Review(s): DVD In the Realms of the Unreal - The Mystery of Henry Darger
Darger a genuis mind
I have read many of the adult reviews and I am astonished at the adult minds narrow and ignorant attitude toward the genius mind of Henry Darger. Even if he was "mentally challenged" (as one adult put it "retarded")does that determine whether or not someone's work or art should be valued as good enough or genius work? Even if someone is retarded that has no constitution or basis as to whether or not his work his good. Many mentally challegend people are really genius' trapped inside a brain that processes information differently than the rest of people and often see the world in a very different light than the rest of us, they understand things to a degree that the rest of us would never be able to grasp and they are often borderline semi-quaditic genuis, mostly they often just have a learning disability that interfers with their intire life, such as being able to read or being able to math, such as people with dyscalculia, who cannot count simple change, but can paint and draw like a hidden genuis. Darger was not some deranged child wanna murderer, he proposed through a graphic vivid sci-fi world how abused, neglected and abandoned children are treated and how children are often the victim in wars, slavery and how many are and still molested, killed etc because of religion (example: Priests molesting kids, petafiles), children are the scapegoats of our society becaue they are innocent and the innocent in times of turmoil always get hurt or slaughtered. Today children are being kidnapped at alarming rates, they are sold into sex slavery, sold into prostitution as puppets on the internet, sold oversea's and vice versa to horny old men for the use of the sexaul deveances. Children are killed by the parents, example: mother's who kill their kids, an alarming statistic in today's society. Children are often raped in wars, example: Vietnam war girls as young as three were rapped by soldiers. Darger depicted disturbing images of girls being slaugeterd because females are always more vunerable in wars than males are and he used adrongenous children with female and male sexaul orgins to give them power, women are always impowered in times of tumoil if they become strong and emotionless like men during times of war and the use of the Christians was to depict how religion is mankinds worst evil, because especially religious wars aim to brainwash the less impowered to beleive without questioning. Thousands of religious wars have been fought since the dawn of time and children were always the first ones to be slaughtered. Hiroshima, WWI, WWII (hundreds of Jewish children slaughtered), Vietnam, The Salem Witch trails: Thousands of girls were massacerd because the Priests claimed they were Witches, etc, even in Iraq today childrena are being killed-by accident and more often in times of firing on BOTH sides. Children are always the first to be killed in times of war time because a child's death is more greusome than an adults because their life has just begun and a child's death is more mournful and sorrowful and that's what enemies wish to acheive to hurt the other side as much as possible-to stick it to them where is really will cuase a sorroful impact-kill a Father's child and that Father becomes an avengeful man, etc.
Darger wrote a story about children (girls) being killed in a religious war, but so many people call him a lunatic or crazy when in fact he had the guts to depict what often really happens to children, but as a society these kind of greusome images are often too hard to come to terms with, so we say "it doesn't happen, " "it never happened", "I don't want to hear about it", because we as a whole society refuse to accept that bad things really do and can happen to children, especially to little girls, therefore Darger as often been shuned because people would reather call him a "retarded imbecile" rather than look more deeply into what he is telling us: That children are our greatest asset and should be protected to no avail and that war is an unessary evil.
"He who has no sin shall throw the first stone!!" Darger was telling us something:Children should be loved and taken care of and, espcailly the abandoned and thrown away children!!! Read between the lines and you will "see" what he is saying, in essence he was retelling the tragedies of his own horrible childhood. Also for the guy who said that Darger was retarded read some history books, he was sent to an insane asylum by his poverty stricken father, because in those days that's where pauper children were sent, but he was not retarded, he did though have a congential heart defeat, his heart was too small and in the wrong place!!!Read his history and you will know, don't write if you do not know what youa re talking about!!
Too many bells and whistles
I must agree with some of the reviews above. This Darger character is pretty interesting and the works he produced are quite astounding, if not a bit infantile.
Nevertheless, I found the documentary difficult to follow. For me, I was definitely not a fan of using Dakota Fanning, or any other child's voice to narrate many portions of the film. The kid's voice was simply grating. One shouldn't be constantly reminded of "poltergeist" (theeey're baack...) when trying to watch a film about a Chicago janitor.
What is truly unconscionable is the fact that the director choose to "animate" Darger's paintings. This is very disappointing and suggests that the director did not have enough confidence in either the subject matter or the audience. When showing Darger's paintings, I didn't need to see little soldier's arms moving in some rip-off Monty Python-esque style. To me, this ploy reflected inexperience not artistry. Just imagine a film about Ed Paschke in which his flourescent wrestlers and other characters "came alive" and started moving their arms and speaking--it would be ridiculous and an insulting move by the director (note, in no way am I comparing Paschke to Darger--the former is a true artist, while the latter is a freak who never new he had artistic tendencies).
In all, this could have been a much more watchable documentary had it simply followed a more basic format. Sure, I can understand that documentary filmmakers, like other artists, should push the boundaries of their genre. However, the sign of a good filmmaker is someone who knows when to push the boundaries and when to simply let the material speak for itself. Wu does way too much of the former, and the result is a film that seems to promote its own cleverness at the expense of Darger's.
all fabrication
All that they have for evidence is paintings&a book&a few pictures(and suface reports by witnesses).That does not show
how he was or why he painted what he did or why he wrote what he did.He may have been haunted by a childlike world of aloness&fantasy whoose real meaning are in feeling those feelings which we can,t do.The idea of using a b acting stereotypical sothern normal voice to be his voice is assuming everything,stupid and not even interesting or creative.The animation world created by animating the paintings may be presenting a pyschological flavor not of darger at all.So in the end there is no movie just the illusion of one.
Harris flug-ps the director in her interview is very pure in thought&emotion&so is in contrast to the film.By his buying of religon,the mythical importance of war(its actually of course an obscene nothingness or infinite abyss)and mythical importance of the image(by painting thousands of times)it shows hes really not an independant thinker at all just unable to do the following to the conformist grave&so still dies mentally but in an abnormal way(nothing to be proud of or to admire)
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