'Realms of the Unreal' just scratches surface

By Kevin Thomas
Los Angeles Times

Henry Darger's artwork, created to illustrate the 15,145-page fantasy novel the reclusive Chicago janitor spent 60 years writing, was discovered after his death. A film about Darger's solitary and weather-obsessed life, in a room cluttered with empty Pepto-Bismol bottles and string, is screening at the Doris Duke Theatre. His novel is about the ordeals of little girls menaced by tyrants and protected by dragon-like beings. "In the Realms of the Unreal" Unrated 82 minutes Screening at 6 p.m. today, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Monday, and 1 and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Doris Duke Theatre, Honolulu Academy of Arts

The solitary lodger who resolutely kept to himself had devoted some 60 years of his life to writing a 15,145-page novel called "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnean War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion." It is a monumental — to say the least — saga of child innocence and martyrdom set on an imaginary planet on which the girls' fate sparks many a battle, clearly inspired by Darger's fascination with the Civil War.

What has brought Darger enduring posthumous acclaim, however, are the paintings he created to illustrate his novel, ranging from small portraits to 12-foot-long scrolls in watercolor and collage. Darger also compiled a 5,000-page, handwritten "History of My Life," kept a 10-year meteorology diary — neighbors said the only thing he would ever talk about was the weather — and held on to hundreds of empty Pepto-Bismol bottles and almost a thousand balls of string.

Filmmaker Jessica Yu's "In the Realms of the Unreal" outlines Darger's lonely life, and interviews Lerner's elegant, sympathetic widow, Kiyoko and other Darger neighbors — highlighted by enchanting animation of some of Darger's exquisite scrolls.

In his realm, the seven Vivian Sisters and other little girls are eternally menaced by an array of tyrants who sometimes succeed in subjecting the children to hideous ordeals despite the protective efforts of the dragon-like Blengins. "The Realms of the Unreal" paintings reflect Darger's horrendous childhood, his struggles with Catholicism and his sorrow over being denied the right to adopt a child himself.

The early deaths of his parents, the adoption of his sister, his miserable experiences in Catholic homes for boys, capped by an adolescence at an asylum for feeble-minded children, from which he escaped at 16, certainly suggest how the impoverished Darger would want to retreat into a world of his own creation. While Yu presents an intriguing introduction to Darger and his world, she could have gone further without the film becoming overwhelmed by the magnitude of Darger's unsettling isolation and oeuvre.

Yu deliberately restricted her interviews to those who knew Darger; she eschewed art experts and psychologists. But those acquainted with him, like Kiyoko Lerner, admit they didn't — and couldn't — really know him. So why not include remarks by John M. MacGregor, a psychoanalyst whose 2003 book "Henry Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal" argues that Darger was a victim of Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism?

MacGregor has done a persuasive analysis of the paintings, and surely his comments would be at least as valuable as those of a neighbor who makes a guess that maybe Darger's little girls have male genitalia because Darger didn't know anything about sex.

Yu wants her audience to draw its own conclusions from what she has presented of Darger's work and what she has revealed (which, it could be argued, isn't really sufficient).

But in a film that continually stresses the unknowable nature of its subject, the absence of knowable facts is troubling. Did Darger leave a will? In any event, who became his heirs? (Kiyoko Lerner reportedly controls his estate.)

Isn't the fate of his legacy, especially one so long held in secrecy, worth knowing? Yu persuades the viewer to care about Henry Darger and his art and to become concerned about its fate. She could easily have answered all these questions and included some insights from MacGregor.

In this light, it is good to know that Darger did at last bring "Realms of the Unreal" to a happy conclusion and did resolve his struggle with his faith. And Kiyoko Lerner remarks that she "couldn't imagine anyone with a richer inner life."