Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 10/10/23

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Henry Fool (Hal Hartley, 1997)

James Urbaniak and Thomas Jay Ryan in Henry Fool

Cast: Thomas Jay Ryan, James Urbaniak, Parker Posey, Maria Porter, James Saito, Kevin Corrigan, Liam Aiken, Miho Nikaido, Gene Ruffini, Nicholas Hope, Chuck Montgomery. Screenplay: Hal Hartley. Cinematography: Michael Spiller. Production design: Steve Rosenzweig. Film editing: Steve Hamilton. Music: Hal Hartley.

In commenting on Hal Hartley's Henry Fool, I feel a little like those people who used to say about Woody Allen that they preferred his earlier, funnier movies. It's not entirely true, of course. Henry Fool is a great step in the right direction for Hartley, winning him the award for best screenplay at Cannes, earning him more mainstream attention than his previous films, and setting up an intriguing trilogy (which Hartley has said wasn't in his mind when he made what became its first installment). It's just that to move from the comparatively sedate world of mostly harmless and underachieving misfits to one in which the characters confess to crimes like statutory rape, get seriously beaten up, commit manslaughter, and win the Nobel Prize in Literature is a long stretch. As usual, much depends on how well the performers can bring the characters to something like life while still working within the distinctive parameters of Hartley's style. They succeed brilliantly in Henry Fool, with Thomas Jay Ryan playing the Mephistophelean title role to perfection, moving from slovenly to seductive with apparent ease. James Urbaniak's Simon Grim is the perfect patsy for Henry's manipulations as he rises from semi-literate garbage man to literary celebrity, taking the fall for Henry even as he triumphs. And as Fay Grim, Simon's slutty sister, Parker Posey manages to break free from Hartley's deadpan mode to be the best Parker Posey she can be, always a treat to watch. There's also the usual gallery of supporting characters who irrupt into the world out of Hartley's imaginings. Henry Fool has more satiric moments than Hartley's earlier films, taking shots at right wing politics and the publishing industry (which I suspect Hartley intends as a stand-in for the film industry).