I'm hardly what you'd call an art-documentary freak, and yet this makes two years in a row that I've been totally blown away by a freakin' art-documentary! What's up with that?!?

First off, every last one of you who reads this, who has a single artistic bone in your body, and has a love of nature, owes it to yourself to see last year's Rivers and Tides - it is resplendently breathtaking. Now, fast forward one year, and here comes another masterpiece of the genre. In the Realms of the Unreal has instantly jumped onto my top ten movies of 2005 list. I hardly want to say anything about it - this movie needs to be seen with fresh eyes - don't let anyone spoil it's magic for you. In the broadest terms though, it is a biography of "outsider" artist/writer Henry Darger and a look at his work. Otherwise, I will say no more, except that I am still quite literally stunned now, hours after seeing it - awesome.

5 out of 5.

Uh, Bradley....do I know you from BOM? I thought you were a new member, but there is only one person I remember from last year that loved Rivers and Tides and we used to talk about it. BTW, Rivers and tides was an excellent movie, I like your taste, and see that we have already agreed on several movies' quality.

I'll keep my out for Realm of the Unreal seeing as how we seem to have similar tastes as far as this forum is concerned at least.

I think he's totoronto.

I am Bradley J. Witherberry from San Francisco, not Totoro from Toronto!

l really wanna see this too...l saw Ebert and Roeper's tv show with it a few days ago. looks awesome. :up:

Ok Bradley!

Well I looked up Realms at Rottentomatoes and they are not loving it. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/in_the_ ... he_unreal/

With 25 entries, * diliked it, which is giving it only a 68% approval rating and 6.6/10. Cream of the Crop 75% at 6.9/10.

Compared to Rivers and Tides (63 entries) 98% approval (8.1/10) and Cream of the Crop (95% at 7.8/10). That's quite a difference, so I don't know how your parallel hold up with the exception of both being about artists. I know you don't want to give too much away, but I think the specialty of artist documentation is that there are two artists. The one in front of the lense and the one behind it.

How was the actual documenter's hand in Realms? Or was it more purely because of Darger?

As I mentioned before, this film is so special that I highly recommend you see it for yourself before you get caught up in other reviewer's interpretations of it. That includes reading my comments, and the quotes from reviewers below which may contain thematic spoilers of a sort...

Some of the negative reviews are because they believe the film's director manipulated Darger's art for effect - they essentially seemed to feel this was a kind of blasphemy, yet Darger himself is shown to commonly use other artists' work in the service of his own, as well as technologies such as photo enlargement. I think the director's technique is fully in the spirit of Darger's work and does an excellent job of elucidating his real and fictional worlds. Remember, Darger wasn't just a painter, but also a novelist and journalist - the paintings were primarily illustrations of his 15,000 page novel titled "In the Realms of the Unreal" - the director's animation work is a superb weaving of the novel into Darger's own journaled life.



Other negative reviews were along the line that his work is a kind of pedophilia - IMHO, this speaks more to the reviewers' unresolved issues than to Darger's. His biography is a very sad story of tragedy and abuse, from which I can well imagine him in the role of a protector of children, not an exploiter.



So, as usual, Rotten Tomatoes be damned - this is a masterpiece!

:2up:

Newsflash...

In the Realms of the Unreal is playing on many PBS stations this Sunday at 11pm...

(Check out the PBS website for specific listings and more info...)

Time to set the ol' generic Tivo-esque thing. (Playin' at 4 AM here).

Thanks for the heads up!

Oh yeah. l ended up watching it in real time, as l was awake at 4 AM anyway (and am now awake at 6 am. what's wrong with me?) As l was saying...

sigh

l'm finding it incredibly hard to write down my thoughts on this film. l typed up like 3 paragraphs, and ended up deleting them, twice already. lt just never comes out right. (fairly common problem for me, though)

Regardless, it is indeed, amazing. Absolutely gorgeous, and one of the most fascinating films l've ever watched (and l can assure you, back when l had netflix l watched quite a lot of very interesting films). l'm completely blown away at how much this guy did, how odd he really was. As far as the technical side, that too was great. Yu uses many different techniques to tell the story and keep it fresh and interesting; animating Darger's own illustrations to tell his epic story of the Vivian girls, (a story narrated brilliantly by young Ms. Fanning); the classic "talking heads" approach with the few people who were in regular contact with the man (neighbors, landlady) etc. That's about it, l suppose, until l manage to type more coherently.

And, if this were a 2005 flick, l'd be right with ya, Bradley. In fact, it would be my #1 of the year so far. But, according to imdb, it's actually 2004. Still one of the 10 best of last year.

Thanks once again, for the PBS heads up.

PS. l told my mom to watch it, since l recorded it, and so far she said it's great. (Hasnt finished it.) And my mom has no taste whatsoever. She ''didn't get'' Eternal Sunshine. Coincidentally, she also did like Rivers and Tides when l forced her to watch it. Then again, she's an artist. Guess art documentaries work for artists more indie "art" films.