It's pretentious and a bit too long, but writer/director Hal Hartley manages to get out of his own way enough to make Henry Fool a satisfactory excursion into the offbeat.
Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) is an alienated and nearly mute garbage man. He lives with his aimlessly slutty sister (Parker Posey) and his burnt out husk of a mother (Maria Porter). Their quietly desperate lives are upended one day when Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) takes up residence in the dingy basement apartment in the Grim family home. Henry is obscene and impulsive, debonair and contemptuous. He's like a bipolar homeless man with a masters degree in English literature, someone who always comports himself as being much smarter than his circumstances.
Henry is a writer and claims to have written a "confession" that will roil the world with its power and insight, but he won't let Simon read it. What Henry does do is inspire Simon to put his own thoughts to paper with the result being an epic poem of such profane beauty that everyone who encounters it must respond with either devotion or loathing. Henry guides Simon into cultivating his own talent in spite of the world's opposition, while falling in love with his sister and revealing more of a past that turns out not to be quite as high minded as Henry likes to put on.
Eventually Simon takes on the life of Henry's dreams. Henry, however, falls down into Simon's old life until an act of either heroism or debauchery moves Simon to try and salvage what's left of his one-time mentor's existence.
This is what you call a "character drama" where what the characters do is less important to enjoying the film than how they do it. What distinguishes Henry Fool from other such work is that it's really not much of a showcase for its cast. Thomas Jay Ryan is given a charismatic part to chew on, but the other actors either have little to do or, like James Urbaniak, they play characters of such limited scope that it never seems like they do much.
No, what makes this urban yarn of frustrating reality work is its slow unfolding of a paradox. Simon Grim is a sub-ordinary man who meets the seemingly extraordinary Henry Fool and is led to being something more than he could have ever imagined. But that same transformation of Simon shows Henry to be nothing at all like what he appears. Simon becomes what Henry always presented himself as, and Henry is forced to abandon his dreams and become what Simon was. It's a very careful take down of intellectual pretension underscored by an admiration of real creative ability. And yes, a movie can attack pretension while being itself pretentious.
Throw in cultural observations, some amusing and some overblown, along with a prescient understanding of what the internet was going to do to the publishing business, and you've got a diverting but slightly taxing motion picture.
Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) is an alienated and nearly mute garbage man. He lives with his aimlessly slutty sister (Parker Posey) and his burnt out husk of a mother (Maria Porter). Their quietly desperate lives are upended one day when Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) takes up residence in the dingy basement apartment in the Grim family home. Henry is obscene and impulsive, debonair and contemptuous. He's like a bipolar homeless man with a masters degree in English literature, someone who always comports himself as being much smarter than his circumstances.
Henry is a writer and claims to have written a "confession" that will roil the world with its power and insight, but he won't let Simon read it. What Henry does do is inspire Simon to put his own thoughts to paper with the result being an epic poem of such profane beauty that everyone who encounters it must respond with either devotion or loathing. Henry guides Simon into cultivating his own talent in spite of the world's opposition, while falling in love with his sister and revealing more of a past that turns out not to be quite as high minded as Henry likes to put on.
Eventually Simon takes on the life of Henry's dreams. Henry, however, falls down into Simon's old life until an act of either heroism or debauchery moves Simon to try and salvage what's left of his one-time mentor's existence.
This is what you call a "character drama" where what the characters do is less important to enjoying the film than how they do it. What distinguishes Henry Fool from other such work is that it's really not much of a showcase for its cast. Thomas Jay Ryan is given a charismatic part to chew on, but the other actors either have little to do or, like James Urbaniak, they play characters of such limited scope that it never seems like they do much.
No, what makes this urban yarn of frustrating reality work is its slow unfolding of a paradox. Simon Grim is a sub-ordinary man who meets the seemingly extraordinary Henry Fool and is led to being something more than he could have ever imagined. But that same transformation of Simon shows Henry to be nothing at all like what he appears. Simon becomes what Henry always presented himself as, and Henry is forced to abandon his dreams and become what Simon was. It's a very careful take down of intellectual pretension underscored by an admiration of real creative ability. And yes, a movie can attack pretension while being itself pretentious.
Throw in cultural observations, some amusing and some overblown, along with a prescient understanding of what the internet was going to do to the publishing business, and you've got a diverting but slightly taxing motion picture.