HENRY FOOL *** (out of four) -a review by Bill Chambers, wchamber@netcom.ca
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starring Thomas Jay Ryan, James Urbaniak, Parker Posey, Maria Porter
written and directed by Hal Hartley
It is often said by his fans that Hal Hartley movies are an acquired taste. Indeed. While perhaps less dangerous than tequila shooters or bungee-jumping, they require no less amount of physical stamina and concentration. I felt rewarded at the end of HENRY FOOL; this movie creeps up on you-at a slow 139 minutes, I mean creeps-and despite the final shot's ambiguity, I left completely satisfied.
Henry Fool ("used to have an ‘e'") arrives at garbageman Simon Grim's house, claims the vacant basement apartment, and almost instantly inspires Simon (Urbaniak) to take up writing-Henry (Martin Donovan look-alike Ryan) is an ex-convict, a once-great author who has been "exiled and marginalized" by the publishing community because of his criminal activity. Simon's poetry turns him into a local sensation, as it causes mute women to sing, high-school girls to swoon, and councilmen to rile against its "pornographic" content. Meanwhile, Henry seduces both Simon's dependent mother (Porter) and immature sister (Sundance Queen Posey) with philosophical babble (which is by turns brilliant and inane) and breathy animal lust. These story elements result in climaxes both inevitable and unpredictable; the teacher-student relationship formed between Henry and Simon eventually reverses itself.
HENRY FOOL is sprinkled with Hartley-ian flourishes: Simon drinks milk from "Udderley's"; the big teen hang-out is called "World of Donuts"; Simon wears his garbageman's uniform throughout; the editing style is decidedly elliptical... (which is key to the conclusion's said ambiguity). The performances by the three leads are abrasive at first, self-consciously "quirky"; the introductory scenes are a chore. These people do grow on you because they convey genuine passion, a belief in themselves, and because they have long-term goals; Henry and Simon may drink a lot of Budweiser and hang out on the streetcorner, but they aren't pop slackers. The story is rather classical: the tutor is a better talker than a doer, raised on books; the timid tutee has innate talent his master only dreams of. (Shades of film school...) The finished film is epic in its proportions for a story so small, and the final third does test one's patience, yet HENRY FOOL is tight, hardly excessive in its length. How refreshing to see a movie this long in 1998 devoted entirely to character. And unless I nodded off, not a single building exploded.
This, Hartley's seventh feature, is contemplative about "the artist"; fortunately, we never get a sampling of Simon's work, and it's a testament to the actors and the screenplay that by the end we can surmise what sort of thoughts would pour from these writers' pens.
-July, 1998
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