In the Realms of the Unreal

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 REVIEW CONTAINS CONTENT WHICH SOME READERS MAY FIND SEXUALLY DISTRESSING.

Henry Darger (1892-1973) remains the most startling exemplar of 'outsider art': art created by an individual who has absolutely no contact with the formal art world. Darger, a native of Chicago, suffered an extremely abusive childhood ... in which he was institutionalised in an asylum for feeble-minded children, even though he may have been of above-average intelligence. He spent almost his entire adult life as a janitor in a Catholic hospital, never earning more than $25 weekly. During these decades, he obsessively attended Mass thrice daily (four times on the Sunday) and typed a 15,000-page novel which nobody has read in its entirety. (I've read four pages of the impenetrable typescript which resides at the American Museum of Folk Art: that's all I could manage.) What has brought Darger so much posthumous attention is his artwork: obsessive drawings of little girls, brightly coloured, on long sheets of butcher's paper. Many of Darger's girls (traced from better artists' work) wear elaborate frocks. Others, drawn free-hand by Darger, have bizarre animal appendages: butterfly wings, rams' horns. Speaking of appendages: many of these little girls are naked ... and they have little-boy penises. Darger's murals and his multi-volume novel document a fantasy realm in which heroic little Christian girls are eternally at war with pagan soldiers.

Jessica Yu's documentary 'In the Realms of the Unreal' (a shortened version of the title of Darger's novel) attempts to make sense of Darger's life, art and obsessions. Darger was not precisely a recluse: he appeared in public but interacted very little. Because Yu has no footage of Darger, and only a handful of photographs of him, she resorts to re-enactments. We keep hearing a male voice-over that purports to be Darger, speaking about himself. Only in the end credits do we learn that this is an actor (Larry Pine), reading fictionalised narration scripted by Yu. The immensely talented child actress Dakota Fanning also narrates: the decision to use a little girl for this task is exactly right, and Fanning reads her material splendidly ... but Yu has written text for her which sounds improbably mature from such a young narrator.

Yu interviews a surprisingly large number of the very few people who actually knew Darger. (They disagree on how to pronounce his name.) I agree with the interviewee who theorises that Darger drew penises on his little girls because he was entirely innocent (and ignorant) of the female anatomy, and he sincerely believed that little girls' sexual equipment looked like little boys'. Many of the little girls in Darger's art (and in his novel) are tortured or brutally murdered by men in military uniforms with mortarboard hats, yet it's clear that Darger's sympathies are with the little girls. He seems to be repelled, not aroused by the violence which he fictionally inflicts on them.

I thought I knew all the weird stories about Darger, but this documentary springs a new one. Apparently, when Darger was alone in his bedsit, he was overheard through the walls by his landlords and the other boarders: having loud arguments with himself, speaking in different voices and accents, sometimes in unknown languages. It wouldn't surprise me if Darger had multiple personalities. Also, I hadn't known (until I saw this film) that Darger's imaginary world was so detailed that he kept lists of the casualties on his fictional battlefields, and financial accounts of the warfare's expenses ... both of these figures exceeded the thousands of millions!

I was intrigued to learn that the Chicago-born Darger attempted to reinvent himself as Henry Dargarus, native of Brazil (where the nuts come from). This behaviour is absolutely typical of someone who experienced long-term sexual abuse in childhood, and who desires a new identity as a means to blot out those memories.

For most of his life, Darger lived in one room of the house of Nathan Lerner, an aspiring artist in his own right who ultimately made his impact in the art world as the curator of Darger's work. Lerner's widow is interviewed here. Yu mentions that the Lerners eventually subsidised Darger's rent, but doesn't mention that they later made a fortune by auctioning many of Darger's girlscapes after his death.

Filmmaker Yu scrupulously documents Darger's obsessions. One of these was for weather patterns, specifically storms. (Darger was present when a cyclone levelled an Illinois town in 1913.) Another of his obsessions was rather odder. In 1911, a five-year-old Chicago girl named Elsie Parobek was abducted and strangled; the case remains unsolved. Darger was in Chicago at the time, age 19, and he obsessed over this girl for the rest of his life. Some Dargerphiles theorise that he may have killed her. But there is no evidence for that, and Yu's film commendably sticks to the known facts.

Was Darger a paedophile? From what I've read, I believe that he was sexually aroused by little girls (and may have wanted to *be* one), but that his desire to protect girls (including Parobek) was sincere, and that he would have been genuinely repelled by the thought of sexual activity with children. We can't know for sure, but Darger was almost certainly a virgin when he died, precisely one day after his 81st birthday.

'In the Realms of the Unreal' uses several gimmicky visual devices. The decision to make animated cartoons from several Darger murals is a good one, and the stiff-legged 'lazy' animation technique used here is appropriate to the material. Less commendable is Yu's decision at several points to use new artwork that paraphrases Darger's themes; audiences will mistake these images for actual Darger artwork. I'll rate this powerful documentary 8 points out of 10.

Henry Darger was a man damaged in childhood who went on to lead a reclusive, long life. As with many of us, he pulled into a fantasy world. Unlike nearly all of us, he found a way to reify that world in text and images. He had no intentions of ever sharing I am sure, but share we can. He is known first for his eccentricity, then his paintings which really are quite remarkable. They illustrate his alternative world where pure little girls formed the army of good against evil. Evil clearly was close to the "real" world. And Darger himself appears in the stories he wrote to supplement the images. And of course he is in the images as well. It is a fascinating story and possibly highly cinematic. There are some facts of his life that were good to learn; and very effective to hear so many conflicting memories of the man. It is valuable to see the images. Some of them are absolutely hypnotizing, especially in the context. But gosh this filmmaker makes so many bad choices. Although the story has no explicit sexual flavor, it is quite close to perverse. My own view is that the world and the girls as he imagined them were tokens of otherworldliness so abstract and pure that they need to be admired for the clean purity. Having Dakota Fanning narrate as one of the Viviane Girls, and with practiced childishness, tips the balance from abstract to absolutely dangerous. A big mistake. The fellow that narrates Darger's inner voice is profoundly wrong too. A narrator could work. Animating the drawings could work. But gosh, either you need to fully buy into the world and enter it as Darger would, or you have to set a platform in between him and us that has some solidity. We have to know who and where we are. This filmmaker does not do that, skipping from place to place with no anchor, no coherence. If the man is about anything, it is coherence. It would have been good to know that some of the "witnesses" here basically stole the man's legacy and became wealthy as a result. Their recall is colored by some pretty crass motives.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

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.

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."