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‘Stranger Than Fiction’ review
BY MAGGIE SCOTT
If we’re occasionally able to tune out the background noise that modern life subjects us to, most of us are still left with the persistent soundtrack of our own voice constructing, questioning, cursing and commenting on our individual realities. The voice can be comforting, tormenting, analytical or aimless. But, it’s ours; and if something comes along to silence it, or if a strange voice takes its place, our sense of self is threatened.
This idea of the inner narrator provides the basis for the imaginative film “Stranger Than Fiction” from debut screenwriter Zach Helm and director Marc Forster.
Helm takes the well-worn themes of finding your passion and the meaning of life and playfully tinkers with reality to tweak the typical plot devices for transforming the film’s leading character(s). With straight face, Helm introduces us to the bizarre dilemma of one Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), whose life has been appropriated by a writer’s blocked woman (Emma Thompson) straining to devise the perfect demise for her novel’s hero.
Fueled by cigarettes and unnerving research into death’s varieties, Karen Eiffel types out in fits and starts the inexorable path to destruction Harold will walk after twelve years of ordered monotony as an IRS agent. As each word of Death and Taxes assembles off the typewriter keys onto the white paper, Karen’s omniscient voice rings in Harold’s ears. At first, it’s like a fly buzzing persistently around his head. Shake it off, shout it down, walk away from it…nothing works. Schizophrenia, he’s told. Just take the medicine, he’s advised.
But, Harold begins to realize this isn’t your average mental illness. The voice is revealing unconscious truths Harold has studiously avoided. Truths that could help Harold forge a new path in life, if he can just cheat the “imminent death” sentence he hears one morning at the bus stop. Perhaps someone like Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), a literary theorist, can help Harold figure out how he can change the ending to this weirdly evolving story of his life.
Evolving to include a self-aware young woman (Maggie Gyllenhaal), whose initial antipathy to the “creep” who is auditing her bakery business mellows into fraternization. Evolving to identify Karen Eiffel as the voice in his head and to confront her with a plea to spare the life that finally has real meaning. A life Harold never knew he always wanted.
Will the miracle of Harold’s transformation inspire a rewrite that chooses his continued existence over a “poetic” ending? Ferrell’s innate comic deviltry never cracks the façade of his beautifully modulated performance. Intelligently crafted, this is a funny, moving exhortation to follow your bliss. A Mandate Pictures production, Columbia Pictures release, rated PG-13 for some disturbing images, sexuality, brief language and nudity.
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