An Endless Reflection of Fate
a believer of fate, a storyteller, Movie Reviewer, Entertainment Writer
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APR
14
2007
Since I was a child I loved those pictures that were an endless reflection, where it would be a picture of someone looking at a TV, and the picture on the TV was a picture of someone looking at a TV, and the picture on that TV was a picture of someone looking at a TV, etc. I've also always been a believer in fate, that everything happens for a reason. I'm also a believer in a really great story. The film Stranger than Fiction invites us into Harold Crick's story of his life, as he wonders if this is all there is and if there could be a different ending to it.
Storyline
You would think that any movie that stars Will Ferrell, and also features Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah, and Maggie Gyllenhaal would be some type of romantic comedy, but instead, it's more of a tragedy, and interestingly enough, that's what Ferrell's character spends half the movie doing, trying to find out if he's living a comedy or a tragedy.
Ferrell stars as Harold Crick who leads a very organized ordinary life, and Thompson stars as an author writing a story about the fictional Harold Crick. Queen Latifah is the assistant the publishers sent to make sure Thompson meets her deadline. As Harold Crick goes about his life, he suddenly finds that the ordinary things he normally does, brush his teeth exactly 76 times, walking an exact amount of steps to the bus stop, going to work as an IRS agent, are being narrated by a woman's voice, Thompson's. He overhears her say that he didn't know it, but he was about to die.
Crick seeks help from a literature professor, Dustin Hoffman, to figure out how best to change the inevitable storyline of his life, from a tragedy into a comedy. In the meantime, he falls for the owner of a bakery, Gyllenhaal, who he's auditing. She's the opposite of him in so many ways. With as many rules as he always follows the same way, she seems to break them all.
As the storyline plays out, it's a story within a story. The movie can't go forward until Harold Crick goes forward, and he can't go forward until Thompson writes his death. She can't write his death until she clears her writers' block. She analyzes all these different ways to end his life, but none of them seem just, and she can't figure out why this story is any different than the others she has written.
Conclusion
Who would think Ferrell would find himself in such an existential movie? Do any of us have the ability to change what's inevitable in our life? Is our life predetermined at the time of our birth and there's nothing we can do to change it? Was he even a real person, or was he just a character in her book? Or is all that taking the movie too far, and maybe there's nothing to any of that at all? Regardless, it was trying to figure all that out that kept me up all night.
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