomas Jay Ryan into the mix) credited here as an independent film icon, is an interesting choice for the project, though he’s more of a conductor stringing along a series of inflections that are as equally bewitching as they are banal.