Review of The Book of Henry (2017) by Marc S — 16 Jun 2017

Go see The Book of Henry. The Book of Henry is a different kind of film and makes special demands of its audience. Here is a film that asks you to think about hard issues. Here is a film in which real people are subjected to harsh circumstance and react in very human, if not always rational ways. Most contemporary cinema asks nothing of the viewers - instead one is directed by the prevailing norms in the industry to sit back and experience the noise, the visual graphics, the passive roller coaster of disconnected moments with little more substance than a 60 second commercial for alcohol, sugar, or cosmetics. I often ask myself how is this possible before I catch myself and realize the internal question was totally rhetorical - I make the sad connection to our current culture, politics, and business in which all seems to happen by unhealthy default, propelled by base instinct without true engagement and thought. A deeper tradition of classic storytelling was meant to help us move through such times and this film was born of that tradition.

The Book of Henry is beautifully filmed and carried by superb acting. The plot makes many demands of its audience, but above all it demands that you think about many issues: the plight of a childish single mother, a brilliant but ailing adolescent who assumes the responsibility of an adult, the ease of access to guns, the failure of those entrusted to protect us, the horror of child abuse.

The strength of this film is its presence as modern morality tale. There are monsters, but there is magic. There is darkness, but there is light. It is a mistake to require all of the twists of its plot to be easy and logical - it flows more like the Rube Goldberg contraptions in the film which surprise us with inexplicable relationships of cause and effect, and improbable uses of everyday objects. There are moments which allude to The Brothers Grimm, to the sketches of Leonardo DaVinci, and moments that evoke Hitchcock. The ending is pure fable, but that makes sense here as the goal of the film is to pose a simple and sincere question: "What would you do?" The tension raised by this question is a serious challenge. The Book of Henry, where the ordinary and the extraordinary converge, is a totally worthwhile challenge.