Proof that famously idiosyncratic filmmaker Hal Hartley can expand the emotional and intellectual range of his often dismayingly bloodless work without compromising the skewed, life on the fringes vision that has built him a cult following. This resonant examination of friendship, fame, cultural trends, and the creative process, stars a garbage man and a mysterious bum. James Urbaniak is the socially challenged trash hauler -Simon Grim who lives with his severely depressed mother and slutty, acerbic sister in a cramped in Queens, N.Y. Thomas Jay Ryan is Henry Fool, the drinking drifter who moves into their basement, claiming to be a writer whose unpublished epic manuscript would shake of the world - if Henry ever allowed it to be published. (In fact he's talent free.) But it's Simon who becomes the literary star. Encouraged by his new friend, the trashman who never wrote before, turns out to be a natural poet, moving (and outraging) the public with the power of his words. The director packs a lot of tender heartache into the Grim household, and he presses his finger firmly on the bruised place in America where celebrity becomes its own curse. (In a great conceit, we never see of hear a word of Simon's masterpiece.) Hartley remains an acquired taste (for views with a lot of time to dine - this sitting runs about two hours and twenty minutes). But with "Henry Fool" he offers a lot to chew on.
Review of Henry Fool
