Stranger Than Fiction

by Anna Pulley

Somewhere between Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland lies Stranger Than Fiction, a restrained comedy by Marc Forster sprinkled with intellectual whimsy and puns galore. It’s a smart film, but it’s also sweet, combining elements of existentialism, romantic gestures, the writing process and even a little animation that visually captures what’s going on in the mind of Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), who is the protagonist of both the film and the book that’s being written about him in the film. Stranger has been compared to the likes of Charlie Kaufman for its self-referential nature, but I wouldn’t go that far. Stranger isn’t meant to be lofty; it may aim for the brain but it hits the aorta.

The story goes like this: Harold is a methodical man, an IRS auditor whose life is based on countless calculations--down to how many strokes he brushes each of his thirty-two teeth. Harold thinks very little of his life outside of implementing the carefully crafted formulas of his day. His drab, repetitive existence makes him the perfect specimen for a novel, which the audience knows of course, but Harold unfortunately doesn’t (cursed dramatic irony!). Primed for a life-altering change, Harold starts to hear a British woman’s voice (Emma Thompson) narrating his life, “only with a better vocabulary.” To use the toothbrushing theme again (couldn’t we all benefit from a few more dental hygienic reminders?), as Harold counts his brush strokes, the voice describes his actions. Understandably, Harold starts to go a little ape-shit on his toothbrush, assuming that’s what’s talking to him.

The constant description that only he can hear continues to plague him and how startlingly accurate it is. But he really starts to worry when the voice tells him, in third person omniscient, that he is going to die soon and seeks out the over-caffeinated, erratic Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), professor of LIT-rature (said in the way only uptight academics with powder blue ties can say it) and staff lifeguard at the University pool. Jules tries to help Harold determine what kind of novel he is in by asking such questions as “Are you the king of the trolls?” and whether anyone has left a Trojan Horse on his doorstep recently. This is the kind of humor I like to geek out on--it’s subdued, literary but not prudishly so, (no one quotes The Canterbury Tales thank god) and filled with puns. Some of my favorites involved the awkward courtship between Harold and Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a tatted up baker who refuses to pay taxes that go to things like war. The two meet when Harold audits Ana’s bakery, which is called “The Uprising” (bahhahahah). Also, later on, Harold brings her “flours” to apologize for his shoddy attempts at expressing romantic interest...because she’s a baker....bahahahahah. As a writer, I admit that I’m biased to humor involving grammar or literary devices but the style of this film appeals to more than just the book sluts of the world. Besides, Maggie Gyllenhaal is charming as ever and everything she says makes me want to lick her. Add the novelist Karen Eiffel’s (Emma Thompson) chain-smoking, nihilist anecdotes, Penny Escher’s (Queen Latifah) quippy sidekick lines and an unforgivably nerdy tax colleague who refers to a guest bedroom as “sleep pod 2” and you’ve got a truly memorable cast of characters to aid in the plot (plot! bahahahah) to kill Harold Crick.

Like Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love and Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, Will Ferrell proves in Stranger that he can in fact act in a role outside of buffoonery, which is not only refreshing but a relief. Indeed, his subtlety and coolness are rather remarkable because he is the ultimate butt of the joke--the one being narrated to death, and doing it voluntarily at that. The moral dilemma of the story is the question of whether it’s worthwhile to die for a masterpiece. If the story of his life is what makes it meaningful, than Harold’s death would be the ultimate poetic sacrifice and after some coaxing from Jules, he willingly accepts this fate. He is, after all, used to a life of following orders, regardless of how the last few weeks of his life have transformed him, essentially making his life worth living. It’s ironic, it’s tragic, it’s comical and Forster does a remarkable job of making the camera play off the progression of the plot. The insignificance of Harold’s life is emphasized at first by long, static shots that make him appear small and meager. As his life is imbued with more and more meaning--he learns guitar, he falls in love, etc--the camera grows with him and the power of his transformation is made that much more visible by such short-distance shots. And as much as I kinda love Queen Latifah ripping on Emma Thompson about the evils of smoking, I couldn’t see a point of her character being in the film, except to give Emma a receptacle to direct her cheerfully scathing comments. Besides that though, the film is a tolerably mushy, mildly reflective meta-narrative that probably won’t make you question the nature of existence but it won’t make you want to punch yourself in the face either, a common Will Ferrell reflex, at least for me.