HENRY FOOL (Sony Pictures Classics) Directed by Hal Hartley Simon can feel something's on the way. Standing in the street near his home in Queens, Simon puts his ear to the ground and picks up the sound of Henry's footsteps, coming steadily down the street. The peripatetic Henry brings with him a message, part of which is revealed in the first words he says to Simon: "Get up off your knees."
Aptly named, Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) is a garbageman whose mouth is a frozen frown. With his rigid hair, unflattering glasses and mousy manner, Simon is the kind of man who feels he has to tell people "I'm not retarded," since his demeanor suggests otherwise. Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) is Simon's polar opposite, a verbose, passionate wanderer who seeks out new worlds to conquer. Henry is in the process of writing his "confession," a multi-volume autobiography that he promises will "blow a hole right through the world's own idea of itself" when it's published, and, at Henry's urging, Simon puts pencil to paper and creates a poem so controversial it divides first his community, then the literary world.
"Henry Fool," which won writer-director Hal Hartley the prize for Best Screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival, is a deft, sometimes perplexing comedy-drama that stubbornly refuses to bow to convention or to soft-sell its darker, more upsetting aspects in the name of drawing a wider audience. And why compromise anyway? It's stories like this one that put the "independent" back into "independent film."
Hartley has crafted a demanding, sometimes funny, sometimes bleak tale of a houseful of people thrown off-balance by fate's unexpected twists and turns. In the beginning, Simon is the kind of guy who appears to have never gotten a break in life: He always looks like someone has just offended him. Henry, with the quizzical face of a big suspicious cat and eyes like lasers, sees the potential within this underachiever and forces it out. Simon's loud-mouthed, promiscuous sister Fay (Parker Posey) likes to pretend she's much younger and sexier than she really is, and she's perturbed when Henry doesn't automatically make advances on her. Fay and Simon's mother (Maria Porter) spends most of her days stretched out on the couch, although it's never clear if she's actually sick or just a hypochondriac who wants attention. By the time the quartet's story wraps up, nearly a decade later, personalities will have evolved, fortunes will have reversed and births, deaths and disclosed secrets will have changed everyone markedly.
Ryan, in his film debut, is made to walk a thin line. Henry has a florid manner of speech that suggests an overeager salesman, and his penchant for posing is reminiscent of a self-involved drama student who's always "on." The temptation in creating such a personality is to play him like, well, a fool. But Henry must also serve as the core of the movie, the sun around which all the space cadets revolve. Ryan manages to have it both ways, letting us see just enough of what's beneath Henry's bluster to make his character arc seem credible.
An even greater challenge falls to Urbaniak, who must come up with a way to make the often silent, vaguely menacing-looking Simon someone the audience can identify with on a certain level. Urbaniak finds the key in Simon's resilience, the fact that even though he's stuck in an awful situation, he's putting up with it because he feels responsible for his family. "Henry Fool" also marks a new high point in the meteoric career of Posey, whose Fay matures from bratty slut into hard-won womanhood with humor and pathos.
Hartley's script always catches the viewer a little off-guard. Everytime you think "Henry Fool" is about to settle into a safe comedic groove, it takes a tragic or shocking detour, and just when the movie starts to seem morose, Hartley throws in a bit of off-the-wall humor. There's also a strain of satire running below the surface, as evidenced by recurring references to a Congressman who claims to be devoted to restoring American morals: His most vocal supporter turns out to be a former drug dealer who beats his wife and daughter while praising his candidate's high ideals. "Henry Fool" seems slightly overlong at 138 minutes, but it's difficult to come up with much material that could be easily trimmed. That, in and of itself, is a pretty high compliment to Hartley and his outstanding cast. James Sanford
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