Watching 'Stranger than Fiction' (2006) in an empty theater...

Rating: 9/10 (11 December 2006)

...was one of the best movie-going experiences I ever had. My husband and I went to see it last Saturday on the 14:15 (2:15 PM) show and we had the small, comfortable, stadium-like theater all to ourselves. I was delighted but my husband gave me a suspicious look before the movie began and asked if I was sure that was the movie I wanted to see. I was sure - I've seen the trailer several times and I loved the idea the movie was based on: an IRS employee, Harold Crick (Will Ferrell has proved admirably to be able to play serious roles) leads the ordered, quite boring full of numbers and digits life only one morning to realize that he is somehow happened to be a main character in a new novel from famous, neurotic, reclusive, chain smoking author Karen Eiffel (great, great Emma Thompson) who always murders her main characters on the last page of her books. He begins hearing a voice in his head that narrates over his life and tells exactly what just happened to him. Where would you go first? To a psychiatrist, of course. What would he (in this movie, she, Linda Hunt, memorable in a tiny cameo) say? "You have to be medicated" but she also advises Harold to seek assistance from the literature expert. Enters Dr. Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman, always reliable, always delight to watch) who would help Harold to determine whether he is in a comedy or a tragedy and whether he would be able to avoid an inevitable tragic end of the book. While figuring out if he is in a comedy or a tragedy, Harold meets a free spirited baker with the Harward Law background named Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal lights up the screen in her every scene) who did not pay a portion of her taxes in purpose and now is a subject for auditing. Harold's life changes, he is not ready to go but the voice sounds in his head and his only chance to avoid the book's final is to meet with Karen and to beg her to reconsider. There is a problem, you see - Karen is impossible to find - she never meets with the readers or replies to the phone calls or letters...
Little did I know how much I would like the movie and how much I would care about its characters. The movie makers are the brave and creative people not only because they chose as the subject the exploration of Author and his character relationship. It's been done before and not only by Charley Kauffman whose name has been mentioned by many commenters. The subject of Creator and his creature, the writer and the heroes of his books, the man and his shadow that one day would refuse to follow its master would go as far as the ancient Greek myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. No, I admire the filmmakers because they were brave enough to make their main character an IRS guy and to make him sympathetic and compelling. Believe it or not, the movie made me smile and cry at the same time and there were the moments that I could not figure out where it would go and I liked the feeling. I don't know if "Stranger than Fiction" is the best movie of this year but it is certainly the best I've seen so far and I wish it all the best when the awards season comes.
...As much as I enjoyed being in the theater with my husband only, I truly wish more viewers see "Stranger than Fiction" because it is a clever, funny yet moving picture - they don't come like that very often.
9/10