NED RIFLE written and directed by Hal Hartley, with Liam Aiken, Thomas Jay Ryan, Parker Posey and Aubrey Plaza. A Possible Films release. 85 minutes. Opens Friday (March 27). For venues and times, see Movies.
Hal Hartley’s Ned Rifle is the culmination of a story begun in 1997 with Henry Fool and continued in 2004 with Fay Grim. In this bone-dry comedy, the eponymous Ned (Liam Aiken) sets aside his Christian upbringing to hunt down his father, Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan), to avenge his mother, Fay (Parker Posey).
Like Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, Hartley’s movies play out over nearly two decades, the actors (and their characters) aging in more or less real time. What that means for Ned Rifle is that Aiken, who acted in Henry Fool when he was six, is now carrying this outing as a grown man.
“Ned’s actually been able to become self-reflective,” Aiken tells me during the movie’s TIFF press day, “which I think is sort of a unique thing. But it’s something that will be true of a lot of people in this generation, coming to acknowledge everyone’s free will, and being accepting of it. He’s been sort of withdrawn from society, but not withdrawn in the way Henry and Fay are.”
Aiken says he was also impressed, looking back over the trilogy, at the way Hartley’s used the stories of Henry, Fay and Ned to explore America’s shifting political temperament before and after 9/11.
“Each picture takes place in a radically different time for America,” he says. “The social climate, the political climate – it was all changing so rapidly through the pictures, and I think what Hal did so beautifully was incorporate all that source material into [this] picture.”
“Well, some of that was intended, even from the first one,” says Hartley in a separate interview. “But I didn’t make the connection – like [having] three different presidents and stuff like that. To me [the backdrop] is just this great big wash of terror.”
Hartley says he’s far more interested in the personal than the political. Ned Rifle presented him with a unique challenge.
“It’s the first film I’ve ever made about a generation that’s younger than me,” he says. “I was learning about the new generation of younger, cool Americans. Religion’s come back for them, particularly Christianity. And one thing I knew right from the start was ‘Okay, Ned wants to find Henry and kill him for fucking up Mom’s life.’
“But then when I threw the religion into the mix, I was like, ‘Ah, now that’s interesting. We’re actually going to make him a good, solid citizen – who wants to kill his dad,'” he laughs.
After the globe-trotting intrigue of Fay Grim, Ned Rifle is a much smaller and more intimate film – partly because of its tiny budget, and partly because Hartley wasn’t interested in another gargantuan production. “This is the spiritual one,” the writer/director says.
“I feel like the films sort of expanded in scope,” says Aiken, “Fay Grim being the broadest, this global kind of thing. And in many ways, this film is returning to where Henry Fool begins.”
Read the review here.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
