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Stranger than Stranger Than Fiction

A numbing mystery about a prime number
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 16th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
One of many plot threads found and discarded in 23.
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The “23 Enigma” is one of those inexhaustable parlor games where one begins discovering this intriguing prime number lurking behind everything. With some judicious selecting, one can lure the number 23 out of dates for everything from Hitler offing himself in the bunker to 9/11, including Charles Manson’s birth (the years “23” seem eventless, unless the Nubian uprising [23 BCE] or Pliny the Elder’s birth [23 CE] haunts you).
The Number 23

Directed by Joel Schumacher
With Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Danny Huston and Bud Cort

“Apophenia” is a handy two-dollar word for this phenomenon. It is the ability (or curse) to find connections and patterns within random pieces of information. The Beautiful Mind’s John Nash was terrorized by the number 23. William S. Burroughs thought that the number, like human language, was a “virus.”
The 23 Enigma discovered its greatest propagators among the seriously satirical Discordians, and by author Robert Anton Wilson, who larded his sly Illuminatus! Trilogy with the number, which was long ripe for a good sharp jab. But now director Joel Schumacher comes along with a little thriller where we are supposed to take this party pastime seriously. Unfortunately, it is all still a bit of a joke.
Shaggy good-hearted schlemiel Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) wanders blissfully through life as the town dog-catcher. His life is carefree, until his wife puts a book titled The Number 23 in his hands. The author, Topsy Kretts (yes, really), has written a life-as-novel about a young fellow named Fingerling, who, after witnessing bloody crimes as a child, becomes a private detective. His life is altered by meeting with a woman dubbed the Suicide Blonde, who reveals to Fingerling (before earning her noirish moniker by jack-knifing out her window) her obsessive history with the number 23.
For Sparrow, these fictive tragedies and crimes begin to seem more like memories to him, and in due course he will become possessed by both the book and the demoniacal numerology that it contains. As we find too in Marc Forster’s recent (and superior) film, Stranger Than Fiction, Sparrow suddenly sees his chance-driven life as something preordained by a book. Vague fears become more specified as our dog catcher stumbles further into a maze of Minotaur terrors.
Actually, his journey might better be described as a monotonous trot through a slipshod script that is unencumbered by reason or plausability. One ludicrous bit of B-movie plotting is hitched to another, like some Rube Goldberg contraption gone wrong, and the whole becomes a deeply dull and exhausting noise.
However, with the sound firmly drowned with an extended trance or house CD, the film might become engaging. Schumacher’s visual effects are highly stylish, fetishistically so, though he owes much to Forster’s Stay, Christopher Nolan’s Memento and David Fincher’s Se7en.
Jim Carrey is as lost in 23 as he was in the properly ignored Fun with Dick and Jane. Now he finds himself stuck in this mire. Sadly, it seems that Carrey was aware of his error in getting involved with this project during filming, as he’s never looked quite as tired. It seems an effort for him to telephone in as much as he does.
The rest of the cast struggles through. Virginia Madsen is given a chance to showcase herself as versatile, playing both Sparrow’s kindly wife and the nefarious novel’s femme fatale. Danny Huston and a transfigured Bud Cort (as Dr. Sirius Leary) are charged with the task of propelling the script’s plottery further with helpful exposition, however moronic. Logan Lerman as Sparrow’s son plays Joe Hardy to Sparrow’s Frank as the two set out to solve the mystery behind this tale.
The real mystery is how this misbegotten programmer was green-lighted. Fleeing the interminable press screening, I gave no significance to my escape being facilitated by tram 23 to Malovanka.
Still, as a curtsy to apophenia, I’ve embedded within this review a warning, which I’ll now reveal. By circling every twenty-third word (initials and numbered dates count as one unit), my urgent message to you will materialize. Please heed it.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (16/05/2007):

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