Tuesday, February 06, 2007

In the Realms of the Unreal


A documentary gem!
This is the story of the work of Henry Darger, an "outsider" artist whose work was discovered posthumously. The picture above was done in watercolor, and is just one example of the illustrations from his 15,000 page novel.
The movie has Dakota Fanning narrating..which may seem a curious choice as she was probably 10 when this was released, but will make absolute sense within minutes of starting this film. She is accompanied of course by other narrators and interview subjects of course, as there is definitely a dark side to his work.
Much of the "novel" is brought to life Terry Gilliam style..the still paintings are animated as the narrator describes what we are seeing. The novel is juxtaposed with people talking about this largely unseen recluse and pans across his tiny apartment crammed with various collections and of course the manuscript..
Recommended

1 comment:

  1. I remember reading about this film project, looks really interesting.

    Thanks for jogging my memory.

    ReplyDelete