The Prague Post
October 7th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre
Prague Real Estate

Home » Archives » Night & Day

One character in search of an author

A likable film that crosses the bounds between fact and fiction
Cinema Review | Search restaurants | Archives

By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
April 11th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
"Little did he know..." Ferrell and Hoffman in Stranger Than Fiction.
Harold Crick is an amiable cipher.He’s a punctual, methodical IRS agent whose life is a set pattern of routines with few variations. Harold seems neither happy nor unhappy with his clockwork existence; it is, in fact, debatable whether he has ever paused to consider it. So he experiences more than a slight shock one morning when a woman’s voice suddenly begins to narrate his life while he brushes his teeth.
As in his intriguing and underrated film Stay, director Marc Forster has created another film testing the limits of reality (whatever that word encompasses for you personally). But rather than being a collage of images flashing before a dying young man’s eyes as in Stay, his new film explores the idea of a person discovering that he is only a character in someone else’s novel.
This isn’t an original idea, of course. The film borrows heavily from Miguel de Unamuno’s 1914 novel Niebla, which led to Pirandello’s plays, as well as, eventually, to Porky and Daffy animatedly quarreling with their creators at Warner Brothers. It’s metafictional territory that’s been more cleverly covered by Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation. Still, Stranger Than Fiction is a pleasant, often surprisingly sweet film.
Stranger Than Fiction

Directed by Marc Forster
With Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman and Queen Latifah

The life of Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is irrevocably altered by the clairaudient commentary supplied by his author. His habits are disrupted, and he becomes distracted at work. He shuffles from one psychiatrist to another until one gives him the sensible idea that he should visit a literary expert on narratology.
Crick’s need to track down his creator becomes even more frantic when he hears her recite a sentence of impending doom. He arrives at the office of Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who, through deductive reasoning, assures this desperate character in search of his author that he is absolutely not in a Greek tragedy, a murder mystery, a fairy tale or a Golem saga. It’s not even clear if he’s in a comedy or drama, though as the authorial voice propels Crick further along the path to destruction, it appears to be the latter.
Stranger Than Fiction is a classic tale of awakening. Crick will emerge from nonentityhood to seize and relish all the essential matters and moments of the day. He will allow himself to fall in love with a free-spirited woman that he’s auditing (the always-good Maggie Gyllenhaal), as well as connecting with the one co-worker that shares his orbit.
He will at last meet his maker, the depressed, blocked writer Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson), who will then provide him with a challenge. The manuscript of her new novel, Death and Taxes, is hailed by Hilbert as Eiffel’s masterpiece. But this novel, like Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, depends upon the death of its central character: Crick. Is life worth more than literature?
The actors all turn in excellent work, especially Ferrell, who, like Jim Carrey and Bill Murray, has finally given himself the opportunity to expand his range. Ferrell’s natural boyish features — particularly his face, which seems to have never shed its baby fat — is perfect for a man being born late into his own life. Ferrell is very effective and affecting.
Hoffman, Thompson and Gyllenhaal are all good, as are the supporting cast, which includes Queen Latifah as Eiffel’s assistant, as well as Linda Hunt and an unrecognizable Tom Hulce as Crick’s shrinks.
Zach Helm’s screenplay is far from being an obscure salute to postmodernism or post-structuralism. It wears its references lightly, so no one will feel excluded. That all the characters share last names with famous mathematicians, structural engineers and algebraic wizards might add an extra layer of meaning for fans of Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach.
For a “masterpiece,” however, Eiffel’s prose, as rendered by Helm, is hardly staggering. And so it becomes a bit of a stretch to imagine anyone weighing their life against it. Plus, one might successfully doubt Hilbert’s verdict on the subject. Can we trust an expert who is reading Sue Grafton?
Though lacking the sheer brio of Stay, Forster’s latest film nevertheless proves again that he’s a good guide into other possible dimensions.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (11/04/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Provokator
Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.