Stranger than Fiction
(2006) – Given the very literary quality of this Monday’s film, I’d like to
start with an analogy from the realm of the book. They say (and my experience
has proven) that every time you read Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen, you find something new, a
clever play with the graphic novel form or an allusion that clicks another cog
of the text into coherence. In the way that rereading brings clarity to Watchmen, re-watching Stranger than Fiction sheds an intense
light on just how beautiful this
movie is. Now, beauty isn’t something upon which I remark often here, but there
is something very transcendent about Stranger
than Fiction’s interrogation of what makes a life significant. Will Ferrell
stars as Harold Crick, a tax auditor whose midlife crisis takes the form of his
life being narrated by a novelist (Emma Thompson) prone to killing off her
characters. Amid Harold’s attempts to stay alive, he falls in love with
anarchist baker Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal) in what is honestly one of my
top ten love stories of all time. The script by Zach Helm is so smart, living
up to the metafictional braininess of the concept, and director Marc Forster controls
the pace of the film with a grace that was sorely missed in his Quantum of Solace. Ferrell, better known
for his often irksome work with the rest of his Frat Pack ilk, gives a
wonderfully understated performance here, ostensibly a career-best; he can
break your heart with a murmured “Oh...” or lead you to more fulfilling
laughter with his subtle quirks than in ten shouty Zoolanders. The supporting cast is a very successful ensemble,
including Dustin Hoffman and Queen Latifah, but there is an overall sense of
being in the quiet presence of inconspicuous greatness that I take away from Stranger than Fiction. It very well may
be a perfect film, for it has never disappointed me in all the times I’ve come
back to it.That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!
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