Resolution for 2009 - get that elusive silver dot. **Glad to see the ratings are appearing again in ...
Resolution for 2009 - get that elusive silver dot. **Glad to see the ratings are appearing again in reviews, that helps a lot!**
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Stranger Than Fiction (2006) (FILM ONLY REVIEW) Genre: Comedy/Drama Certificate: 12A (UK), PG-13 (USA) Running time: 113 minutes
Director: Marc Forster Writer: Zach Helm
Main Cast: Will Ferrell – Harold Crick Emma Thompson – Kay Eiffel Maggie Gyllenhaal – Ana Pascal Dustin Hoffman – Prof. Jules Hilbert Queen Latifah – Penny Escher
“Stranger than Fiction” is a bit of a hard film to categorise. Part comedy and part drama, there is also a fantastical element to it; it is whimsical and quirky, and based on a simple yet intriguing and (please forgive the pun) novel premise. It brings to mind a number of other films, notably Charlie Kaufman’s “Adaptation” and “Being John Malkovich”, with which it shares a metaphysical element, existential themes and intellectual ambitions. However, “Stranger than Fiction” does not quite reach the same levels of complexity as these films – it appears instead to be a Kaufman film for people who aren’t smart enough to get Kaufman films: think of it as a Diet Kaufman movie and you would be some way there. However, it does provide an interesting insight into the troubled world of being a writer, a world that I suspect anyone who has attempted to write a book (or indeed anything creative or of substantial length) will at once recognise and empathise with.
The film is based around an Inland Revenue office drone by the name of Harold Crick (Will Ferrell). Crick is “a man of infinite calculation”, a dull but dependable type with a tendency to see numbers everywhere and take a strange comfort in precision and routine. Every morning he brushes his teeth 72 times: 36 times back and forth, and 36 times up and down. He goes to bed at precisely 11.13pm every night. He knows exactly how many steps it is from his apartment to the bus stop.
The charisma void that is Harold lives a quietly solitary existence, living in flat so neat and bland that it looks like a hotel room. However, one Wednesday morning his carefully controlled existence is disturbed by the intrusion of a clipped English voice into his bathroom, which appears to be narrating Harold’s every move (accurately…and with a better vocabulary than him). So far, so “Truman Show”. However, things take a sharp turn for the worse after the narrator calmly predicts Harold’s imminent demise as he waits for his bus one morning. Eventually deciding that “I’m not schizophrenic, I’ve just got a voice in my head”, he decides the best way to persuade his narrator not to kill him off is to track her down with the help of an eminent literature Professor, Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman).
Hilbert is quite amused by Harold’s predicament, and seems to relish the task of drawing up a list of living authors who could possibly be writing the narration. Meanwhile, whilst carrying out a tax audit at a local bakery, Harold meets the fiery owner Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a women protesting at the US government through selective payment of her taxes. Opposites attract in the way they do in movieland, and Harold finds he suddenly has more reason to live than ever. Unfortunately, his narrator turns out to be the once celebrated author Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), who, having not published anything for the past 10 years is now close to finishing her masterpiece, a novel called “Death and Taxes” about an IRS inspector called Harold Crick, little knowing that he really exists and is uncontrollably guided by her words. Trapped by writer’s block, the only thing stopping Kay finishing her book is her inability to decide how to kill her protagonist. To make matters worse, her publisher has just dispatched a hard-nosed assistant (Queen Latifah) to help her finish off Harold and finish off her book. As Harold starts to live and love for first time, he becomes convinced that his life is a comedy and therefore he cannot be given an untimely end. However, Kay is renowned as a writer of tragedies who relishes the chance to kill off her characters just as they have the most to live for. This leaves Crick and Eiffel in a moral dilemma about the value of a single human life against what might be a timeless work of art: a book about life, death (and taxes).
I’m sure many of you reading this will be surprised to see Will Ferrell headlining a film with such intellectual pretensions as “Stranger than Fiction”. However, it appears that the star of such lowbrow comedies as “The Anchorman” and “Bewitched” has done a Jim Carrey on us – he shown that in the right film he is quite capable of a subtle, understated and engaging performance, and I thought he made a convincingly lonely Harold Crick. Anyone who has ever felt trapped by routine or stifled by a job that they would rather not do will find it hard not to like the inherently good but boringly pathetic Everyman that Ferrell portrays. Finding out that he is a hero in a novel in the catalyst Harold needs to change his life for the better, and it is very hard not to be rooting for Crick as he strives to live his life whilst not disappointing the author of it.
Ferrell was ably supported by the wonderfully comic scenes with Hoffman, and Emma Thompson proved herself to be funnier than I would have expected as the magnificently bitter Kay Eiffel. However, it is debateable how well the relationship with Gyllenhaal worked; although there was nothing wrong as such with the way she portrayed Ana (indeed, I think she put in a fine performance), the characters as shown never really worked for me as a couple – there was very little chemistry between the actors and nothing to convince me that this was true love being experienced for the first time. While this film may have persuaded me to take Will Ferrell seriously as an actor, he would still not be my first choice as a romantic lead. I think the film could probably have worked just as well without Queen Latifah’s character Penny as well, whose purpose was apparently to speed up the demise of Harold, but who seemed to add little tension in this regard. Her role ultimately seemed to be more a sounding board for Kay’s issues as a writer than as an independent and useful character in herself.
“Stranger than Fiction” is a meditation on life, love, death and our responsibilities to art. It is a rewardingly intelligent film, well scripted for the most part by newcomer Zach Helm, although it does lose the plot a bit towards the end, which is perhaps not as satisfying as it could have been. It may not be up to the lofty standards of Kaufman films, but I think Helm did well with this post-modern tale and he should be a big talent to watch out for in the future. The audience has a rare chance to emotionally participate in not just the story itself, but in how the story is being written, and in the relationship between the creator and the creation. I suppose we have all at some point fantasised about being the protagonist of a book or of writing one ourselves, and this film plays on that common desire and uses it to explore the central themes. We often imagine that we have our own narrator, a voice inside our heads telling us what to be and what to do, and perhaps this is a good hook to get us to suspend our disbelief for a film that brings some fantasy into the drab real world. While the premise might be unusual and (in some places) unbelievable, it manages to be a film that was both funny and poignant, and not many movies manage that. It succeeds as a wake-up call to live our lives to the fullest, as a comedy and as drama, even though it falls a bit flat in being a romance. It is not quite a masterpiece – for it to be that you would have to believe that Eiffel was actually writing one, which I never quite managed – but it was certainly funny, and satisfyingly intellectual enough to be a breath of fresh air between turgid Hollywood blockbusters.
As a final point, I was amused to find out that the last names of the characters in the film - Crick, Pascal, Eiffel, Escher, Baneker, Kronecker, Cayly, Hilbert – are all names of mathematicians who have focussed on the innate order of things. I think it is a fitting little tribute to Harold Crick, the man of “infinite calculation”, and like many things in this film, made me smile.
Recommended.
Official Website: www.sonypictures.com/movies/strangerthanfiction
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
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I enjoyed this movie, I don't think Ferrell has starred in many such movies! good review
Expired-Account 21.03.2008 07:13
I'd quite like to see this one, but there's no rush, great review,very helpful
hlmccarron 03.02.2008 19:14
I do love kaufman films but admittedly they leave me with a frustration headache afterward, maybe I'll enjoy this one minus the headache. Enjoyable review x
Much was written about Will Ferrell's first "dramatic role" as Harold Crick, an IRS ... more
auditor who begins hearing a voice narrating his life. ButStranger Than Fictionis hardly a drama. However, what Ferrell does--like Jim Carrey before him inThe Truman Sh...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Will Ferrell stars as Harold Crick, a lonely tax man whose world is turned upside-down ... more
when he starts hearing a mysterious voice narrating his life. With the help of Professor Jules Hilbert, the bewildered and hilariously resistant Harold discovers he'...
Advantages: Easy to understand - documents ALL her life and her impact upon England as a ruler. Disadvantages: Some people might prefer a 'traditional' film adaptation.
Advantages: Witty, gritty, thrilling... the best gangster film I've seen in years. Disadvantages: A bit of a Deus ex machina ending, some predictable moments...negligable really
Entwife 08.06.2007 (04.02.2008)
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