Hal Hartley's Henry Fool is the first truly startling and provocative film of the year, filling a niche occupied in 1997 by The Sweet Hereafter and In the Company of Men. Despite its focus on a dominant male figure mentoring a more submissive man into confrontational behavior, Henry Fool in many respects more resembles the former than the latter.
Ostensibly the story of socially-inept garbageman Simon Grimm's transformation into a celebrated poet under the tutelage of a shadowy, but apparently brilliant, figure, Henry Fool, the film explores the thin line between genius and madness, the nature of authentic poetry and public taste, and the growing movement towards American cultural protectionism in the face of immigrants who may be more dedicated to success than members of the white mainstream. The Internet as a truly-democratic mode of communication figures prominently in the plot.
Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan) is a fascinating figure--a pedophile who may be a literary talent silenced by a mainstream culture afraid of challenge. Ryan completely embodies a man both infinitely self-assured and clinging to the bare threads of sanity on the outer fringes of society. Henry is a Byronic antihero for the '90s, appealingly defiant and charismatic in spite of his antisocial behavior.
James Urbaniak's Simon is no less complex. We perceive him first as victim--throughout much of the film his face is marred by bruises from a vicious beating. Under Henry's guidance, he quickly becomes dedicated to the idea that he might be a natural poet of worth. In the face of relentless criticism, mixed with just enough occasional but unmixed praise to justify his work, he fashions a phone-book-sized poem and sets out to secure its publication. We never read any of the poem--or Henry's magnum opus, his "Confession"--but it is denounced as "scatalogical" and devoid of clear reasoning.
Hartley's film evokes Pinter in its use of a claustrophobic basement room as a meeting ground for two loners, the nature of whose work is unclear and whose relationship gradually shifts throughout, as well as in Simon's frequently strangled attempts at speech. Equally, the movie draws on Beckett--Simon and Henry wear the same clothes virtually the entire time and are wrapped up in an atmosphere of scatology and frustrated enterprise that would have well suited Vladimir and Estragon from "Godot". Hartley unflinchingly stages a number of shocking set pieces which manage to stir affection and laughter in spite of their outrageousness. The supporting cast is excellent, with Parker Posey adding to her impressive resume of independent films.
Henry Fool clearly ranks as one of the year's best films and, along with the best of David Lynch, one of the finest examinations ever of the truth, beauty and humor lurking behind the thin veil of the ugly.