Two movies this week but they really deserve to be together. They follow the lives of Simon Grim (James Urbaniak), his sister Fay (Parker Posey), and a bombastic but vastly untalented writer with a mysterious past Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan). Written and directed by Hal Hartley the movies are both funny and deeply serious. Hartley places the characters in an off center universe to live out their stories. Both movies have the kind of aesthetic that results in them being proclaimed genius and garbage.
Henry Fool (1997) Simon Grimm is a socially inept, utterly unremarkable (unless looking a bit like Ichabod Crane is remarkable) garbage man who scribbles thoughts and words in notebooks. One day he comes upon a strange man in the middle of the street looking for a place to stay. Henry Fool rents a room in the basement of the Grim household and begins to change the lives of everyone there. Simon will write controversial but compelling poetry and become a rising star in publishing while Henry talks a good game. They all end up in places they never anticipated. Henry ends up on the run, Simon ends up in jail and Fay ends up married, pregnant and abandoned. You’ll never believe how they all get there.
The first half hour had me wondering if it were the product of first time film makers (it’s Hartley’s fifth film in fact). The dialogue is odd and the directorial choices seem abrupt. Once you make the adjustment the movie takes on its own life and flavor. Henry weaves magic with his words, bringing not just the Grim family under his sway but seemingly anyone within earshot. I eventually succumbed to the words of the rogue myself. Hartley’s style has nothing to do with “realism”. You enter the world as he and his characters see it. Like them, it may take you somewhere you didn’t anticipate. I can certainly see that Hartley would be a bit of an aquired taste. If you like your stories straight with happy endings you will find “Henry Fool” unsettling, confusing and ultimately unsatisfying. If working without a net at the movies is something you enjoy now and then, you’ll find a fascinating movie here. Your greatest challenge will be trying to figure out how to talk about it with friends who haven’t seen it.
Fay Grim (2006) – A decade later we rejoin the characters. Simon is in jail for helping Henry escape an arrest for murder, Fay is struggling with being a mother to her son Ned (Liam Aiken) and Henry is nowhere to be found. And that’s a problem, because suddenly everyone wants him. Most especially they want the notebooks that contained the book he had been writing, the book he called his “Confessions”. They have entered into legend in the publishing industry. Rejected originally because they stink they have developed a certain cachet. Now Simon’s publisher wants them. It turns out that some of Henry’s mysterious past, only hinted at by in the first film, might actually be true. Henry Fool travelled the world and worked with spies, mercenaries, politicians and traitors. All of which may be spelled out in the “Confessions”. CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) leads a group of intelligence service agents from around the world who want to see those notebooks. With Henry gone they descend on Fay. That’s where the adventure begins.
Having enjoyed the first film, I was really looking forward to the sequel. The problem here is that having created something of an Indie movie hit with “Henry Fool” Hartley seems to feel compelled to be as clever as possible this time around. You’ll get an ache in your neck because virtually every shot in the movie is at an angle. While effective when used sparingly it simply becomes tedious and intrusive here. Add in that the writer/director decides to play with the action movie genre along the way and the sequel is far short of the original. He doesn’t have the budget to make it work, so what he ends up with looks like a bad high school action flick. All of which takes away from the wonderful performances by Posey and Goldblum that are the true gems of this movie.
The first movie is very much the superior of the two. The second is worth a look if only to see the story lines conclude a little better.
Rating – Henry Fool – *** Worth A Look
Fay Grim – ** 1/2 Only Worth a Look If You’ve Seen the Previous
Stories Are My Life 
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