Sunday, April 26 at 6:00 PM – Gene Siskel Film Center – 164 N State St
Tickets: $13 at the door or purchase in advance
HENRY FOOL
Directed by Hal Hartley • 1997
A lonely garbageman named Simon Grim puts his ear to the ground in Woodside, Queens, and summons a scoundrel who will upend the lives of everyone around him. Henry Fool (“centuries ago it had an E at the end”) is a depraved horndog, a felon, a writer of a magnum opus (unfinished), and he cracks open Simon’s world like an egg. While Henry Fool contains all the humanist trappings of Hartley’s earlier films (deadpan humor, blue collar weirdos, artistic struggle), it deepens and darkens that work, going down a twisted path strewn with domestic violence, suicide, pedophilia, a ’90s version of MAGA, plus its fair share of excrement and puke. All of which makes CFS very proud to be the archival custodians of Hal Hartley’s 35mm films, including this one. Starring James Urbaniak as Simon, Thomas Jay Ryan as Henry, an underrated Kevin Corrigan, and always fabulous Parker Posey as Fay Grim – she of chronic bedhead and a bad attitude. (RL)
137 min • Possible Films • 35mm from the Chicago Film Society collection
Preceded by: “Share the Care” (Chicago Park District, 1941) – 2 min – 35mm from Chicago Film Society
“Share the Care” has been preserved by Chicago Film Society with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation
“I wanted a new modern myth — something broad, but penetrating, that sketched in who we might be here and now. Henry himself is the personification of the inconvenient push and pull of events that cause us to become a community rather than a mob, whether we like it or not.” – Hal Hartley
“The affectless precision of Hal Hartley’s previous work is absolutely no preparation for the brilliance and deep resonance of his “Henry Fool.” Here is a great American film that’s no more likely than “Nashville” to turn up on the American Film Institute’s Top-100 hit parade (where “Rocky” outranks “The Searchers”) but will linger where it matters: in the hearts and minds of viewers receptive to its epic vision.” – Janet Maslin, NY Times
From the Collection: This season at the Gene Siskel Film Center we’ll be highlighting prints from the Chicago Film Society’s collection, which has grown over the past decade to include over 3,000 individual items on 16mm, 35mm, and 70mm, most representing movies that aren’t available on film through distribution companies or other archives. We loan prints from the collection to venues all over the world and all over the country (last year over 5,000 non-Chicagoans attended screenings of our prints in other towns), but this is the first time we’re highlighting our collection in a series right here where we live!
NEXT UP: PRE-CODE PICTURE PARTY! May 1 – 3 at the Logan Center for the Arts