Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Directed by Marc Forster
Written Zach Helm
Starring Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah, Emma Thompson
Release Date November 10th, 2006
Published November 8th, 2006
Director Marc Forster is an exceptionally underrated director. In four features he has yet to make a less than brilliant movie, how many directors can say that. The resume is extraordinary. Monster's Ball, which won an Oscar for Halle Berry, a feat that looks more and more amazing with each ensuing performance from Ms. Berry. Finding Neverland, the J.M Barrie bio with the equally brilliant Johnny Depp, was a deserving Best Picture nominee.
Then there is the curious sci fi thriller Stay. This ingenious, marvelously directed film divided critics and met with complete audience indifference. For me Stay was a revelation and one of the best films of 2005.
Forster's latest is another movie that is dividing critics and only catching a modest audience. Stranger Than Fiction, starring Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson, couldn't be any more different from Stay. This wonderfully wordy, literate, deadpan comedy has a complicated premise that is executed with breezy ease and light hearted intelligence. It's just simply a terrific little movie.
Will Ferrell stars in Stranger Than Fiction as Harold Crick. Harold is an IRS agent with a penchant for counting everything from steps to the strokes of his toothbrush. Harold's life is regimented, scheduled and timed to the minute. Timing becomes a crucial aspect of Harold's life as his unique wrist watch begins mixing up his life. Of course if a wacky wrist watch were Harold's only problem, he'd be happy.
Along with the wacky watch Harold has begun hearing a voice. Not voices, mind you, but a single voice that happens to be narrating his every move. Harold does what comes naturally in a situation like this, he consults a psychiatrist who immediately diagnoses him a schizophrenic. Unconvinced, Harold pleads for help in a more literary fashion to explain why his life is being narrated.
Enter professor Jules Hibbert (Dustin Hoffman) , a literary professor with a keen insight into narration and the art of the novel. Hibbert also believes that Harold is crazy until he hears the words ``Little did he know '', a literary device that professor Hibbert has written volumes on. The phrase leads Hibbert to help Harold find his narrator and devine whether Harold is trapped within a comedy or a tragedy.
Parallel to Harold's story is that of novelist Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). A long respected writer, Ms. Eiffel is dealing with a case of writer's block so severe that her publisher has assigned an assistant (Queen Latifah) to keep her on track. Karen happens to be the narrator that Harold is looking for and her writer's block is a function of her inability to decide how to kill Harold Crick.
Writer Zak Helm came up with this wonderfully quirky story but it is director Marc Forster who gives it a visual life. Using various visual devices to lay out Harold's quirks and Karen's fantasies, Forster takes an exceptionally literary story and gives it texture and its own very unique reality. The story of Stranger Than Fiction is a bit of a mindbender at times but Forster manages to make it accessible, even comfortable and easy to follow for those willing to follow the movie's unique brand of logic.
Will Ferrell is terrific as the downbeat, average Joe Harold. Known more for his wildside, Ferrell indulges his rarely seen mild side to craft Harold as a believable character in an unbelievable situation. When Harold does come out of his shell and expresses his exasperation in more typically Will Ferrell ways, he manages to remain true to the character while delivering a few of the kinds of laughs we expect from a Will Ferrell character.
Maggie Gyllenhaal shows up in Stranger Than Fiction as Ana, the unlikely love interest for Harold. The romance in Stranger Than Fiction unfolds in the most wondrous of ways. Harold, unable or unwilling to approach Ana, has this crush thrust upon him by the narrator who leads him into the romance and then leaves him to cultivate it on his own. Harold is far from a natural romantic and the relationship develops strangely but in the most lovely of ways.
What I loved about Stranger Than Fiction is how smart it is about literature and literary conceits. The way Dustin Hoffman, as the literary professor Harold speaks to his narrator, speaks of the phrase 'little did he know', how he could write reams of papers about that phrase and its role in literature, its various meanings and interpretations. Part of the wonder is the way Hoffman delivers this line, with impish gleam in his eyes and boundless enthusiasm, but a bigger part is the truth of why he and we find it such a wondrous phrase.
Director Marc Forster's approach to Stranger Than Fiction was to create unusual characters and a universe in which those characters can exist in their own reality. A reality similar to our own but with its own unique beat. Compare Forster's approach to the one note approach of director Ryan Murphy in the film Running With Scissors, a film that wants a similar note of eccentricity but ends up just crafting weird characters being weird without regard to the world that formed them.
