Stranger Than Fiction

[bryant]

Spoilers ahead.

I’m unclear as to whether Stranger Than Fiction is a comedy or a tragedy. I guess strictly speaking it’s a romantic comedy, but really, that’s not the story of the movie; the story of the movie is about how something dies. Does a great person have a downfall? Yep. So I think I have to read it as a bittersweet tragedy, albeit one with an ending which could be seen as rather happy.

Then again, it perhaps betrays my bibliophiliac nature that I think the death of a novel is a tragedy. But — no, I think I’m on target. A classic tragedy is inevitable. In Stranger Than Fiction, everyone makes the right decisions; ethics prevail throughout. It just so happens that the result of these decisions is that Karen Eiffel doesn’t complete her greatest novel.

But the alternative would have been worse. It’s to the movie’s credit that there’s a bit of uncertainty there, though. Around fifteen minutes before the end, I thought Harold was going to die, and that would have been an impressive choice. Then I thought we were going to have a saccharine ending; then it was redeemed, because it was clear that the choice made was a painful one. Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson pretty much pulled this off with their final scene; perfect portrayal of two people who know a sacrifice has been made.

The two of them more or less made the movie work all along, actually. Will Ferrell was good; the role wasn’t deeply demanding, but he did avoid hamming it up and he was perfectly decent as a mostly blank cipher. I’m guessing he’ll do one of these every few years to maintain cred, and if he’s this good every time he’ll deserve whatever cred he gets. But really, it was Thompson and Hoffman deserve the credit for creating the context in which he could work.

So I liked it. As elliptical Wes Andersonesque movies go, it was no Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but it beat the crap out of I Heart Huckabees.

Originally published at Imaginary Vestibule.

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Huckabees was awesome. I will watch StF and make my own pronouncement, sirrah.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

What did you think of the animations?

A featurette on the DVD makes it look like the movie originally had a LOT more of those graphic/GUI animations representing Harold's mental processes. But they seem to have taken most of them out, so the animations, and the watch too come to think of it, ended up seeming to me like a gimmick from some other movie stuck in for the first 20 minutes or so.

[crs.livejournal.com]

People keep forgetting to drool uncontrollably over Maggie Gyllenhaal when reviewing this movie and I don't understand how.

[bryant]

Too damn precious. If a movie's gonna be twee, I want it to not sit around being aware of how twee it's being. I want unrepentant twee.

[bryant]

The watch was weird. But it worked for me as part of the novel.

The animations felt like someone realized "whoa, hold on, this looks like Fight Club now." But they didn't; but they didn't really reflect Haroldness much, either.

Actually, I thought they were the watch's thought processes.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I think the preciousness was balanced by its ability to make fun of itself. Or maybe that's precious. BAH.

[bryant]

It's an exceedingly fine line. If it'd tilted a /little/ further over in that direction, it'd have been satire and that would have been super-funny.

... OK, the first parody hipster movie from the guys who made Scary Movie just flashed before my eyes, and it was ugly.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Man, now i'm gonna have to drink to get that image out of my head.