In the Realms of the Unreal (2004)

With the recent focus on outsider art,somebody must have figured that Henry Darger was a natural. Darger was a janitor and well known introvert for years. What was not known (at least until after his death in 1973),was that Darger kept a series of stories & paintings, as a continuing account of a realm of fantasy that only Darger could relate to. Vast volumes of paintings & text were found in the cramped apartment that he lived in for years (he had little family & had less than no use for the company of other people). Jessica Yu's film attempts to tell Darger's story (with extracts of his writing read by the likes of Dakota Fanning,and others). This film is a "must see" for anybody with an interest in art (especially outsider art). As this film is independently produced,it carries no MPAA rating,but does contain a bit of mature subject matter (mainly in the way of some of his paintings depicted that has nudity).

Henry Darger was a profoundly mentally ill man. He was a recluse who disliked contact 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.

Herny Darger seems to be a strange and lonely man, but sadly none of the people interviewed in the film can give us any insight into his life. The film-makers deliberately set their contradicting comments about him next to each other so that the audience is aware of how little any person actually knew him. But because it is true that no one knew him in the least, it seems impossible to make a satisfying documentary about him and his work. The illustrations from his stories are animated, and the narration is done by a little girl (Dakota Fanning) so that the whole thing is very surreal and actually slightly magical. But the fact remains that seeing his work is probably the only real way to get any insight about him or his inner workings, while seeing this movie will only make you want to do just that.

This is easily the strangest movie I have ever seen, and I've seen some odd ones. The movie and animation were well-done but I did not like the movie overall. I suppose this is because I am tired of people exalting mentally disturbed and/or extremely eccentric individuals as undiscovered artists when they are often lost souls in need of some intense therapy. Don't get me wrong, as we know, a lot of extremely creative and talented individuals have been and are disturbed (I think often times this helps fuel the creative process), but I certainly don't think it was true in this case. Darger was merely an extremely sick individual who was expressing this sickness in his "art."