Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Henry Darger is a fascinating figure -- one of those extreme characters whose private artistic output is at the same time strange and familiar, a collection of strange obsessions born out on paper. There have probably been a lot of people pouring their anxieties into private fantasies, but none of them had quite the tenacity or strangeness of Darger.Jessica Yu's film In the Realms of the Unreal is fascinating, then, inasmuch as it's a film about a fascinating individual. Yu loosely sticks to the standard documentary format, with lots of talking heads and voice-over narration. There are some artistic touches, some of them successful (the strange animation), others of them less so (the child voice over). On the whole it's a competent documentary on the subject, if perhaps a bit overlong, but little more. In the Realms of the Unreal is probably a good introduction to Darger, but if you've already read a couple articles on him, there won't be much new there.

To say this film is good is like saying water is wet. The director has brought to the world a story everyone should not just see...but one you should pay close attention to.At the end of this film you might come away with a sense of..."what if?" By this I mean what if not a soul payed attention to me.Henry Darger was a lonely soul throughout his life. I got the impression he was lonely...by design. He couldn't deal with people because early on in his life he had such difficulties as a child that he figured why deal with real people. How bout I create my own world. This is what he did...and what he did is visually stunning and mentally stimulating. In a basic sense I mean he created some outstanding paintings and oh yeah, there are written stories to go along with each panting. The stories are beyond any Sci-fi fantasy. These are just pure make believe that he actually believed in.Pure innocence is a rarity in the world anymore. If you wanna see some, watch this film and be prepared to cry and be amazed. I know I was.Thank you Jessica Yu.

With the recent focus on outsider art,somebody must have figured that Henry Darger was a natural. Darger was a janitor and well known introvert for years. What was not known (at least until after his death in 1973),was that Darger kept a series of stories & paintings, as a continuing account of a realm of fantasy that only Darger could relate to. Vast volumes of paintings & text were found in the cramped apartment that he lived in for years (he had little family & had less than no use for the company of other people). Jessica Yu's film attempts to tell Darger's story (with extracts of his writing read by the likes of Dakota Fanning,and others). This film is a "must see" for anybody with an interest in art (especially outsider art). As this film is independently produced,it carries no MPAA rating,but does contain a bit of mature subject matter (mainly in the way of some of his paintings depicted that has nudity).

I believe, upon seeing this film, that Henry Darger was an autistic savant, and that his life and artistic work stand as a monument to understanding the condition of the autistic personality, particularly the personality of the autistic savant.An autistic person suffers from a certain amount of confusion in the thought process. They usually have some problems communicating with others. Sometimes they say or do things that they don't mean. They might get work orders confused, and not know it. They might suddenly change subjects during conversation without warning and be unaware of it. The problem is that they are completely unaware that they did something other than what they thought they did, or that they changed the subject of conversation without knowing it.When this confusion arises, arguments follow, because the autistic person is so often unaware of the problem he or she is having (Henry got into arguments with his Nun employers at the hospital, where he was a janitor, over chores he was assigned which he may have failed to complete through an autistic mental lapse, while thinking he had completed them.) Temper tantrums arise due to the process of frustration that occurs when these mental lapses or episodes of confusion happen. The autistic person isn't really being "tempermental". The autistic person is truly being surprised by these events of their own misunderstanding, and may sincerely feel mistreated by those who complain about them.A self-activated tape recorder may help autistic people understand how others are perceiving their conversation and behavior.Autistic people do not always find it easy to communicate with others. Henry Darger spent a lot of time alone, creating a fantasy world out of his wishes to communicate. The phenomenon of the savant has been described as what sometimes develops when an autistic person can focus all their mental energy on a single well of thought and perception. In such cases, it is believed that the whole activity of the brain centers on a single slice of life. This phenomenon is well marked in cases of musical prodigies who have severe autism, so that they could not have been taught music, but learned it spontaneously when circumstance provided them with the proper combination of tools, such as access to both a radio - and a piano.Henry Darger was not terribly abnormal. His was a rather mild case of autism. But he was truly a savant, I believe. There are many people who have mild cases of autism. Some of them may be savants too. Thanks to Henry Darger and this film, their circumstances may more easily come to light, and be better understood.