TV REVIEW : Stylish Short Films From Hal Hartley

Like him or not, Hal Hartley is a young director who most assuredly has his own style, as he skirts overly eccentric ponderousness yet demonstrates such a good knack for the incongruous deadpan gag. His second feature film, “Trust,” is due in theaters next month, but meanwhile, two recent short films make up tonight’s episode of PBS’ “Alive from Off Center” (on KCET Channel 28 at 11), and they come off as if avant-garde filmmaker Jon Jost were doing an Obsession commercial with a lot of help from Woody Allen.

Both shorts are concerned with the dreaded concept of work and how the artistic temperament deals with it--rent money versus real life. In the first and more humorous featurette, the 17-minute “Theory of Achievement,” a group of folks living in Brooklyn for reasons of frugality collectively face down the prospect of being “young, middle-class, college-educated and unskilled.”

If you thought the “thirty-something” crew was whiny, wait till you meet this bunch. Yet Hartley mocks as well as celebrates their frustrations at balancing purpose in life and the need to make a living. He’s a director who’s extremely self-conscious of his own highfalutinness as well as that of his characters, and he throws a lot of very funny lines in between the pseudo-philosophizing nuggets--resulting in an unevenness of tone that’s deliberate, funny and a little frustrating.

The second short, the nine-minute “Ambition,” is more surreal and enigmatic, though not without its wit as well. It centers around a young man whose mantra is “I’m good at what I do,” who faces up to a literally bullying pragmatist of a boss and a more aesthetically inclined mystery woman in some heavily artificial, symbolically loaded scenes.

Though Hartley can work with a conventional narrative, as evidenced in last year’s feature debut “The Unbelievable Truth,” neither one of these shorts is overly focused on story, and they actually work better on a second viewing, after their milieu becomes clearer and you can concentrate on the alternately pithy and pretentious dialogue. They’re worth the videotape expended for a repeat visit.