In 2010, Hal Hartley made several short films. It's easy to imagine that his initial burst of indie filmmaking and the recognition and opportunities he'd enjoyed had run their course. His expectations about filmmaking were probably smaller, more private.
On a television screen during several shots, Jean-Luc Godard talks about his smaller audience - as he put it later, making films for 100k of his closest friends. The film itself is a perfect distillation of Godard's post 1980s filmmaking: an off screen voice from a phone call setting off a plot; the plot an excuse for imagines, comments, and emotions; the framing of shots, the television showing Godard; even the sound of a tape being rewound abs fast forwarded clearly nodding to (and likely lifted from) Godard's Historie(s) su Cinema. The final nod comes in the end credit which stats Godard "used without permission"
It's a nod to a major influence, but Hartley is clearly making a similar comment about his own filmmaking. He has reached a stage where the filmmaking is no less serious, the art no less focused, but the expectation is changed. He acknowledges making films for a small and smaller circle.
With that context in mind, the effect is moving and honest. It packs more in three minutes than most filmmakers do in hours...
