In the Realms of the Unreal - The Mystery of Henry Darger

Starring:Larry Pine, Dakota Fanning, Frier McCollister, Wally Wingert, Janice Hong (II), Ruby McCollister, Paul Robert Langdon, Mary O'Donnell, Kiyoko Lerner, Mary Rooney (II), David Berglund, Regina Waters (II), Mark Waters (IX), Henry Darger
Director: Jessica Yu
Studio: Fox Lorber
Product Type: DVD

Description

Henry Darger, an elderly recluse, spent his childhood in Illinois's asylum for feeble-minded children and his adulthood working as a janitor. He lived a quiet, nearly solitary existence, but his imaginary life was exciting, colorful and sexually provocative. When he died in Chicago in 1973, his landlady discovered in his room 300 paintings, some over 10 feet long, and a 15,000-page illustrated novel (The Realms of the Unreal), which told the epic story of the virtuous Vivian Girls leading a child slave revolt against the evil Glandelinians. Featuring Dakota Fanning (Hide and Seek) and Larry Pine (The Royal Tenenbaums) as narrators and imaginative animation of Darger's work, Oscar® winner Jessica Yu (Breathing Lessons) brings to life one of the twentieth century's greatest self-taught artists.

Customer Reviews:

Darger Inspires, Film-Maker Not So Much.......2007-06-26

Henry Darger is very inspirational. To characterize his art, as some have, as an offshoot of mental illness is insulting to Darger's legacy. Because he was different, solitary, does not make him mentally ill - he seemed to function as a person, hold a job, etc - why does this make him insane? Choosing solitude should not be considered an illness.

The director took too much liberty in the choice to animate his drawings, and did it badly, to add insult to injury. Underemphasis on the Catholicism is also a problem. I hate to bring it up, but perhaps being Asian might be a slight barrier to fully understanding the Catholic aspect.

The little girl voice is especially irritating, as it sounds like she needs to blow her nose really badly throughout all her narrations. I kept wanting to shout "Hey, somebody get the litte girl a kleenex!"

Henry da Man.......2007-05-14

I feel totally inspired by this documentary about Henry Darger, orphaned and victimized by child-slavery. That he could express his innermost needs thru his personal art and writings, never making art because he desired any sort of admiration from others. I find the story so touching, yet funny that he really didn't realize that little girls don't have penises~~or who knows, maybe he fantasized that they did! His art was his own and nobody else's. For those of us who have felt such intense isolation from others, here is a hero!

Unreal world? Or was Henry Darger an Ultra-Realist?.......2007-04-13

This is a fascinating film of one of the 20th Centuries most important artists: Henry Darger. Filmmaker Jessica Yu had some hard choices to make, but presents a Darger self portrait, an observers portrait, and partial exploration of Darger's interior world in the film's three narrative veins.

My own criticism, and this is frankly a minor quibble, is that too little is made of Darger's Catholicism. Henry Darger assisted (read: attended) at Mass sometimes five times a day, this in addition to his life's work, and his job, and his weather observations. Too little is made of this dimension of Darger's self-construct and in the way others saw him.

But this is a forgivable flaw. Jessica Yu's portrait is an excellent first approximation of a fascinating artist and man, and her film invokes the lesson amplified by Walker Percy and commanded by the Church: there is an infinity in any human soul. May we meet Henry Darger in paradise now that we have been given the grace to see his interior world this side of the veil.

Fascinating Study of Adult Sexual Ignorance or Immaturity.......2006-08-26

To me, the most fascinating aspect of this movie is that Henry seemed to be utterly ignorant of the differences between boys and girls. When I was growing up, nudity between the sexes was utterly taboo - we had to be very careful to explore each other without alerting out parents. Those little kids who did not have or take those opportunities invariably said the sexual differences were that boys had short hair and wore pants and girls had long hair and wore dresses. Henry either never was able to see the physical differences between the sexes, or he did so late he was psychologically unable to accept the differences. Thus, he drew his naked little girls as he would have imagined them as a little boy - like his body, but with long hair.

Unable to relate to the opposite sex, which also would have made him an oddity to his own sex, he withdrew more and more into his own imaginary world. In an effort to make sense of his life, and possibly to find some social acceptance, he grew into a faithful Catholic. He might have felt at home in the Church because he learned sexual mores through the Catholic orphanages he grew up in, and then those mores were reinforced through the Church in homilies and other teachings of the late 19th Century and early 20th Century.

This movie is a study of this interrelation between his utter lack of knowledge, yet fascination with little girls and his absorption of the catechism of the Catholic Church. To create his own reality since he couldn't comprehend the larger social actuality, he wrote and drew the world as he saw it within this context. The movie, especially to one who is interested in sexual paraphilias or sexual immaturity in an adult, is interesting in this respect.

Very Bizarre..........2006-08-17

Well many people have claimed Henry Darger was retarded which makes no sense considering his achievements. He wrote a 15,000 page plus book withs hundreds and hundreds of paintings for it. Do you know one mentally challenged person who can sit down and write 10 good pages or one good drawing? No but from what I've seen in this film Mr Darger was probably an autistic savant. Savants are very anti-social can't hold up common everyday tasks but are absolute geniuses at subjects like math or drawing. All these things fit Henry Darger's life. Many people claim that he was a genius writer which although he was a good one he obviously didn't set out to write a fantasy novel. Henry Darger was deeply religious but also had witnessed much child cruelty during his early years.
Mostly he set out to tell a tale of how children are abused constantly but sets it in a grand religious style story. As for why he gave girls male body parts. Many people once again make him try to seem like a genius that he was representing that women could be as strong as men by having their parts which is not only absurd but sexist too. Darger simply didnt know that girls had different parts than boys. That is my take on the life of Henry Darger.

PS Many people have different views on his life and many people will disagree on how I explain his story but there's no true answer to his story.

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