Henry Fool

I was disappointed by this movie. I had been wanting to check out the films of Hal Hartley for a few years and had never gotten around to it. I saw Henry Fool on the shelf at the video rental place and couldn't pass up the opportunity. I was happy with the film for the most part for the first three-fourths of the movie. The characters were very original and the movie had a go-for-broke attitude that promised many surprises. The title character was a treat until he became the sad sack of the last fourth of the film. He was no longer interesting. I didn't like him anymore. The film lost speed when he lost speed. He was such a lively character, a great foil to the other lead, an aspiring writer who used to be a garbage man. Where the garbage man is primarily quiet and lack confidence, Henry Fool more than makes up with his vocabulary that falls out of his with arrogance. But the arrogance is more endearing because it is accompanied with confidence and countered by a relentless desire to instill his knowledge of the craft of writing on the garbage man. The film has some very funny things to say about writing, things that will make any aspiring writer grimace and silently guffaw. The charm of the film is the great short hand between all the characters. Henry Fool abruptly enters the lives of the other characters, but behaves in such a manner that he has every right to treat them with bluntness and familarity. And the other characters reciprocate. The film doesn't want to be a laugh riot, though it is very funny. It offers some short beautiful moments (a mute [?] woman sings softly) usually centered around the poem of the garbage man. But the movie lost its energy when the garbage man reads Henry Fool's opus that turns out to be literary scurvy. That in itself is funny, but what follows is not enjoyable at all. Where did all this gloom and seriousness come from? That isn't to say that the film prior was not gloomy or serious, but certainly not to the extent of the last fourth. Also, Fool is a convicted pedophile and I admit I was unable to look at him as the same charming wannabe world-changer once the fact was revealed. The fact offers the character some complexity and depth, but I found it difficult after the fact to like the character afterwards. Still, I managed to come out the film unscathed. It certainly is not a bad film. It strikes me as what indepedent film strives for. It is daring and edgy without appearing to show an obssession to be so. I will probably watch it again with the hope that it will surprise me with new positives now that all the negatives have already been catalogued and stored away in the appropriate warehouse.

**1/2