Sundance: Henry Poole Is Here

Luke Wilson is a quiet loner who buys a house in an old suburban Southern California neighborhood, but he doesn’t expect to stay long. Why, he doesn’t say. He blocks out the light with a blanket over the window.

Next door on one side is an older woman who brings him tamales, and on the other is a woman his age who flirts through the chain link. I thought I knew where this was going, but writer Albert Torres and director Mark Pellington (who also co-directed U2 3D) have a few more elements to stir into the mix, including a dollop of magical realism that recalls Frank Capra. It turns out that if you were to thaw It’s A Wonderful Life in the hot California sun, all of that snow would lend a glistening coat to the entire neighborhood, the crystalline hills melting into pools of tears at the feet of people attempting a peaceful end.

Henry Poole is Here has the undeniable power of a sentimental pop song, and much of its mood comes from which songs were chosen for the handful of interludes. Rather than being embellishment, the musical montages may be this film’s spine, and whether I roll my eyes at one more tender music video or tear up like a baby probably depends a lot on how fried my nerves are going in. Good day or bad day. Good life or bad life. End of a work day or mid-way through a festival where one film after another is trying to rock me to the core, six on Sunday, five yesterday.

It’s a sweet and simple movie, dumb as a concrete culvert and unexplainably touching.

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Update: For some reason I want to tack something onto this. The film’s plot involves a water stain in Wilson’s stucco. His neighbor believes it’s the face of Christ; he does not. And even though I said the movie was as dumb as a concrete culvert (have you ever gotten a logical answer out of one?), some of Wilson’s heated responses to his faith-filled neighbors are prickly as a cactus, welling up from deep within. This isn’t an annoyed man but a deeply cynical one, which may be the medicine that helps the sugar go down, so to speak.