Fantastic Voyager
Outsider artist’s secret life revealed in engrossing "Realms of the Unreal"

Chances are you've never heard of Henry Darger, the subject of Jessica Yu's engrossing documentary In The Realms Of The Unreal. Throughout his life, Darger went out of his way to go unnoticed. A humble janitor at St. Joseph's Catholic Hospital in Chicago from age 17 until his forced retirement at 73, Darger had no family or friends, no social life, and rarely spoke to anyone. The few people Wu interviews who were actually acquainted with Darger knew him so slightly, they can't even agree on the pronunciation of his name.

But Darger was the ultimate book that can't be judged by its cover. Beneath his ordinary binding, Darger possessed a creative imagination of extreme perversity, naiveté, and obsessive artistic ferocity. Alone in his cramped apartment every night for virtually all of his adult life (he lived to age 81), Darger toiled away on "the Work," a fantastical epic of good and evil, Christianity, cruelty, heroism, and savage warfare. His media included drawings, collages, and vividly colored watercolor paintings, along with a staggering amount of written documents. After Darger was moved to a rest home and his landlords were cleaning out his apartment, they discovered volumes of journals, ledgers, and autobiography, some 300 paintings (mostly painted on both sides of the paper) and a fifteen-thousand-page, single-space typed fiction manuscript In The Realms of the Unreal.

Darger fits the profile of a classic outsider artist, someone generally untrained, self-taught, and far beyond the fringe of the commercial art business, who's compulsively devoted to his creative vision, whether or not anyone else will ever see it. (Although since his death in 1973, he's become a critical darling of the art scene.) His images are disturbing, yet often lovely in an odd, ethereal way. In his fantasy world, armies of children led by the seven Christian Vivian sisters fight an endless, bloody war of rebellion against an army of godless grown-ups who use them as "child slaves."

Scenes of horrendous bloodshed, brutality, and torture mingle with images of pastoral innocence, or glorious fantasy when beauteous butterfly-winged dragons or angels swoop into the battle. The children depicted are often girls, frequently drawn naked, often with little penises. Except for that surprising addition, the girls are inspired (often directly traced or copied) from the most charming source material: Darger's collection of turn-of-the-century storybooks and postcards, advertising images (like the Coppertone girl), or newspaper photos.

It's a lot to absorb. Fortunately for Wu and the viewer, Darger left behind plenty of autobiographical material that helps to put his work into perspective. (Darger's own words are spoken in the film by actor Larry Pine; Wu's written narration is read by preternaturally sophisticated child actress Dakota Fanning.) His child slavery theme makes sense when we learn Darger was orphaned very young, expelled from a Catholic boys school, and finally locked up in an institution for the "feeble-minded," where the boys were put into work gangs and beaten at will by the gang bosses.

Never very articulate in life ("Henry only had conversations with himself," notes one neighbor), Darger's written output is vast, imaginative, even droll. The enemy leader is named for a bully from Darger's schooldays. His army wears Civil War jackets and scholastic mortarboards. And while Darger was a scrupulous churchgoer, Wu shows how God's Christian army in the work occasionally suffers horrendous setbacks and abuses whenever Darger feels his prayers in real life have gone unanswered (like his thwarted attempts to adopt a child of his own to protect).

Was Darger a pedophile? No one in the film can recall ever seeing him so much as speak to a child; he was far too wrapped up in his own private world. Relationships apparently didn't interest him as much as fantasy. As to those penises, one neighbor suggests Darger was so isolated "he didn't know the difference" between boys and girls. Another suggests his girl heroes were meant to represent both sexes.

Wu devotes a shade too much screen time to the fanciful Monty Python-style animation of Darger's images (which are potent enough as they are). But her fine film invites us to ponder what's real and unreal in the all-consuming vigor with which Darger created the world in which he really lived.

IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL A film by Jessica Yu. A Wellspring release. Not rated. 82 minutes. (***1/2)
Review published in Good Times, March 3, 2005