Review: In a diarylike conversation, a 1970s art scene comes to life in 'Peter Hujar's Day'

If our waking hours are a canvas, the art is how one fills it: tightly packed, loosely, a little of both.At a time when they were both 40 and the art scene in ’70s New York was in thrall to street-centered youth of all stripes, real-life writer Linda Rosenkrantz asked her close friend, photographer Peter Hujar, to make a record of his activities on one day — Dec.

18, 1974 — and then narrate those details into her tape recorder the following day at her apartment.The goal was a book about the great mundane, the stuff of life as experienced by her talented confidants.In Hujar’s case, an uncannily observant queer artist and key gay liberation figure planning his first book, what emerged was a wry narrative of phone calls (Susan Sontag), freelancing woes (is this gig going to pay?), celebrity encounters (he does an Allen Ginsberg shoot for the New York Times) and chance meetings (some guy waiting for food at the Chinese restaurant).

The Hujar transcript, recovered in 2019 sans the tape, was ultimately published as “Peter Hujar’s Day.”Now director Ira Sachs, who came across the text while filming his previous movie “Passages,” has given this quietly mesmerizing, diaristic conversation cinematic life as a filmed performance of sorts, with “Passages” star Ben Whishaw perfectly cast as Hujar and Rebecca Hall filling out the room tone as Rosenkrantz.(They also go to the roof a couple of times, which offers enough of an exterior visual to remind us that New York is the third character getting the time-capsule treatment.) Movies “Peter Hujar’s Day” would be a conversation between actors Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall, but around them, a team of designers spun the atmosphere of 1974 New York City.

From the whistle of a tea kettle in the daylight as Hujar amusingly feels out from Rosenkrantz what’s required of him, to twilight’s more honest self-assessments and a supine cuddle between friends who’ve spent many hours together, “Peter Hujar’s...