Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

Starring Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson

Stranger Than Fiction is a delightful, inventive, hilarious movie that dips into fantasy, yet is filled with essential insights into, and affirmations of, life. Will Ferrell is a boring, by-the-book IRS auditor. He leads a disciplined, measured existence from the start of each day to its end. He brushes each tooth eighty times exactly, and times his departure from his home (and even the length and speed of his steps) so that he arrives at the bus stop just as his intended bus is about to pull away. The movie includes some delightful graphics to illustrate these points.

Then something strange happens. He starts to hear a voice in his head. It isn’t telling him to jump off a bridge, or kill someone, or start a new religion. Instead, the voice is narrating and commenting on his life. Suddenly, the voice is describing each of the routine, repetitive acts in his life as if they’re interesting or important, at least in the context of the story the narrator is telling.

He goes to a psychiatrist, played by Linda Hunt, who tells his he’s probably crazy and wants him to take drugs for it. Instead, Ferrell visits a professor of Literature, Dustin Hoffman. Hoffman is a thoughtful, knowledgeable teacher who takes a curious academic interest in Ferrell’s plight. After all, it seems like Ferrell finds himself in the middle of a novel: who better to help him than an expert on novels?

Hoffman wonders what kind of story Ferrell find himself in the middle of. Is it a comedy or a tragedy? Does Ferrell’s new love interest, a sensual baker played with gusto and verve by Maggie Gyllenhaal, play a part?

Meanwhile, a famous novelist (Emma Thompson) has a big problem. She’s writing a novel about a lackluster IRS auditor, and is having trouble coming up with a convincing way to kill him off at the end of the book. As she flirts with the idea of suicide herself, she’s struggling with how she’ll finish this latest writing project. In walks a determined Queen Latifah, sent by Thompson’s publisher to help her get the promised book finished. (Latifah is joining my A-list of actors I look forward to seeing at the movies.)

It turns out that Thompson is “writing” Ferrell’s life, and once she finishes it off, Ferrell may be finished, too.

In the hands of this talented, stellar cast, this movie is both funny and thought provoking from start to finish. It stretches and plays with our ideas about fiction and reality. But in the midst of it all, the characters act believably and convincingly within their lives and in the ways they confront their problems and the boundaries that constrain them.

Long after the movie was over, I found myself thinking about the various characters and situations within the movie. In the best movies, like this one, the characters live on after the movie is over: we care about them because they have become real for us.

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