TrickTaylor Boy oh boy did I want to love this movie. I am fascinated by the secret lives of everyday people, especially those who seemingly have been forgotten by society. The story of Henry Darger and his massive, secret work of fantasy should have been a sure thing. Unfortunately, the movie had precious little to work with and came off as confusing and slow.What makes this movie intriguing is also its biggest barrier, and that is that there are only 3 known photos of Darger, and few, if anyone, who really knew the man. You could feel the struggle as the filmmaker tried to tease 80 minutes out of 3 photos. Darger did leave behind an autobiography and more than 15,000 pages of a fantasy novel, but I wanted to see Darger, and that could not be provided.Darger is notable for leaving behind said volumes, and the fact that nobody knew he was working on it. What a surprise it must have been to realize that the forgotten man had produced such wondrous works. The film does a nice job of weaving personal accounts from Darger with details about his story. One can clearly see that he used the story as an outlet to deal with his own confusing existence. Unfortunately, the story isn't enough to hold one's attention, and eventually turns into ramblings of a recluse. I would have liked a sturdier thread holding this together. The good stuff was there, just not told very well by the filmmaker.In the end, In the Realms of the Unreal was interesting in spots and far too tedious in others. The main character could never be illustrated fully and we are left to learn about him through his confusing stories and the flimsy accounts from people who barely knew him. What began as prime subject matter melted into a desperate exercise to make a full length movie.

Joseph Sylvers A documentary about a hermitic janitor, who upon his death at age 82, leaves his landlords and neighbors to discover his life's work of several hundred paintings, some well over twelve feet long, and a fifteen thousand page book(one of the longest novels in history), all revolving around a children's story called "In The Realms Of The Unreal". The book is about seven sisters named the Vivian sisters who battle a wicked, "Godless", country of child enslaving men, with the help of a good Christian nation. Really moving, tragic, and inspiring. A human drama about the extreme isolation of the artist. A remarkable story, told through beautiful and wonderous art work.

lostcheerio Henry Darger was a janitor. He lived in one room. He cleaned a Catholic hospital for fifty years, and then died with a 15,000 page manuscript and yards and yards of artwork, unknown and unpublished, in his room. You can find out more about Henry Darger and his life work, chronicling the adventures of "The Vivian Girls" at the Henry Darger entry on Wikipedia."In the Realms of the Unreal" is a documentary about his life. The narrative comes through a few different sources: There are interviews with those who knew of Darger in his last days, including the landlords who discovered his work. There is an old man's voice reading Darger's autobiography. There are pieces of Darger's novel. Then there is a narrator who is about 5 years old, providing a little summary and connectivity now and then. The visuals behind the readings are sometimes photos of relevant locations, like the state farm where Darger spent his late childhood, or the hospital where he worked most of his life. Sometimes they are stills or animations of Darger's artwork.The life of Henry Darger is fascinating. It's especially intriguing to think that there are people around us who are silently, secretly living these incredibly rich and complicated internal lives. It's sad that Darger was never "discovered," but even that sadness is complicated. I'm not sure what the world would have done with him, had we known what he was about. His was not the type of art that's comfortable to package and sell. Hard to contemplate a lonely old man drawing pictures of naked children, unless you put it in the context of his whole life. Not easy to reduce to a few key words.The movie was kind of distancing. I came away knowing more about Darger but I felt unsatisfied somehow, like some primary source had been held back, like everything had been too filtered, too disjointed. Maybe it just goes with the subject matter -- Darger was a recluse, not open to interpretation or summary. The most meaningful parts to me were the pieces read from his autobiography. It was surprisingly kind, chatty, a bit apologetic, and patient. No bitterness. No angst. Isn't that strange.

annbonnifield I believe, upon seeing this film, that Henry Darger was an autistic savant, and that his life and artistic work stand as a monument to understanding the condition of the autistic personality, particularly the personality of the autistic savant.An autistic person suffers from a certain amount of confusion in the thought process. They usually have some problems communicating with others. Sometimes they say or do things that they don't mean. They might get work orders confused, and not know it. They might suddenly change subjects during conversation without warning and be unaware of it. The problem is that they are completely unaware that they did something other than what they thought they did, or that they changed the subject of conversation without knowing it.When this confusion arises, arguments follow, because the autistic person is so often unaware of the problem he or she is having (Henry got into arguments with his Nun employers at the hospital, where he was a janitor, over chores he was assigned which he may have failed to complete through an autistic mental lapse, while thinking he had completed them.) Temper tantrums arise due to the process of frustration that occurs when these mental lapses or episodes of confusion happen. The autistic person isn't really being "tempermental". The autistic person is truly being surprised by these events of their own misunderstanding, and may sincerely feel mistreated by those who complain about them.A self-activated tape recorder may help autistic people understand how others are perceiving their conversation and behavior.Autistic people do not always find it easy to communicate with others. Henry Darger spent a lot of time alone, creating a fantasy world out of his wishes to communicate. The phenomenon of the savant has been described as what sometimes develops when an autistic person can focus all their mental energy on a single well of thought and perception. In such cases, it is believed that the whole activity of the brain centers on a single slice of life. This phenomenon is well marked in cases of musical prodigies who have severe autism, so that they could not have been taught music, but learned it spontaneously when circumstance provided them with the proper combination of tools, such as access to both a radio - and a piano.Henry Darger was not terribly abnormal. His was a rather mild case of autism. But he was truly a savant, I believe. There are many people who have mild cases of autism. Some of them may be savants too. Thanks to Henry Darger and this film, their circumstances may more easily come to light, and be better understood.