Peter Hujar’s Day Sundance Review — Ben Whishaw is Stunning in Ira Sachs’s Formal Experiment

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Recent years have seen many filmmakers take a less linear approach to the biopic, inviting audiences to learn more about the subject than a superficial understanding of their life events. Ira Sachs’s latest film,Peter Hujar’s Day,takes the slice-of-life genre to its extreme, delivering an experimental work that many may dismiss as uneventful but has many fascinating layers to unpack. In taking this unorthodox approach, Sachs helps audiences know more about Hujar and the world in which he worked than any simple biopic could.

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Peter Hujar’s DayReview

Peter Hujar’s Dayis, as the title implies, a narration of a day in the life of Peter Hujar, a gay portrait photographer who has recently become acclaimed for being the seminal figure he was despite the lack of recognition he received at the time. And because of this, the film — like its subject — is incredibly humble and minimalistic in nature, although there is an elegance to be found in its lack of exuberance.

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Sachs bases the movie on the transcript of a conversation that happened between Hujar and journalist Linda Rosenkrantz in 1974. As such, the film takes the form of a 76-minute conversation between the two characters. They never leave Hujar’s New York City apartment; there is no real action or conflict other than the gossipy stories Hujar tells, and it’s just two people sitting around talking about art and life. Understandably, this may be alienating to some viewers who are expecting more of a narrative drive.

However, Sachs creates such an intimate, immersive atmosphere in the film that it’s easy to linger on every word Whishaw says as Hujar — especially if one has an interest in the vibrant photography and art scenes of 1970s New York City. The cinematography, shot in 16mm, radiates an inviting warmth that draws the audience into that room with the performers. Sachs has created something that is deceptively slight, and while he seems to know that the audience for a work like this is incredibly narrow, he uses it to explore and share themes and ideas he is genuinely interested in.

Peter Hujars Day Still 1.jpg

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Like most of Sachs’s work — albeit perhaps more subtly —Peter Hujar’s Dayis, beneath the surface, an exploration of queerness. Although it may not be literally about queer relationships, it is about a queer man describing his experience drifting through a community searching for belonging. Admittedly, this deeper layer of meaning will likely be lost on a majority of moviegoers unless they are intimately familiar with Sachs’s interests or the New York art scene of the 1970s (Hujar is hardly as well-known of a name as, say, his contemporary Andy Warhol), but Sachs offers some intriguing insights into how outsider (and, by extension, queer) artists in this era felt excluded and isolated.

The glue that holdsPeter Hujar’s Daytogether is a tremendous performance by Ben Whishaw. This is Whishaw’s second collaboration with Sachs after the fantastic romantic dramaPassages, and Whishaw steps into the role in a way that feels utterly transformative. Although it would have been easy for Whishaw to do a mere impersonation of Hujar considering that the movie is based on an archival recording, Whishaw does much more here, imbuing his portrayal of the esoteric artist with a quiet sadness that makes his observations feel all the more poignant.

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I wish the same could be said about Whishaw’s co-star,Rebecca Hall(Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire). Granted, she has a much less substantial role — as the interviewer, Linda Rosenkrantz, she has only one line every few minutes, whereas Whishaw is talking nearly non-stop. However, where Whishaw’s performance feels incredibly immersive, Hall’s is much more inconsistent, suffering from an accent that ebbs and flows and a personality that feels a little too buoyant.

IsPeter Hujar’s Dayworth watching?

In many ways, Ira Sachs’sPeter Hujar’s Dayfeels more like a formal experiment than anything — an intimate, low-stakes test run for a style that Sachs hopes to use for something more substantial down the line. However, thanks to an astounding performance by Ben Whishaw and Sachs’s ability to draw the subtext out of relatively straightforward material,Peter Hujar’s Daynonetheless ends up being a mostly engaging and evocative experience.

Peter Hujar’s Dayis screening at the2025 Sundance Film Festival, which runs January 22-February 2 in Park City and Salt Lake City, UT, and January 30-February 2 online.

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