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April 8, 2005

In the Realms of the Unreal

Jessica Yu's In the Realms of the Unreal (IMDB) tells the story of the prolific outsider artist Henry Darger, a reclusive Chicago janitor, who produced a 15,000 page novel (with heavy illustrations) and over 300 paintings, virtually all of which portrayed what Darger called "the realms of the unreal." Darger's reclusiveness is established early in the film when the few interviewees who remember him each pronounce his last name differently, and the film goes to great lengths to convey why Darger might have withdrawn from the world, noting his parents' untimely deaths, his separation from his sister, and most importantly, the decision to place the young Darger in an institution for "feeble-minded" children. However, Realms wisely underplays any attempt to offer a clear-cut psychological explanation for Darger's self-imposed isolation and his escape into this fantasy world, which makes for a far richer film.

Instead, the film mixes fleeting aspects of Darger's biography (what we know of it), with animated re-tellings of Darger's massive story, an epic tale of the seven "Vivian Sisters," which mixes William Blake style-Christianity, war imagery, and children's book illustration techniques. In the story, the Vivian sisters become identified with some form of childhood innocence mixed with eccentric supernatural powers that might be associated with Christianity. Darger casts "himself" as a general in the Christian army fighting against fierce child-enslaving rivals, and it's clear that, to some extent, Darger's elaborate fantasy narrative is likely a response to his own childhood experiences when he was virtually enslaved.

Darger's portrayal of the Vivian sisters is also striking: he often draws them nude, but often with male genitalia. Here, I think the film's will to avoid interpretation is a limitation, with one of Darger's friends attributing the drawings to a lack of sexual awareness (which simplifies things considerably). Here, I think Ed Park is right to criticize the film for downplaying some of the more disturbing aspects of Darger's work and his clear struggles with his faith.

The film does use Darger's work beautifully, conveying the extent to which he experimented with collage effects, photographic blow-ups, and other techniques for conveying this alternate reality. Realms ends essentially with the end of Darger's novel, at a fascinating moment of indecision, with Darger's "Vivian Sisters" story pursuing one of two possible, but very different, endings, clearly suggesting that even after 15,000 pages and hundreds of drawings and paintings, Darger still struggled, was unsure of any final answers. This uncertainty is balanced nicely by the use of Tom Waits' amazing "You're Innocent When You Dream" (also used to great effect in Wayne Wang's Smoke) over the closing scenes of the film. Like Yu's film, I'm not sure that I have any conclusions about Darger's life or work, nor am I entirely sure that I should, but the film's unwillingness to interpret beyond the biographical connections left me feeling a little frustrated, especially when elements of the real world, such as the occasional "Chicago montages" that characterized the changes in the city over the course of Darger's life, creeped into the film.

Posted by chuck at April 8, 2005 11:38 PM

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