Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Grade:A
I’m constantly surprised that films can still make me feel like a kid again, marvelling at the wonders of the craft. The opening sequence of Marc Forster’s brilliant new Stranger than Fiction had me grinning as widely as possible at the ingenuity of its visual style. Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) brushes his teeth in the morning and then ties his tie and eats breakfast as a narrator (Emma Thompson) poetically explains that Crick is a man of habit and of planning. As Crick goes about his day, various titles pop up and expand on their own, creating a visual record of brush strokes and bus schedules, like a real-life game of The Sims.
This beautiful effects work is seamlessly integrated into the opening sequence, and it sets the tone for the film as a whole. It seems that the narrator is not an omniscient narrator, but rather author Kay Eiffel, who is writing her new book. Crick is her main character, except he very much exists in reality.
This is the most creative film I’ve seen in a long time, but what makes this a great film is that director Forster is able to strike the perfect balance between innovation and entertainment. The screenplay has hilarious moments, but as Eiffel continues writing her novel, it becomes clear that she intends to kill Crick, so the film becomes intensely bittersweet, but optimistic at the same time. This is an original film that doesn’t alienate its audience at the expense of its ingenuity.
The film just makes you happy; I know that’s more than lacking in specifics, but I just felt purely giddy during this film. As a student of Film, I appreciated the construction of it: there is no unnecessary scene and the filmmakers manage to make the outrageous scenario work.
As a student of Literature, however, I loved what the film had to say about the process of writing. Once Crick finds out who Eiffel is (through the help of a professor, Jules Hilbert, played by Dustin Hoffman) and meets her, the film takes a shift in tone. Eiffel is now faced with the dilemma of killing off a real person, and the film has such a strong commentary about authors and their characters and how they interact. Even if Crick weren’t a real person, would the act of killing him be any less tragic?
The film also passes my litmus test for gimmicky films like these: Would the film work without the gimmick? The answer is yes, due to an utterly charming romance included between Crick and Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a baker he is in the process of auditing. Their meeting, courtship, and eventual romance could provide more than enough material for a film on its own. After a day of cataloguing her receipts, she offers him some milk and cookies and proceeds to give the loveliest rendition of her reasons for becoming a baker. It’s an amazingly simplistic and powerful scene.
Director Forster last made the disastrous Stay, so it’s nice to see him make such a marked improvement this time around. He’s certainly my favorite director in terms of visual style. Stay was one of the most gorgeously photographed films I’ve ever seen, and he brings that visual flair to Stranger than Fiction. The film has a wonderful color palette of grays, whites, and yellows that gives it a brisk look, and there are a variety of visually interesting locations, including Crick’s and Hilbert’s offices, Eiffel’s writing studio, Pascal’s bakery, and the apartment of a friend of Crick’s (Tony Hale).
The casting is also spot-on and full of interesting choices. Gyllenhaal can play these types of endearing romantic roles in her sleep, but she does them extremely well. Hoffman and Thompson are both reliable veterans and they are both fantastic. It’s Will Ferrell, however, who has to sell the film and he proves here that he has skills that go far beyond the broad comedies he’s known for. He plays it way down here, but still delivers the moments of comedy that are required of him. It’s an incredibly strong performance.
Stranger than Fiction ultimately acts like a fable, though. Because there is never some sort of realistic explanation given for why Harold hears Kay’s narration, we must simply accept that this is how it happens in the world of the film. However, for those who must try to find some realism here, I suggest that perhaps we are merely witnessing Eiffel’s story unfold as she types it. We’re given plenty of clues to suggest that Eiffel has a vivid enough visual imagination (as she considers various ways of killing Crick, we see them come to life as she looks on) and is potentially mentally unstable enough, as presented in the film, to imagine a character coming to visit her.
For this viewer, however, I’d rather believe that the film is meant to be taken literally, showing a simple man learning to appreciate the fragility of life once he becomes aware of the fact that it will soon be taken from him. The final ten minutes of the film (and especially Thompson’s closing narration) are intensely poetic and moving. Towards the end of the film, Professor Hilbert, a noted Eiffel scholar, reads the finished manuscript of Eiffel’s work and declares it a masterpiece. Having just seen the novel play out in front of us, we can’t help but agree.
Bottom Line:
Stranger than Fiction is a potentially gimmicky film (man finds out he’s a character in a book after hearing a narrator in his everyday life) that becomes a transcendantly poetic fable about the fragility and importance of life.
© 2004-2009 Ben Waldorf. Posted November 10, 2006. IMDB