tomgillespie2002 Henry Darger, an unassuming, reclusive janitor, working and living in Chicago, died at the age of 81. To his landlady and neighbours, he was a simple man, who rarely conversed with them, and died in 1973 a lonely man, with no family or friends to speak of. Before he ed in a nursing home, a neighbour visited him, telling him that he had seen Darger's work, and was deeply impressed. He replied: "It's too late now." His landlady, Kiyoko Lerner, entered Darger's small flat to clear it and found, to her amazement, rows of manuscript, along with hundreds of accompanying paintings. The book, a fantasy world constructed over decades, was over 15,000 pages long, and completely unique to the unknown inner world of the man.Darger had created a totally specific world, titled 'The Realms of the Unreal', that told the story of the Vivian girls, and their adventures during many Christian-led wars, the Glandeco-Angelinnian War, caused by the child slave rebellion. The paintings, constructed with various mediums and methods, illustrated this fantasy world, using collage, ink and paint, and he collected images, xeroxing many particular images over and over, to portray his beloved Vivian girls. With no exterior life, and a lack of social skills, Darger had lived completely within this inner world, where he kept intricate details and charts detailing the events in the "realm", and documented the wars - including names, dates of soldiers deaths, the costs of each of these wars: immensely detailed, impeccably assembled.Whilst the actual reality of Darger's life is difficult to portray - only three photographs of him exist - he did begin a diary of his life after he retired. His life was one of desolation, separated from life, he was a devout Christian; he seemingly never had a relationship with someone of the opposite sex, but wanted deeply to have children. Many of the images he left behind hint at a man, whose asexuality, seems to be more about naivety. Often, naked little girls are portrayed in the paintings as having penises. This could point to a complete lack of knowledge of gender difference. However, without any actual input from the man, it is difficult to fully understand, and we can only speculate - it would be easy to accuse the man of unnatural desires, but I think this may be a cruel conclusion.Jessica Yu's film is constructed of interviews with the few neighbours (I can't say they knew him, as clearly no one did), and a narration by Dakota Fanning - Larry Pine also recites ages from the Darger diary, expressing his inner desires. Visually, Yu uses Darger's paintings, animating the figures, and constructs a narrative largely connected with the stories in the book. It is an incredibly touching, disturbing, enlightening and beautiful story, but one which is tainted by many insidious conclusions and speculations. I saw this about five years ago, and it never really left my mind. The opportunity to watch it again filled me with questions as to whether it would touch me quite as much. It's hard not to be moved by this story. After all, Darger created one of the most colossal, detailed, and epic pieces of outsider art that I have ever encountered. A portrait of a damaged, complex person, who never really had the opportunity to share his body of work, until his death. Posthumously, his work is now displayed for the public. In 2001 the Henry Darger Centre was opened in The American Folk Art Museum in New York.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com
MartinHafer Henry Darger was a profoundly mentally ill man. He was a recluse who disliked with others and spent all his non-working hours either writing his epic tomes (running to 18,000 plus pages!) or making primitive art. After his death, his lifelong obsession was discovered and since then his "art" has been embraced by those "in the know" (i.e., people who are so much smarter and enlightened than 99.9% of us, as the rest of us plebes would probably think Darger's art was crap).Frankly, there isn't that much more to the story than that. Now more insight into his tortured childhood (which is only explored in a cursory manner) might have been interesting but since it isn't, the film seemed very heavily padded--with some seemingly irrelevant information and too much time spent to his crazy stories. After all, what more is there to know other than he was a crazy crank who was probably a lot like the Unibomber (with his own manifesto--just like Darger) except that Darger didn't kill anyone.For a much more interesting story with many similar themes, try watching THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON. Like Darger, he is adored by insiders for his art. However, unlike Darger he is still alive and so many of the unanswered questions of IN THE REALMS are actually answered in the Daniel Johnston documentary. Seeing Johnston's progression to madness to public acceptance is very interesting--even if you don't love his art or music. This is what really sets this film apart from IN THE REALMS--a story that seems almost pointless if you don't love the "art" because there just isn't that much insight into Darger's twisted mind and too much time is spent making his rambling epic seem important.I know I'll get a bazillion "not helpfuls" for this, but this film isn't genius and the story and art of Darger aren't compelling except to a few people whose sanity I now have reason to question! This was especially apparent when one knucklehead said "...if there was anything wrong with this man..." and another said he "wasn't crazy". Yeah, right. He was a functional but severely delusional, obsessive and schizoid man (and perhaps more--it's hard to tell given that he's not here to interview)...and all that sure adds up to crazy to me.
TrickTaylor Boy oh boy did I want to love this movie. I am fascinated by the secret lives of everyday people, especially those who seemingly have been forgotten by society. The story of Henry Darger and his massive, secret work of fantasy should have been a sure thing. Unfortunately, the movie had precious little to work with and came off as confusing and slow.What makes this movie intriguing is also its biggest barrier, and that is that there are only 3 known photos of Darger, and few, if anyone, who really knew the man. You could feel the struggle as the filmmaker tried to tease 80 minutes out of 3 photos. Darger did leave behind an autobiography and more than 15,000 pages of a fantasy novel, but I wanted to see Darger, and that could not be provided.Darger is notable for leaving behind said volumes, and the fact that nobody knew he was working on it. What a surprise it must have been to realize that the forgotten man had produced such wondrous works. The film does a nice job of weaving personal s from Darger with details about his story. One can clearly see that he used the story as an outlet to deal with his own confusing existence. Unfortunately, the story isn't enough to hold one's attention, and eventually turns into ramblings of a recluse. I would have liked a sturdier thread holding this together. The good stuff was there, just not told very well by the filmmaker.In the end, In the Realms of the Unreal was interesting in spots and far too tedious in others. The main character could never be illustrated fully and we are left to learn about him through his confusing stories and the flimsy s from people who barely knew him. What began as prime subject matter melted into a desperate exercise to make a full length movie.
