Stranger Than Fiction
Marc Forster’s “Stranger Than Fiction” marks the 100th film I’ve seen from the 2006 calender year, and another versatile offering from the director of “Monster’s Ball,” “Finding Neverland,” and “Stay.” These four films (and from what I’ve read about his 2001 film- unseen by me- “Everything Put Together”) couldn’t be more different in their stories, but when considered individually, one finds common themes of mortality, loneliness, and- in the case of this film and “Neverland”- a discovery of artistic expression within reality that connects the stories he’s told onscreen. “Fiction” is worthy of comparison to the best of these films (“Ball” and “Neverland” are his highwater marks).
Comparisons to Charlie Kaufman- the modern-day surrealist responsible for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Adaptation.”- are inevitable for “Fiction’s” equally-clever screenwriter Zach Helm, whose idea seems based on the little message at the end of most movies that states that “similarities to any person, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.” His hero is Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), an IRS agent whose simple, number-obsessed life is thrown off-balance when he begins hearing the voice of a narrator, chronicling his every move and activity, beginning with an including the number of times he brushes each tooth. It’s not long before we find out that the voice belongs to Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson, looking emotionally and physically burned-out in a role she hits out of the park), an author suffering from writers block. The reclusive writer- whose publisher has sent an assistant (Queen Latifah, a presence in a role that isn’t much of one onscreen) to help her get out of her rut- is stuck as she works on her next book- she’s can’t figure out how to kill her protagonist, an IRS agent named Harold Crick whose simple lifestyle she’s about to upend on the page with sudden death. The news of his impending death from a disembodied voice (whom he doesn’t recognize as Eiffel’s until later) sends the real Crick reeling, so much that he seeks the advice of literary professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman in his best, loosest performance since “Wag the Dog”), who admires Eiffel. The first thing Hilbert suggests is trying to figure out whether Harold’s in a comedy or a tragedy. Elements of both genres rear their head.
As he did in “Neverland,” Forster shows an instinctive knack for blending fantasy and reality as he takes Harold on a funny and frightening journey of self-discovery. It’s not frightening in a head-spinning, horror movie way; only in the way someone whose had to look themselves in the mirror, face the fear of change that leads to a joy of life they aren’t used to, and look deep down, and decide what they really want in life has at a moment of self-realization. Forster nails that fear to break away from routine, and as played by Ferrell, his protagonist is a character worth rooting for. Ferrell is two-for-two this year with me, both for playing stupid as the win-obsessed race car driver he brought to high comic life in “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” and now as Crick. Like fellow mega-million funnymen Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler, it’s taken the right standard vehicle and a well-timed change-of-pace film for me to truly appreciate Ferrell’s gifts as a comic talent. For Carrey, it was “The Mask” (1994) and “The Truman Show” (1998), while Sandler sold me on his screen persona in “The Wedding Singer” (1998) and “Punch-Drunk Love” (2002). For Ferrell, he made his transformation for me in the same calender year. His Ricky Bobby is just plain funny; his Harold Crick is an evolution of that single-minded persona he usually plays dumb. His role in Woody Allen’s “Melinda & Melinda” last year came close to this type of role, but his Crick is a better companion to his striaght-up silliness that Ferrell plays with sympathetic humor and heartbreak. As was the case with Carrey and Sandler in their first change-of-pace roles, Ferrell’s character is partially inspired to break routine by a woman; in this case, it’s a bakery owner (the terrific Maggie Gyllenhaal, whose sweet, sexy anarchist could inspire change in any guy- the scene where she bakes cookies for Crick has a playful romanticism to it) he’s auditing who hates his guts. Will Harold get the girl who hates him in the end, changing tragedy into comedy, or will he be forced to die for someone else’s art? I wouldn’t dream of giving up the ending- just sit back and watch an endearing main character and the undeniable comic talent playing him onscreen in the act of discovering their full potential. It’s a sight to behold, in a film both funny and touching like all great comedies…and tragedies, for that matter.
