Unreal

A movie that a saw a couple of years ago has been coming up in a lot of conversations lately. In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary directed by Jessica Yu (she really hasn”t done much, a few television epidsodes like ER) and highlights the life of recluse, Henry Darger. Darger’s early life was spent moving from place to place, escaping from mental institutions, and a handful of odd jobs. However, what set this man apart from anyone else wasn’t discovered until his death.
Living alone in a studio apartment Darger was spending all of thsoe quiet hours writing the longest novel ever written. When the tenants found his body a few days after he passed, they also found over 15,000 hand-written pages of an epic story, and hundreds of drawings, sketches and paintings that illustrate it.
The film is narrated perfectly with the creepy voice of Dakota Fanning, who brings to life not only the charactes of Darger’s tale, but the unsettling true events that shaped Darger into the man who penned an epic battle between the little Vivian girls and grownups.
It is without a doubt one of the best documentaries out there, and perhaps much of that can be credited to the film’s way of using all of the illustrations to playout his massive battle scenes and eerie stoylines.
After his death in 1973 the tenants, knowing that Darger had no family or friends to speak of, felt that it would be a great loss for society if they did not share his work. “Since then, Henry Darger’s work has been exhibited and collected worldwide. His art has inspired the creation of paintings, poetry, music, and works in theatre, dance, and opera.”

In the Realms of the Unreal–see it. It is available at any movie rental/retail store.