[2][3] His films include The Unbelievable Truth (1989), Trust (1990), Simple Men (1992), Amateur (1994) and Henry Fool (1997),[4] which are notable for deadpan humour and offbeat characters quoting philosophical dialogue.

[5] Hartley frequently scores his own films, sometimes under the pseudonym Ned Rifle,[6] and his soundtracks regularly feature music by Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo and PJ Harvey.

[citation needed] His films provided a career launch for a number of actors, including Adrienne Shelly, Edie Falco, James Urbaniak, Martin Donovan, Karen Sillas and Elina Löwensohn.

The screenplay featured what have become Hartley's trademarks – deadpan humour, offbeat, stilted, pause-filled dialogue, and characters posing philosophical questions about the meaning of life, combined with a degree of stylization in acting, choreography[7] and camera movement.

Simple Men (1992), a drama about two brothers (played by Burke and Bill Sage) who reunite to search for their anarchist father and encounter two women in a small town (Karen Sillas and Elina Löwensohn), was entered in competition at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival.

[citation needed] Hartley achieved his greatest commercial and critical success with Henry Fool (1997), a comic drama about a near-catatonic garbageman Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) and his sister Fay (Parker Posey), who meet Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan), a libertine and aspiring novelist who inspires Simon to write and seduces Fay and her depressed mother (Maria Porter).

According to the film summary "[t]he end of the millenium has taken on a certain significance in modern day prophecies", and Hartley's The Book of Life considers a scenario where Jesus Christ has second thoughts about the Apocalypse and argues with the Devil.

[9] The dialogue-heavy plot is driven the two along with Christ's assistant Magdelene, debating the end of the world, and the possibility of human redemption; The story imagines Jesus (Martin Donovan) returning to Earth on the eve of the 2000 millennium to open the Book of Life (the Seven Seals stored on an Apple Mac laptop), which will start the Apocalypse.

[citation needed] The Girl from Monday (2005), filmed in New York City and Puerto Rico, is set in a future dystopia where people are encouraged to record their sexual encounters as an economic transaction and thus increase their consumer buying power.

[citation needed] Hartley's stage play Soon, a drama dealing with the confrontation at Waco, Texas, between the religious community known as the Branch Davidians and the U.S. federal government, was first produced at the Salzburg Festival and then later that year in Antwerp.

Hartley was awarded a fellowship by The American Academy in Berlin in late 2004, where he did research related to a proposed large-scale project concerning the life of French educator and social activist Simone Weil.