So here we have a garbageman character with underdeveloped social skills who turns out to have a tremendous talent for writing poetry, yet he isn’t even the film’s main character! Hal Hartley makes a series of odd creative decisions here and devises a titular character who should be seen as disgusting and irredeemable. Yet he makes it work, showing that even a man like him can have friends and inspire others. His mentor-mentee relationship with Simon feels unique and there is humor underneath that dark, dark material.

Simon Grim lives a routine, seemingly boring life as a garbageman with his mentally ill mother Mary and a promiscuous sister Fay. One day a flamboyant man, Henry Fool, moves into their basement and befriends Simon. Fancying himself as a writer, Henry is unemployed, is a bullshitter of the highest order and later turns out to be on probation after a stint in prison for statutory rape. When Simon expresses interest to the books Henry brings, the latter gifts him a notebook and tells him to write out his thoughts. Simon does so and the poetry that he writes either disgusts readers or inspires them. Simon eventually brings his poetry to a publisher, Angus, who Henry claims to know. However Angus rejects the submission and it turns out that Henry was only a janitor in his company. Having learned of the existence of the Internet, Henry encourages Fay to upload Simon’s poetry and it becomes a viral hit. Meanwhile Henry impregnates Fay after a sexual encounter and despite his freewheeling lifestyle is led to marry her and live a mundane life.

I’ve seen my share of black comedies but this one surely wins the prize for how dark it is willing to get while maintaining a light-hearted tone. Simon is a weirdo who spies on people having sex. In addition to the crime he was convicted of, Henry is a rapist and thinks of himself as an underappreciated genius when he is merely a pathetic loser. Hartley goes to extreme lengths to make the characters here gross. Simon spews out a comical amount of vomit on two occasions. Henry constantly lies, begs for money and takes advantage of Mary. I’m not even sure why they let him stay in their basement as he obviously can’t pay anything. The magic of this film is that despite the crassness of the characters, there’s something appealing and uplifting in the relationship between Henry and Simon. Henry may be a low-life braggart who can’t back up any of his boasts, yet he does inspire Simon’s writing career and set his life in a radically different direction. Plus as we are so often told in movies, as awful a person as Henry is, he does have a core of decency deep inside him.

I don’t care this messaging nor do I sympathize with any of the characters. But I have to admit that this is a very slickly executed film set in a fully realized world. It’s funny how Simon spends the whole time wearing his garbageman uniform, even when he is off work and after he has resigned. Then once he gets his book deal, he puts on an expensive coat on top of it. The supporting character Warren goes from street hood, to suited canvasser for a right-wing politician to domestic abuser. The neighborhood shop run by Mr. Deng gets gentrified into a cafe with poetry readings. The film even covers the rise of the Internet and how Simon wouldn’t have been a success if his work hadn’t been picked up by rebellious anti-establishment kids online. So the characters may be terrible people but the film does succeed in capturing the cynical zeitgeist of the era.

Surprisingly there are two sequels to this, bringing back the same characters and actors and so making it a real trilogy. Unfortunately neither of them seem like they’re any good so it’s unlikely that I’ll ever get around to watching them. As much I detest the characters here. I readily admit that this first entry is a fine film that is well worth watching.