Documenting Genius?

I gobble up documentaries, and by their ever-growing appeal, so do many other people as well. The obvious ‘stranger than fiction’ appeal is always a refreshing break from regular escapism, whereas their ability to present ideas and issues thoughtfully and thoroughly is always good head-food, too. What I find particularly appealing is the insiders view into the lives of eccentrics, geniuses, or simply people, who, in watching them express the complexity of being human. This particular view is a fondness of many a great documentary filmmaker ala Herzog, Morris, etc., and which as a sub-genre has grown vastly in the last decade, although interesting people have always captivated.

I could retread some notables in a very deficient list: Gates of Heaven, Crumb, Grizzly Man, American Movie, Gray Gardens, etc., but I wanted instead to pick a couple that, of late, I’ve felt very strongly about: The Devil and Daniel Johnston and In the Realms of the Unreal.

I just finished watching The Devil and Daniel Johnston, and I was blow away by the story of Johnston, who, I have to admit in my ghastly unhipness, I never paid much attention to past his few songs on the Kids soundtrack. Watching this documentary made me feel as if I’d overlooked a legendary and brilliant, though deeply troubled, man.

What makes this documentary especially fascinating is that Johnston basically documented his entire life on film and cassette tape, not to mention through his music and art. These documents interspersed with a plethora of interviews with family and friends creates a thoroughly indepth and multifaceted portrait of Johnston, which becomes more and more fascinating and unbelievable as the film goes on.

What moved me, as always does, is the underlying motif of an artist finding his own voice, and sticking to it wherever it may take him. No matter how out of hand this path may seem, there is always something, dare I say, nearly divine about people who are at one with their art to such a degree. It’s difficult to imagine in such extremes, for Johnston is obviously a very unstable and delusional man at times, and yet the spontaneous freedom of his expression is enviable. The immense and seemingly uncapped creativity of the man is awe-inspiring, in light of the many difficulties he has faced. Director Jeff Feuerzeig did a great job in bringing together a plethora of material to create a well rounded and touching documentary.

To take the eccentric artist theme one step further, as I was watching The Devil and Daniel Johnston, I kept thinking about Jessica Yu’s Documentary on Henry Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal. The obvious correlation between the two is that both of these men were in their own nearly childlike worlds, each of which had its own language and symbolism, and each completely unbound in its expressive borders. But where Johnston was adamant about thrusting himself into the limelight, Darger was a near-recluse who’s work never found an audience, nor, ultimately it seems, was it meant to.

Darger’s work revolves around a group of young girls he created, The Vivian Girls, who are the protagonists of his obsessive and self-contained fantasy works which involve tens of thousands of manuscript pages as well as hundreds of colorful and surreal pieces of art, illustrating their adventures. Just type his name in Google and look at the fascinating plethora of creatively surreal works he has produced. There is a caveat…his obsession with young girls, and often shocking violence, has been looked at as either innocent or troubling, a controversy the film touches upon, for it is obviously a big part of the subject, but as always it’s for the individual to judge their merit.

Darger was another man who was, as the documentary shows, a deeply disturbed individual with the proclivity toward an obsessive amount of creative expression. It’s difficult not to appreciate Darger’s pictures and the maintenance of his vision, however strange it may be. Like Johnston, much of Darger’s work revolves around a constant battle between good and evil, with odd religious underpinnings. This often reflects what must have been the great internal battle that both of these men faced their entire lives.

The story of Darger is less indepth and more speculative due to him being virtually unknown, but the few bits of information that are brought up about childhood abuse and institutionalization offer insights into the need to escape into the fantasy realms that Darger created. The Realms of the Unreal isn’t the greatest documentary, for there are a lot of gaps that are filled in by Wu’s own creative license, but as an invitation into Darger’s work it gives us an opening through which to see into the life of a fascinating individual.

What I find so amazing, is the lifelong pursuit of artistic expression found in both Darger and Johnston, despite the obvious darkness they had to deal with internally due to whatever mental or spiritual instabilities they were saddled with. Whether they were, or are in Johnston’s case, mad or not, they were in the thrall of something thatkept them afloat and which in the end they were inseparable from.