Henry Fool

Simon Grim collects rubbish in New Jersey. He speaks so little as to barely speak. He lives with his mother and his sister Fay. A lodger arrives in the basement: Henry Fool. The man declares himself a writer; he says he has been working on a work for years and shows his notebooks to nobody. He gives Simon a notebook and tells him to write. Simon writes. What he writes is first thrown out of the library, then reaches the internet, and finally is argued over worldwide. Henry's own work is accepted by no publisher. Hal Hartley writes and directs. James Urbaniak plays Simon, Thomas Jay Ryan plays Henry and Parker Posey plays Fay. It is an American production. The film won best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival. The matter it treats is who holds the talent; Henry behaves as a teacher but what he writes is worthless. The narrative never shows Simon's poem; the text is not read and its effect is given only through people's reactions. Hartley's style rests on flat speech and fixed framing; the acting is deliberately distanced. It runs long and the narrative spreads across years. Two further films followed and it became a trilogy. The narrative makes no character likeable and does not defend Henry to the end. Its limit is style; the dialogue is artificial, the pace flat and the characters cold. Who it is for: viewers who like American independent cinema and Hal Hartley. Who it is not for: it is long, the style demanding, and some scenes crude.