Review – In the Realms of the Unreal

This is a fascinating look at the life and work of Henry Darger. Of course, with Darger as a subject you’d have to work pretty hard to make an uninteresting movie. And to be sure, there are a few rough spots. I’m not as big a fan as I thought I’d be of the decision to animate his drawings. On a more fundamental level, the background material – interviews with his neighbors and the like – didn’t amount to much beyond clearly establishing that nobody knew him especially well. With this in mind, most of the screen time goes to the artist’s work, particularly his legendary 15,000-page novel. It was enough to make me wish some visionary publishing house could find a way to print it, though it sounds like it would make difficult reading at best. As it stands, most of us will just have to be content with reproductions of his drawings and snippets of his writing. Worth seeing