By Ryland Walker Knight
Will Ferrell is Harold Crick, an IRS auditor with an OCD-like daily use for his knack for mathematics. Emma Thompson is Karen Eiffel, a neurotic and depressive writer who cannot finish her newest novel. Harold Crick is the protagonist of Karen Eiffel’s newest novel – supposedly an unassuming everyman, living his everyday life in an anytown, unaware of his fate. But he is fully aware, because he’s been hearing Eiffel narrate his day-to-day torpor and she’s spot on with every minute detail, like the sound of folders pulled across one another mimicking soft ocean waves cresting on a beach. Her novel is moot if Crick is aware of his “imminent death” because that hideous phrase “little did he know” is simply wrong: he knows. Stranger Than Fiction is a movie, confused about its intent and clumsily executed at that. Zach Helm is a screenwriter, clever and witty and myopic. Marc Foster is a director, quick to telegraph the screenplay in an effort to streamline the story while undermining his cast’s roundly good performances with borrowed tricks and a meticulous art direction that serves only to distract. 
The aggravation sets in right up front with a visual gimmick that is lifted wholesale from Fight Club’s Ikea catalogue sequence: Harold Crick’s precision (counting brushstrokes, tying a half-Windsor, the speed of his gait as he tries to catch the bus) is animated onscreen with little white numbers ticking up and diagrams unfolding just off the central action. We’re supposed to see this as an inroad into Harold’s mind: that he works up calculations for co-workers instantaneously proves he’s boxed in by his undeniable squaredom. The action is described by that obnoxious, third-person omniscient narrator Eiffel (Thompson) with buzz words like “innocuous” and the aforementioned “imminent”.
It might all be unwatchable if it weren’t for Ferrell. He built his name on broad comedy from the beginning but, in fact, he’s a real actor with an enviable skill set, able to subvert the gimmicky hucksterism of Ricky Bobby and Ron Burgundy when needed. His gift for infusing subtle comedy into a straight man role recalls those of his logical predecessor, Bill Murray’s, in one of his best and least-seen performances, The Razor’s Edge. Unfortunately, at every turn, Forster rears his misguided hand to bitch slap the movie, and Farrell’s Crick, into submission. Consider the scene where Crick breaks down, unable to endure Eiffel's incessant narration, and tears apart his apartment. Thompson’s voice is absent, and Ferrell narrates the scene himself, yelling at his toothbrush and bed lamp and closet. It’s hilarious, really, how he throws himself into this by-the-numbers scene -- but halfway through, Forster slips in a string section to tell us this is poignant, completely shifting the tone for no reason, rendering the flailing awkward instead of funny. This abrupt tonal shift maneuver is used again and again, and it never works.
After striking out with a shrink (a wasted Linda Hunt), Harold turns to the caffeine-addled literary theory Professor Jules Hilbert, played by Dustin Hoffman with the manic runoff from his I [Heart} Huckabees performance. Harold hopes that the professor might help him figure out whether he can stop his imminent death, or maybe identify his omniscient narrator; needless to say, this leads to quirky banter, with plenty of laughs earned by both actors. It’s here that Helm tries his hand at appropriating some of Charlie Kaufman’s bag of tricks from Adaptation. No surprise, they don’t translate. These scenes succeed because of the inherent charm of both actors, not because they offer a well-reasoned deconstruction of narrative. It’s textbook literary theory: anybody can think this way if they took the right course. 
Thompson’s Karen Eiffel, like this film, is a mess. Here we have an Oscar-winning actress playing a reclusive Pynchonesque writer whose prose sounds no more brilliant than what you'd find in the innumerable pulp paperbacks littering the globe. She seems like the film’s worst creation until Queen Latifah shows up in as an assistant sent by the publisher to ensure the completion of Eiffel’s novel. Latifah’s mainly a mouthpiece for a litany of “Less smoking, more writing” inanities. Thompson, however, rises above the material and delivers a well wrought portrait of a woman struggling with more than words, even if the screenplay doesn’t call for it; this more or less relegates Latifah to the cinematic dunce corner, where she does even less for the movie. Their scenes are at once both intermittently rewarding and pointlessly maddening: at one point Eiffel is doing “research” on death (and how to kill Harold Crick) in an ER, and when she realizes those gurneyed past her will likely survive, she asks a nurse where the people who won’t live are located. But the scene ends with a broad “You crazy missus” one-liner rather than the embedded black humor.
Farrell’s deft timing is the film’s most rewarding element. He’s able to sell Harold’s transformation from closed-in cipher to exuberant lover/liver despite all the hurdles the screenplay and the director place in his path There’s no logical reason he and Maggie Gyllenhaal -- playing a local baker he's sent to audit -- should have any chemistry at all, much less that which they cook up in their improbable romance. There are at least two too many movies fighting inside Stranger Than Fiction, and they all remind the viewer of better movies they’ve seen before. If the film had hewed close to Harold Crick as long as possible, and stayed away from Karen Eiffel in that space, it may have succeeded in balancing its meta-movie tangents with the warmth of the romance. Ferrell’s charisma can almost make me believe that, no matter how blatantly Marc Forster illustrates the ideas.
___________________________________
Ryland Walker Knight is a Seattle-based critic and the publisher of the blog Vinyl is Heavy. This is his first article for The House Next Door.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Hardly Novel: Stranger Than Fiction
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
8 comments:
I haven't seen this yet, but I am looking forward to it, and I'm glad we seem to be on the same page regarding Ferrell's talent. He's formidable -- like a strange hybrid of Tom Hanks and Peter Sellers -- and I really wish he could have played Ignatius Reilly in the aborted screen version of "A Confederacy of Dunces."
Pity about Forster laying on the editorializing background music during that apartment-wrecking scene, though. A very TV thing to do.
PS -- If anybody knows the latest on "Dunces" -- which last I heard was going to be directed by David Gordon Green -- I'd love to know.
It's a film I feel quite conflicted about as evident in my incredibly wishy-washy written response in "Navel Gazing" (shameless plug I know) as every time the film is on the brink of posing an intriguing question it quickly shunts it to the side in favor of something far more pedestrian and conventionally self-contained. For example, if Ferrell's character existed before Thompson's character began writing her book (and we're lead to believe he did) than aren't we all just writer's creations waiting to happen? Was the life Harold lived up to this point pre-ordained back-story or did he play any role at all in shaping the man he is now? And while the film briefly touches upon it, if all of Karen's characters were real people doesn't that make her a serial killer, and wouldn't that knowledge alone be enough to put down the typewriter? It's like the film devised a "clever" premise and never bothered to really explore it.
But as you've written before, the movie in Stranger than Fiction about an unlikely romance between an uptight IRS agent and a punk-rock activist/baker is distractingly well performed. The scenes feel lifted from some breezy late 60’s chestnut where there’s no believable reason for these two mix-matched people to connect but through sheer happenstance and the conviction of the performers they do. It's convinced me that the film's worth seeing (if not in a theater than in some other after-market) just to remember why it is I fell for Maggie G. in the first place a few years ago.
RE: Dunces
Permanently shelved. I, too, think Farrell would have been perfect for Ignatius--that whole cast (with the exception of Drew Barrymore) was pretty well organized. A shame it never materialized...
DGG's wrapped his 4th film and I think he's editing it for a release next year. It's got a pretty remarkable cast full of indie-fabulous downtown talent like Sam Rockwell and Amy Sedaris.
As for the movie, I may have liked it a little better if only it hadn't posed as such a clever piece when in fact it's rather facile an idea. A good idea, yes, but one not fully explored, as evidenced by Andrew's problems with Harold's backstory/life leading up to the picture. But really, it's probably more a reaction to the direction than the silly screenplay.
And as I said in the Navel Gazing comments, at one point Hoffman's literary theorist is lifeguarding while reading a Sue Grafton book...
And yes, I shunted Maggie in my review in favor of my problems with the film: she's simply adorable. It's a pretty impossible role to pull off, with some truly awful dialogue (she attended Harvard Law, of course) but her genuine generosity as a performer shines through all the wreckage surrounding her and Farrell.
Dignan writes, "But as you've written before, the movie in Stranger than Fiction about an unlikely romance between an uptight IRS agent and a punk-rock activist/baker is distractingly well performed. The scenes feel lifted from some breezy late 60’s chestnut where there’s no believable reason for these two mix-matched people to connect but through sheer happenstance and the conviction of the performers they do."
I felt the same way about Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel in "Elf," and Ferrell and Christina Applegate in "Anchorman." I believed in these couples completely, without reservation, no matter how ludicrous the films became. Seems Ferrell is one of those rare comedy stars who's not only convincing as a man in love, but who clicks with a wide array of actresses. Do we need to start thinking of him as a romantic lead, then?
"These scenes succeed because of the inherent charm of both actors, not because they offer a well-reasoned deconstruction of narrative. It’s textbook literary theory: anybody can think this way if they took the right course."
I dunno. It's one thing to think in a postmodernist mindset (I agree with ya that it's a school of thought you either buy into or not), but it's another thing to construct a deconstruction of narrative that actually works. And Zach Helm's script is quite dumb - he is too infatuated with his "cleverness" to realize that he isn't all that clever to begin with.
(And btw, what exactly was he trying to deconstruct? That the story was both a blend of comedy and tragedy? Or that Karen Eiffel, the person behind the strings, was devising a ... *gasp* plot? Come on, Helm - be a little ambitious in your deconstructing.)
Psst... I actually don't hate Marc Forster as many of you guys do (that brings to mind Todd's hilarious past rants about Finding Neverland on OW :D). I think he's acutally pretty decent of a director (I'm kinda getting suspicious of Monster's Ball's racial politics though). Plus, I'm biased as hell - I hated Fincher's Fight Club, so that whole borrowing from the IKEA scene was a-OK with me.
I don't really like FIGHT CLUB, either, but that was one of the truly inventive scenes in the picture. It's an iconic moment for the film, really.
I do think Farrell, despite his odd half-second chin, bad hair and dunce-like countenance, is a great romantic lead because he can sell a line as bold-bald-awkward as "I want you" and make you see all the hidden implications and internal workings.
As expected, Water Chaw kicks butt on this one again, even if I don't agree with his 3-star rating and generally positive review. I do agree with the last seven words, though: "the first real disappointment of the season." It's probably due to a heightened expectation (anticipation?) because I like all the actors and the premise sounded too good to be true. But, alas, I didn't think it delivered what it really wanted to. Like I said, if it had been solely about Farrell and Gyllenhaal it could have been a fluffy, enjoyable romance with a good number of laughs but it was reaching for too much, I guess, to win me over all the way.
Post a Comment