Stranger than Fiction
Jim Carrey has done it; Bill Murray too, and now, in Stranger than Fiction, Will Ferrell accepts the challenge of a serious role. In suite with the current movie trend, Ferrell’s decision should not come as a surprise, especially when we consider the actual challenge or seriousness of Ferrell’s two-dimensional role.
Ferrell is definitely not playing Frank the Tank from Old School or Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights. He is Harold Crick, a man “who lived a life of solitude; he would walk home alone; he would eat alone and precisely at 11:13 every night he would go to bed alone.” What the narrator describes is an empty life Ferrell wears well on his face, but which his character is oblivious to, since he is absorbed by things like the fullness of soap containers in public restrooms. As the clever digital graphics underline, Harold Crick’s reality is numbers and grids. Indeed, his life is a daily routine of mathematical precision fashioned by a consciousness that more closely resembles a binary code than a soul. His watch is even more responsive to life than he, and the film hints at it being his soul. In complete abstraction, Harold counts his steps as he trots to the bus stop, while his watch “delights in the feeling of the crisp wind rushing over its face.” At the end of the day, after endless calculations as an IRS agent, Harold Crick retraces his steps as we watch the digital numbers count back down toward zero, the sum of his life. He returns to his quiet and undecorated apartment, which is as impersonal as a hotel room. He does nothing more within it than eat, wash and sleep.
In dulled peace, his days plod forward, each one no different than the last, accumulating with as little significance as numbers on an empty beaker; until, one day, he hears a voice narrating his life. The voice is more perceptive and articulate than his. Naturally, Harold is disturbed and not only because it is not his or that it is a woman’s, but also because it shatters the glass of the vacuum within which he lives and breathes. The novelist’s voice (Emma Thompson) articulates the previously unnoticed sounds and sensations of his day; more disturbingly, his desire for Anna Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal)—the hot, principled, tax-evasive baker he was sent to audit—in such passionate terms he screams at it to “shut up” in the hope to stifle his amorous yen. Thus, the voice of conscious engagement and reflection makes his life richer yet more frustrating. The film tracks the development of his consciousness to his apprehension of death and his courageous response to it. An important narrative arc for our escapist and numbed zeitgeist, but the film’s strictly allegorical script confines its actors to flattened roles, of which they do manage to make the best.
Harold Crick is little more than an idea, and Anna Pascal a cliché. Throwing a finger to convention, she is the tattooed, tank-topped alarm clock to Harold Crick’s existential slumber. Consequently, their relationship is a working out of ideas more than hearts. The same applies to all the characters. Notwithstanding this limitation, the film is clever. The camera work is graceful, specifically the bus scenes, and the screenplay is quirky with a kind agenda. The film is not always dexterous when mixing comedy with tragedy; however, as it progresses, it is easy to get more comfortable in our seats as we accept it for what it is: a charming film with a simple and agreeable message to get up, get out there and give it a shot. It’s worth it. After all, who of us really wants to be sitting in front of the TV when the crane of fate comes crashing through our walls?
Story: B-
Acting: B
Visuals: B+
Originality: B
Enjoyability: B
Overall: B
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