[box cover]  Henry Fool  The question regarding Henry Fool
(1997) is not whether it is a great film, but why it is Hal
Hartley's only great film (so far, anyway). Hartley has made
some ten features, and though there is a cult around him, his
pictures usually have the arch mannerisms and tortured dialogue
of a junior-high play, in which none of the babbling characters
actually seem to be in the same piece of work. Henry Fool comes
out of nowhere, a moving, beguiling film that is at root unlike
all of Hartley's other work. For one thing, it's one of the few
convincing films about writing and the writer's life. It's a
magical film, about the power of words to change us. It's also a
comedy, but the way James Joyce's Ulysses is a comedy, with a
lusty and almost tragic view of life. It's also one of those
rare films in which, if you don't know the plot, you really
never know what is going to happen next. Henry Fool begins as if
the premise is going to be how a stranger arrives and changes
the lives of those he find