# Henry Fool (1997)

### reviewed by
Wallace Baine

Publish or perish 'Henry Fool' a charming epic about literary pretentions You're not alone if you think the title of Hal Hartley's absorbing new film `Henry Fool' sounds vaguely Shakespearean. It is, in fact, a title that fits this raggedy, profane movie quite well, considering that Hartley's themes here are ambition, vanity, morality and artistic vision. OK, Shakespeare it ain't. Still, Hartley -- the comic miniaturist who's charmed thousands ... uh, hundreds with unorthodox, sometimes kinky little dramas like `The Unbelievable Truth' and `Amateur' -- has created a scruffy, immensely likable mini-allegory that should become his most popular work. For the first time, Hartley has created a film that doesn't feel like a sardonically diverting daydream. This one has charm and substance. Frustrated writers and unrecognized artists are likely to find a kindred spirit in one of the two protagonists: a deadpan, withdrawn garbage man named Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) and a chain-smoking, greasy-haired mooch named Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan). As his surname suggests, young and tormented Simon leads a miserable kind of life, living with his not-all-there mother and his haggard, sex-mad sister Fay (indy film darling Parker Posey). Into this desperate household walks Henry, a disheveled stranger, to rent the basement apartment. Henry is a gabby Charles Bukowski wannabe who carries with him a grandiose unpublished memoir he darkly calls his `confession,' a literary landmark struggling to be born. With Simon as his silent audience, Henry indulges in wild-eyed paranoia and delusions of artistic importance. He uses a kind of reverse logic to state his case: Since real artists are despised and isolated, then the despised and isolated, a demographic in which both men count themselves, are the world's artists and visionaries. This inspires Simon to pick up the pen and begin writing his own opus. The result is an epic poem that causes a visible reaction from anyone who reads it. It becomes something of a sensation and, after a curt dismissal from a vainglorious publisher, eventually propells Simon to the status of a young lion of American poetry. Curiously, in one of Hartley's more audacious artistic choices, we the audience don't get even a taste of what is contained in Simon's poem or Henry's memoir. We know these works only by the reactions they cause in other people. In this way, we get to judge these `artists' by other means than their creations. Both lead actors are new to film and their freshness is intoxicating. As Simon, James Urbaniak adopts a kind of stoic hostility to the world, looking like a down-on-his-luck ex-member of Devo. It's a treat to see him wrestle with the unfamiliar emotion of gratitude toward Henry, a reprobate who clearly resents Simon's success. Thomas Jay Ryan has the tastier role as the volcanic Henry and he clearly dominates the movie from his first entrance. Ryan, an acclaimed off-Broadway stage actor, gives Henry a rapacious alertness, a liar convinced he is about to be exposed and the only way to save himself is to build more lies. As the film progresses and Henry has to deal with Simon's success, envy gives him an edge of unpredictability. The fact that we learn Henry served time for having sex with a 13-year-old girl doesn't take an edge off his charisma. This super-charged relationship between these two losers, with the complicating factor of Simon's sister Fay who literally brings Henry into the family, moves the film forward whenever it threatens to sag. `Henry Fool' is a comic epic about the power of the written word that doesn't bother to show us a single written word. In the end, this film is more about writers than about writing, about the fantasy of literary success more than the reality of it. In that way, it's the unintentional biography of literary pretenders everywhere from Shakespeare on down.

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