Henry Fool
Hal Hartley, USA, 1997, 137 mins
Reviewed by Gerald Houghton (1998-9)
Most of indie-supremo Hal Hartley’s best are too long and Henry Fool is no exception. More so, if anything. It’s an engaging, funny, sometimes dark, surprisingly crude twist on familiar themes. But, oh, at 137 minutes there is just so damn much of it.
Simon (James Urbaniak) is a nervy, anonymous small town garbage man until the arrival in his life of the eponymous Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan). Taking up residence in Simon’s basement, the enigmatic stranger is a self-proclaimed visionary, even now putting the finishing touches to his epic ‘confession’. It will, he proclaims without a hint of irony, blow the lid off of contemporary thought: ‘a literature of protest, a novel of ideas.’
Totally commanding Simon’s life, Henry encourages him to write, while he contents himself with bedding Simon’s ailing mother and leaving promiscuous sister Fay (indie-mainstay Parker Posey) pregnant. Eventually they will marry, but only after Simson’s pornographic book-length poem begins to cause ripples. Henry claims an important publisher friend will be interested, but Simon’s work is rejected. Until, that is, sections posted on the Internet violently capture the public imagination.
Henry surely belongs to a certain tradition of cinematic strangers - from Pasolini’s Theorem through to Martin in Potter’s Brimstone and Treacle - who invade dysfunctional homes with their sexual and intellectual mischievousness. Fool (‘Centuries ago it had an ‘e’ at the end’), is both catalyst and poser. He spends his days intoning wit and wisdom in a well-deep baritone and dodging the man who turns out to be his parole officer. As the latter half of the picture proceeds to explain, Henry Fool has a past.
Hartley’s film certainly operates on a level not glimpsed in his work before, particularly as Simon’s fame spreads (there is a bizarre cameo from Camille Paglia), and in a sudden, vivid fascination with bodily functions. But at heart it remains very firmly rooted. Performances throughout are exceptional, with the self-assured Ryan, mouse-like Urbaniak and sluttish Posey all particularly fine. Michael Spiller’s camerawork is darker, more sombre, less geometric than previously, but no less recognisable. Hartley’s dialogue (Best Screenplay at this year’s Cannes) is as ironic, elliptic and aphoristicly quotable as ever, and his self-penned score is compelling. No one else makes films that look or sound quite the same.
But even while it ostensibly represents the expansion of the Hartley canvass first hinted at by Amateur, the film is also Hartley at his most personal. It’s a film concerned with notions of integrity and the value of art in a commercial world. Henry can walk the walk, but will his book measure up? And why is Simon’s poetry printed - after it sparks controversy - by the same publisher who initially rejected it? (Sensibly, we are never privy to either of the great works.) Hartley’s film is rather erratic, and over-long in its initial stages, but the cumulative effect is undeniably powerful, even profound.