In the Realms of the Unreal

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.

A brilliant documentary, which wisely avoids the speculations about Darger that most of the books on him are prone to. There is no *evidence* about Darger's sexuality, nor any about his psychological status. This film covers the known information about Darger thoroughly and coherently, while also capturing something of the magic of his art and his invented world. I am so tired of casual, sloppy claims made about Darger, based on nothing but the speaker's own opinions about the work. Similarly, art scholars have rarely treated Darger's work well--labeling it "outsider" or trying to fit it into the Pop movement, or something.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that this film has none of that crap. Yay for no bloviating talking heads! Instead, it pieces together and interweaves Darger's biography with a sketch of the saga of his novel and the artworks that go with it.

In addition, the filmmaker has found some connections between the known facts of Darger's life and his art--the source of some of the names of recurring characters, for example. Some of the info in the film does not appear in any of the books, as far as I can tell. Good research was done here.

If I have any quibble, it's that the full story of "The Adventures of the Vivian Sisters in the Realms of the Unreal" is not clearly set forth. The story has a narrative line and many episodes. There's a geography, with city and nation names. There are numerous kinds of monsters and many side stories. This was not described as fully as I'd have liked. And a little more of the details of the art would have been nice. I imagine that rights for reproduction of the artworks in the supplemental "gallery" were restricted to just a few works. That's a shame. But at least this was not the Ken Burns blahblah treatment.

I remember hearing about Henry Darger several years ago, but the article I read back then was brief and I was disturbed by images of little girls being strangled in his art. I was eager to see a documentary that would more fully explain his art. I thought the film did a very good job of providing insight to his work - how his traumatic early life led to the themes of his obsessive artwork, how the torture of the little girls probably references his own feelings of feeling tortured in his own life, clues to why he drew penises on all his little blonde girls --"the Vivians," his basic sense of himself as an "innocent," his attempt to adopt children, how he created a secret world for himself, complete with talking to himself in different voices, etc. A much more interesting look into mental illness in some ways than the movie A Beautiful Mind.

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."

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.

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