Terror and magic collide in Darger doc.
How do you make a documentary film about a man who, to most of the world outside his home, didn't exist? Filmmaker Jessica Yu (
Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien
) has creatively cobbled together the life of outsider artist Henry Darger using the artist's
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work as a starting point and working around the fact that the foremost authority on the famed recluse is Darger himself.
When he died in 1972, Darger, an asocial and hermetic man who spent his working life as a hospital janitor, left behind 30,000 pages of writing, including obsessive weather reports, an autobiography and a 15,000-page epic novel called, like Yu's film,
In the Realms of the Unreal
. Darger also created some 300 paintings depicting scenes from his massive novel, the story of a war between a group of beautiful Christian sisters named the Vivian girls and the evil slave drivers of Glandalenia. Much of the novel reflects time Darger spent in institutions for mentally ill children and bares the scars he received there and carried for the rest of his life. His crisis of faith, a love/hate relationship with God that lasted his entire life, is also central to the novel.
Without another considerable text, Darger's autobiography, Yu's film might only be a few minutes long. Yu uses these documents as the basis for her film, supplementing facts from Darger's past with interviews from people who lived in the same building with him. His behavior, his inability to connect with people he came in contact with on a daily basis, is explained through passages of his autobiography, read by Larry Pine (
Melinda and Melinda
), and brings the viewer closer to understanding Darger's thinking and motivations.
Though Darger was disconnected from the larger world, he was very much at home in the sphere of his own
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work. Yu brings Darger's fantastic world to life through stylized animation and dramatization while respecting the still image as it was originally created. Dakota Fanning (
Hide and Seek
) appropriately provides narration, as precocious little girls are the subjects in much of the artist's work.
Despite the volume of work he left behind, only three photos of Darger are known to exist. Though who he was becomes clearer by the film's end, Henry Darger remains elusive. Even minute details of his life-where he sat in church, how he pronounced his last name-are disputed by people who knew him, all giving different answers and interpretations of his character and habits. But resolving such details is unimportant to the film's success;
In the Realms of the Unreal
works with its curious subject to create not a comprehensive personal profile of Henry Darger, but rather a colorful impression of the artist that is as lively and fantastic as his paintings.
