Henry Fool

5 out of 5 stars
I rewatched this film for the first time in four years in preperation for Fay Grim (which is in my netflix queue). And still, I think this film is incredible. Hal Hartley embodies the indie film rise -- meaning that he found a team of actors who work together so, so well and who work from his (very lengthy and wordy) script and take the roles seriously. It would have been an easy to play these roles ironically or to make a farce out of them, but Hartley and his cast have found the perfect balance of humor and honesty which is what makes this film so powerful and heartbreaking. The general theme is something that has been covered numerous times in other films (ie. what is art? who is to argue about taste, one man's trash is another man's treasure, etc) but Hartley finds the time (2 hours and 17 minutes, exactly) to really explore his ideas and he allows the actors to take their time with the difficult dialogue (which is something that almost never fully satisfies me in shorter, mainstream films). This film is liking watching a great and unknown off broadway play -- it's very 'stagey' (in a good way) not only the literal staging but Hartley's use of sound and dialogue as sound. This is a film that always stays with me and I haven't seen anything recently (possibly since American Beauty) that has had that effect.