An Honest Man Is Always In Trouble
A solid four of five stars. This is a quintessential "indie", or cult film, just too intelligent for the mass market. After watching it on DVD, and loving it, I hesitated to offer this review once I realized it had been pretty roundly panned — every review I read objected to the camera angles, lost the plot (or accused the director of losing the plot), and despised the character of Henry Fool, the spy, present throughout but only in person towards the end. They just don't get it. This is a surrealist comedy/commentary which can only be appreciated in a very right-brain way. It's not for nothing that the protagonist, Fay Grim (Parker Posey), is a woman, or that women are disproportionately represented in the production (read the credits). Hal Hartley, the writer/director, is not telling a strictly linear story — the bottom line here is that a single mom just wants to have a normal life while the world goes nuts around her. I guess how well one understands the film depends on how nuts, and funny, one sees the world being...
Possibly one is tempted to think this is all so surreal it's meaningless. I wonder. Henry Fool, who gets the chase started, seems to have led an impossible, smart-Forrest Gump sort of spy life. Except that people almost exactly like Henry Fool exist. I can think of one, in particular, a former special forces type, who might as well have been the template for this character. To be honest, these guys' lives make no sense, and that's very faithfully portrayed in the film. Nor do their close friends, perhaps even their wives, know who's on first. The "Hunh??" factor in the film is absolutely real. Hartley is clued in, his reviewers are not.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the toss-off references I saw, or imagined that I saw. Fay Grim tracks her husband Henry Fool through a photo of an orgy, just as George Smiley (Alec Guinness) tracks down the Soviet spymaster Karla through a photo of an orgy in the acclaimed BBC mini-series Smiley's People. At one point Henry Fool remarks "I was just passing through", a catch-line from Vin Diesel's character in The Chronicles of Riddick. As I say, I may be imagining it, but the film is chock-full of odd, off-the-wall references. It would be a most satisfying parlor game to spot them all...
Why, exactly, did the film get panned? Call me paranoid but I'm pretty sure that apart from an IQ disconnect one other important reason is that a minor, unpleasant, but very sexy character is a renegade Israeli Zionist operative, who's planned to have Fay Grim's son killed (but is foiled) in order to obtain Henry Fool's notebook "confessions." Putting Zionist trouble-makers in a bad light, that's taboo. 'No, Hal, you mustn't do that'.
Heck, you may not like the film. But after I watched it, read the reviews, and started to doubt my own reaction, I watched it again with Sharon. The second time it still worked for me and she thought it was great, too. And she knows more about that spy stuff, anyhow, than I do. It's a hugely amusing film, very entertaining, and smart. Unfortunately, probably destined for oblivion in video rental stores. Either that or a half-life in university film clubs.
Posted by George Kenney on June 10, 2007 5:06 PM 
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Comments
Well, I'll watch it at least! I ran across your site because of your interview with Jon Stokes, but have been too busy reading to listen to it yet. I like how you write.
Posted by: Siri De Licori | June 15, 2007 3:39 PM