Stranger Than Fiction

[Ghostboy]

I was really surprised by how much I liked this. Maybe it was because I'd only a few hours earlier come out of a screening of a staggering seven hour Hungarian art film and this was in contrast a nice refreshing bit of fluffy breeze, but I was thouroughly entertained, and thought it almost managed to be slightly meaningful here and there. And Maggie G. was a sheer delight.

[I Love a Magician]

I really hated those little CG things.

[I Don't Believe in Beatles]

I was really surprised by how much I liked this. Maybe it was because I'd only a few hours earlier come out of a screening of a staggering seven hour Hungarian art film and this was in contrast a nice refreshing bit of fluffy breeze, but I was thouroughly entertained, and thought it almost managed to be slightly meaningful here and there. And Maggie G. was a sheer delight.

Sátántangó?

[Ghostboy]

Yep. Travelled all the way to Chicago to see it, too.

[Chest Rockwell]

Saw it last night. My brief informal review:

What a peculiar movie. It seems stuck on that duplicitous fine line that separates comedy and drama (or shall I say, tragedy), and, more poignantly, the line between reality and fiction. Thankfully, the film flaunts these virtues, integrating them into a story that was made for that effect. What we have in this movie is a cast full of seeming charicatures: Harold Crick the lonely man who counts brush strokes (36 times verticaly, and 36 times horizontally, on each tooth) and has an exact schedule worked out to exact numbers; Karen Eiffel the quivering writer struggling with writer's block and who could snap at any moment; Penny Escher the bureaucratic and drilling writer-motivator who never misses a deadline; Prof. Jules Hilbert the literary scholar who dresses casually because he is a literary scholar and who is always surrounded by an organized stack of papers and books; and Ana Pascal the tattooed liberal that doesn't pay her taxes out of a symbolic political gesture whom you do not want to anger. I deliberately described these characters as they're first given to us, which doesn't amount to much more than stock characters. But by the end of the movie they all seem much more alive than they do upon first impressions, thanks in part to the merits of the screenplay but probably mostly due to the rather incredible cast, none of whom fail to create human beings that we care about but more importantly that we think could exist.

This is important for the movie, considering it is precisely about the dichotomy between reality and fiction. Harold Crick is a character, and appropriately charicaturish when we think he is merely a character, but he is also a person and is thus made to be much more human (for instance, he has friends, he's actually pretty funny but perhaps just doesn't have enough oppurtunities to show it; when he's happy we too feel happy and when he cries we empathize. One of the questions Forster asks us to consider is when fiction becomes reality. If Harold Crick is a character and a person then by turns wouldn't everyone around him also be real and unreal, including Karen Eiffel? Is the movie we're seeing also real? How much of Crick's characterization in the movie is independent of Eiffel's narration, and how much of it occurs because of said narration?

[SPOILERS] The other major theme, less subtle than the first, in this movie is the moral responsibilty of art. What is more important, the temporary life of a man or the everlasting masterpiece that could have been Karen Eiffel's book had she killed him. The approach to the question is novel (pun intended), but the question itself does carry some weight, hearing myths of workers dying during difficult movie productions and to an arguably lesser extent animals. Thankfully the filmmakers did not bow out of the question, perhaps by creating a twist that involved all of it being imagined or something to that effect. No, I liked that Harold Crick and Karen Eiffel were real people to the end, not slaves to their archetypal obligations. [END SPOILERS]

One thing I can say about Marc Forster is that he's inconsistent. Finding Neverland was pretty good, but I didn't like Monster's Ball that much, and I never saw the almost-universally panned Stay. Stranger than Fiction should prove a landmark in his directorial career, even though he hasn't received much billing or attention at all for it. Hopefully the movie will prove a contender in this year's Academy Awards in regards especially to the incredible cast and the imaginative screenplay and the competent direction. It's almost a certainty that it will appear in my list of the top ten for the year.

[JG]

Thanks for the themes! 

no but seriously, good movie and good review on mod's part. 

[matt35mm]

Prof. Jules Hilbert

This immediately makes me think of Julius Hibbert, therefore it must be a rip off (I mean, a "nod").

[Ravi]

I loved this. If you want it to make perfect sense and look for hole plots, dont fucking even see it... now if you want to relax and watch something original, funny and well written... be my guest.

I'm sure you meant "plot holes" but one major plot hole practically ruined everything else afterwards for me.

SPOILERS










When Karen Eiffel is writing "the phone rang," the movie took a downturn.  If she's writing the story of Harold Crick's life, hasn't she written that he's looking for Eiffel's number at the publisher's office and eventually finds it at the IRS?  Why is she then surprised that the phone rings and that Harold Crick is on the other end?  If the film implicitly or explicitly explained that Karen wasn't writing everything in Harold's life or explained their meeting in an otherwise satisfactory matter, I might have been okay with it.  As it is, that major flaw bugs me.

[Pubrick]

hey but it's an original, funny, and most importantly well written hole-ridden plot. 

[Kal]

pubrick you are smart.

if you decide to focus on something positive and productive you will be very successful!

this movie is good... even with the plot holes... very original.

[cron]

spoilers, if you care.

what about emma thompson deliberately writing a scene where will ferrel gets hit by a bus? that was a bit cruel , i think.

this movie sucked.

[MacGuffin]

I loved this film. It's tone was perfect to match the original script, bringing a smile to my face throughout. The characters were a joy to follow. At its heart was a charming love story between Harold and Ana. Their interactions felt natural; never forced. And it was so good to see Emma Thompson again.

[SiliasRuby]

I loved this film. It's tone was perfect to match the original script, bringing a smile to my face throughout. The characters were a joy to follow. At its heart was a charming love story between Harold and Ana. Their interactions felt natural; never forced. And it was so good to see Emma Thompson again.

ditto
Will gives quite a subdued heartfelt performance and the ending felt extremely satisfying.