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137 min | USA | 35 mm
main programme
credits
PROD: Shooting Gallery, True Fiction Pictures
SALES: Celluloid Dreams
SCENARIO: Hal Hartley
CAMERA: Mike Spiller
EDITOR: Steve Hamilton
ARTDIR: Steve Rosenzweig
SOUND: Daniel McIntosh
MUSIC: Hal Hartley
CAST: Thomas Jay Ryan, James Urbaniak, Parker Posey, Kevin Corrigan, Miho Nikaido, Chuck Montgomery
screenings
30 saturday 16:30 Venster 1
31 sunday 10:00 Path� 1
05 friday 19:30 Path� 5
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The story of Henry Fool is instantly recognisable as a narrative by Hal Hartley (honoured in 1992 with a retrospective in Rotterdam), but this is the first epic variation on the theme. That is enough to make the film unique. A shy refuse collector, Simon Grimm (Urbaniak), who always seems to be a laughing stock, is universally despised and pestered by locals. Neither his mother nor his sister (Posey) offer any comfort. The first to believe in him is Henry Fool (Ryan), a chain-smoking barfly who regards himself as a writing genius and is apparently brimming with self-confidence. Fool moves into the cellar flat of the Grimmfamily and encourages Simon to start writing too. The unexpected result is an enormous poem that makes Simon world-famous. Fool's life work is meanwhile written off as pretentious rubbish. That is quite a trial for their friendship. Thus Henry Fool tells a story of artistic originality and genius, and about the influence of fame on relationships with family, friends and the world we know. The enormous number of ideas, ingenious inventions and philosophical jokes make Henry Fool a typical Hartley. The director: 'When people ask me: "Is this comedy or is this drama?" I don't really have an easy time answering. I don't consider myself a writer of comedies or a writer of dramas. Writing, I try to work out some sort of reconciliation of the incongruities I see in life. Sometimes they make me laugh, sometimes they make me cry.'
Hal Hartley
Hal Hartley (1959, Long Island) grew up in the suburbs of New York City. He attended art school in Boston where he first made experimental non-narrative films. In 1980 he was admitted to the film school of the State University of New York, where he studied directing and cutting. He graduated in 1984 and had already made a name for himself on the circuit with several short films. In 1986 he started working for Action Productions as producer and writer. This co-operation led to his first long feature, The Unbelievable Truth (1989). Rotterdam screened a complete retrospective of Hartley's work in 1992.
films
Films: Kid (1985, short), The Cartographer's Girlfriend (1986, short), Dogs (1987, short), The Unbelievable Truth (1989), Trust (1990), Ambition (1991, short), Surviving Desire (1991, short), Theory of Achievement (1991, short), Simple Men (1992), Flirt (1993, short), Amateur (1994), Flirt (1995), Henry Fool (1997).
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