In the Realms of the Unreal

Henry Darger was a janitor. He lived in one room. He cleaned a Catholic hospital for fifty years, and then died with a 15,000 page manuscript and yards and yards of artwork, unknown and unpublished, in his room. You can find out more about Henry Darger and his life work, chronicling the adventures of "The Vivian Girls" at the Henry Darger entry on Wikipedia.

"In the Realms of the Unreal" is a documentary about his life. The narrative comes through a few different sources: There are interviews with those who knew of Darger in his last days, including the landlords who discovered his work. There is an old man's voice reading Darger's autobiography. There are pieces of Darger's novel. Then there is a narrator who is about 5 years old, providing a little summary and connectivity now and then. The visuals behind the readings are sometimes photos of relevant locations, like the state farm where Darger spent his late childhood, or the hospital where he worked most of his life. Sometimes they are stills or animations of Darger's artwork.

The life of Henry Darger is fascinating. It's especially intriguing to think that there are people around us who are silently, secretly living these incredibly rich and complicated internal lives. It's sad that Darger was never "discovered," but even that sadness is complicated. I'm not sure what the world would have done with him, had we known what he was about. His was not the type of art that's comfortable to package and sell. Hard to contemplate a lonely old man drawing pictures of naked children, unless you put it in the context of his whole life. Not easy to reduce to a few key words.

The movie was kind of distancing. I came away knowing more about Darger but I felt unsatisfied somehow, like some primary source had been held back, like everything had been too filtered, too disjointed. Maybe it just goes with the subject matter -- Darger was a recluse, not open to interpretation or summary. The most meaningful parts to me were the pieces read from his autobiography. It was surprisingly kind, chatty, a bit apologetic, and patient. No bitterness. No angst. Isn't that strange.

The Henry Darger story is fascinating, and it made a terrific documentary for Jessica Yu and her animation team. She approaches it partially as a narrative, partially as a fantasy, and overall as as documentary. The animation is beautiful as it really transforms us in the world of Darger's artwork and life. There is rarely a dull instant in the piece, and I found myself just awed at this beautiful piece.

Henry Darger, an unassuming, reclusive janitor, working and living in Chicago, died at the age of 81. To his landlady and neighbours, he was a simple man, who rarely conversed with them, and died in 1973 a lonely man, with no family or friends to speak of. Before he passed in a nursing home, a neighbour visited him, telling him that he had seen Darger's work, and was deeply impressed. He replied: "It's too late now." His landlady, Kiyoko Lerner, entered Darger's small flat to clear it and found, to her amazement, rows of manuscript, along with hundreds of accompanying paintings. The book, a fantasy world constructed over decades, was over 15,000 pages long, and completely unique to the unknown inner world of the man.

Darger had created a totally specific world, titled 'The Realms of the Unreal', that told the story of the Vivian girls, and their adventures during many Christian-led wars, the Glandeco-Angelinnian War, caused by the child slave rebellion. The paintings, constructed with various mediums and methods, illustrated this fantasy world, using collage, ink and paint, and he collected images, xeroxing many particular images over and over, to portray his beloved Vivian girls. With no exterior life, and a lack of social skills, Darger had lived completely within this inner world, where he kept intricate details and charts detailing the events in the "realm", and documented the wars - including names, dates of soldiers deaths, the costs of each of these wars: immensely detailed, impeccably assembled.

Whilst the actual reality of Darger's life is difficult to portray - only three photographs of him exist - he did begin a diary of his life after he retired. His life was one of desolation, separated from life, he was a devout Christian; he seemingly never had a relationship with someone of the opposite sex, but wanted deeply to have children. Many of the images he left behind hint at a man, whose asexuality, seems to be more about naivety. Often, naked little girls are portrayed in the paintings as having penises. This could point to a complete lack of knowledge of gender difference. However, without any actual input from the man, it is difficult to fully understand, and we can only speculate - it would be easy to accuse the man of unnatural desires, but I think this may be a cruel conclusion.

Jessica Yu's film is constructed of interviews with the few neighbours (I can't say they knew him, as clearly no one did), and a narration by Dakota Fanning - Larry Pine also recites passages from the Darger diary, expressing his inner desires. Visually, Yu uses Darger's paintings, animating the figures, and constructs a narrative largely connected with the stories in the book. It is an incredibly touching, disturbing, enlightening and beautiful story, but one which is tainted by many insidious conclusions and speculations. I saw this about five years ago, and it never really left my mind. The opportunity to watch it again filled me with questions as to whether it would touch me quite as much. It's hard not to be moved by this story. After all, Darger created one of the most colossal, detailed, and epic pieces of outsider art that I have ever encountered. A portrait of a damaged, complex person, who never really had the opportunity to share his body of work, until his death. Posthumously, his work is now displayed for the public. In 2001 the Henry Darger Centre was opened in The American Folk Art Museum in New York.

www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

This was a very impressive documentary. Although it was different from the films I generally go to see, I remained interested in Henry Darger's life throughout the whole movie. He was portrayed as quite an interesting person. As a child, he is taken to an asylum and thought to be insane. When he finally escapes this life, he becomes a janitor and later, a part of the army. His neighbors play an important role in the movie because they describe his personality and what they knew about him. It was interesting to hear each perspective. Much of what they had to say about him was the same, but some of it varied at least through word choice which I felt was significant because it revealed each of their attitudes toward who they thought he was. Henry Darger's artwork was amazing. The illustrations of the Vivian sisters provided insight into his eyes. The most impressive thing was how the lives of these girls seemed to represent his life and feelings toward it. If you are interested in learning something, I encourage you to see, "In the Realms of the Unreal."

This is a very, very strange story and even a different kind of documentary. From what I could see here, scanning the reviews, most of them were not favorable toward this.

Myself, I found it slow in the first but more and more fascinating as it went on. It's just so bizarre, it's hard to know what to think as you watch this. When it was over, I found I was glad I took a chance on this DVD and will watch it again. But - it's not a happy experience.....and it is a bit haunting.

I would just comment on a few things: 1 - I agree that, considering the subject matter and strange character (Henry Darger) whom this is about, this documentary should have been more interesting; 2 - I did not object to the artwork coming to life on occasion. It added badly-needed interest to the presentation. You never quite knew what you were going to see next, and I liked that; 3 - I enjoyed the two main voices, those of Larry Pine and Dakota Fanning. Pine voiced Darger as an adult and Fanning was the narrator and represented the Vivian Girls. Although young for this kind of role and vocabulary, Fanning is an exceptional young actress and seems to handle to everything well. Both did an outstanding job and the two complemented each other nicely, too.

4 - I disagree with those who assumed Darger had no idea the physical difference between men and women, which is why he drew penises on the little girls. Come on - how naive can you be? Everyone - even shut-ins - knows the difference, whether one is celibate his/her own life or not. People see nudity throughout their life, even in the most innocent of places such as statues in public parks, museums, galleries, almost anywhere. He knew. Lord knows why he drew what he drew but let that remain his business. 5 - The more one listens to this account, the more insane Darger appears. I wasn't totally sure of that until he went into his "weather" phase. Holy smokes, this man had problems! It's sad, in a way, and is a prime example of how much an imprint your childhood has on the rest of your life. With a "normal" childhood, with a loving mother and father, would Henry have been a "normal" adult?

Anyway, I found his book - from what Dakota and the others read from it - somewhat boring and definitely depressing, to be frank. To me, in addition to being immense adventure story it is, it was just as much - if not more - simply a long diary of man wrestling with his tortured soul.

Definitely recommended, but know what you're in for.