True Films 3.0 - Kevin Kelly

In the Realms of the Unreal
By Jessica Yu
2005, 82 min.
Available form Amazon
Rent from Netflix
Rare image of Darger
(top). One of thousands
of pages of his singlespaced
manuscript
(left). Images from his
fantasy.
A poor old man lives 50 years as an absolute recluse without a single friend. He speaks to no
one; he talks only to himself in his room. Using different voices, he acts out his rage at the
mistreatment he experience growing up in orphanages and institutions for the mentally handicapped.
When he finally leaves his room to die in a hospital (where he once worked as a janitor),
his landlords discover in his room the longest novel ever written – a towering stack of 15,000
pages. His tale recounts an imaginary, nearly endless series of battles between evil adults who
wage war against innocent children – specifically seven angelic sisters. Despite its stupendous
length, this story and the man’s life would have been utterly forgotten except for one amazing
wrinkle. The man, Henry, painted hundreds of scenes from his “realms of the unreal” on long
scrolls in amazing detail. His paintings were immediately recognized as a work of art. He had
gift: an exquisite sense of color, an eye for composition, and a true artist’s vision. There was a
touch of genius in him, one that not a single other human had ever known about. This clever
films manages to digitally animate Darger’s scrolls so their enhanced scenes represent the
battles which consumed Darger, and through his zany colorful images you enter into his strange
world, which he spent 50 years building in complete secrecy. His is not an welcoming world,
born out of the pain of his own history; it’s truly weird. But instead of spending 50 years in his
room consuming TV, he spent 50 years producing his own fantasy, in great curious detail, and
for that achievement, he deserves this worthwhile journey into his world and back.
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