FILM HIGHLIGHT | April 5, 2024
The films of Hal Hartley all but helped define the legendary American independent film of the 1990s. Richly textured while maintaining a wry distance, his comic dramas cut through the noise of life with a pinpoint-precise sense of human flaw and foible.
His 1998 film Henry Fool might be his greatest achievement. We’re screening it this weekend, with an introduction by guest curator David Schwartz, as part of our ongoing Queens on Screen series, celebrating cinematic depictions of our home borough. The neighborhood Woodside is the lovingly filmed setting for this rowdy, hilarious saga, in which a depraved wanderer with a literary flair named Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan), inspires the shy sanitation worker Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) to write a book-length poem that, of course, catapults him to fame. In her New York Times review, Janet Maslin wrote, “Shot so beautifully by Michael Spiller that its squalid Queens, N.Y., settings assume an instant mythic quality, Henry Fool is a perfect modern parable.”
This unlikely ode to bohemian life is also a bracing examination of the age-old struggle between art and commerce, and a domestic odyssey about young adults looking to escape their tortured family lives, featuring Parker Posey in a winning comic supporting role. Henry Fool won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes.
Playing this Sunday, April 7, at 5:00 p.m., in a 35mm print.
