Henry Poole is Here (Movie)

Henry Poole is Here (2008) [D: Marl Pellington. Luke Wilson, Rhada Mitchell, Adriana Barraza] Henry thinks he’s dying, moves into a house on the street where he grew up, and waits for the end. It’s not to be. The little girl next door is traumatised by her father’s abrupt departure. A friendly neighbour tries to cheer him up. The real estate agent has arranged for a repair to the stucco and a repaint, which produces a water stain that looks vaguely like the face of Jesus as popularly imagined. A drop of blood appears, too. So the plot point is: Is that face really a miraculous appearance? Will the various wounded people be healed by their faith? Are the healings mere coincidence?
     Major themes, but the movie fails to come to grips with them. Faith and lack of it are seen as mere personal quirks, on much the same level as preferences for apple pie and cheesecake.
     On the other hand, it succeeds quite nicely as a character study. Henry is a baffled, angry, and sad guy who is afraid to hope. His response to the bad news may seem odd at first: he actually wanted to buy the house he grew up in, but it wasn’t available. But really he wants to know what his life has amounted to. His parents fought when he was young, he has no relatives or friends, all he has is a photograph of three smiling people: his father, his mother, and himself. Memories make us. What do Henry’s make him? Something of a failure, which is why his impending death seems such a randomly cruel fate. It’s not surprising that Henry’s paralysed into inaction. When he writes “Henry Poole was here” on his living room wall, it seems a fitting epitaph.
     But the people in the neighbourhood provoke him into action. He doesn’t like the picture on the garage wall, not what the credulous make of it. He doesn’t like the hurt that numbs his little neighbour. He doesn’t like the friendly believer who gives him pie as a welcome gift, and then spreads the word about the miracle. He’s attracted to the little girl’s mother despite himself; and when the little girl begins to speak again, something like a sense of worth begins to form in Henry’s nearly empty heart. He takes a sledge hammer to the wall of the garage, and the roof comes down on him. The tests in the hospital reveal that the  diagnosis of doom was false. The movie ends on a note of hope. Maltin gives it two stars, but I’ll give it **½