Henry Fool (1997) on Netflix
Garbageman Simon Grim lives with his sister Fay and their mother Mary, who is severely depressed. A stranger on probation, Henry Fool, moves into their basement and encourages Simon to write.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb7.1/108,265 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
Simon Grim hauls garbage for a living and lives with his sister Fay and Mary, their mother, who has severe depression. Henry Fool, a stranger, installs himself in their basement and becomes part of their daily lives. Henry notices Simon's interest in literature and encourages him to put his thoughts down in a notebook. Simon fills several notebooks, and the writing turns out to be a poem that many dismiss as pornographic and scatological. Henry urges him to try to get it published, and Simon takes the manuscript to a publisher named Angus, whom Henry claims as a friend. Henry keeps notebooks of his own, which he calls his Confession, and refuses to let anyone read them.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Henry Fool (1997)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Hartley chose not to show Simon's poem to the viewer, believing that films about artists "always get it wrong when they show the art" and that showing it lets the audience participate in judging whether the art is good or bad.
- The characters of Henry and Simon were partly inspired by the relationship between writers James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, while Goethe's Faust was another influence, with Hartley comparing Henry to Mephistopheles and John Falstaff, and Simon with Kaspar Hauser.
- Henry Fool marked the feature film debuts of Thomas Jay Ryan, James Urbaniak and Liam Aiken; Ryan, a stage actor, was cast after Hartley saw him in a play by Richard Foreman called My Head Was a Sledgehammer.
