You're asking me to knowingly face my death?

Rating: 5/10 (21 May 2016)

Has Harold Crick ever gone out of his way to talk to someone (let alone a female) that wasn't part of his daily schedule before the film's fated events? My guess would be no. There are plenty of people like Harold that exist in real life - those in the menial, day to day grind, who are ordered about by routine and a strict adherence to it. Their lives are unspontaneous and uninteresting. That begs the question, is it worth pointing the camera this way and crafting a narrative about one of these types? We never really find out. In Stranger than Fiction, Karen Eiffel has written a modern masterpiece on his life and all its rigidly compartmentalised sections, but finds that the only way to give it the ending it deserves is to kill Harold off. This might be meaningful if we were given enough reason to wonder why. Eiffel's omniscient narrator flows in and out of the story without any real guidelines. Forster picks and chooses the moments of the film in which a thoughtful and contemplative voice-over might add to the emotion, or clash with Harold's apparent nonchalance. Dustin Hoffman is introduced to attempt to explain the phenomena, but even he cannot define it except in the vaguest of ideas. The concept is left to flounder. The ideal that any masterpiece must end with tragedy is a cliché and trite one, as is Thompson's insufferable caricature of the tortured artist, the dishevelled and weary body language, the angst of writer's block, the hopeless pessimism. Not to mention there is nothing at all remarkable about her flowery, waffly prose - the film stands on this idea that her story must be finished, because it is a vital and important piece of work. But we rarely see much of it at all, and are given no incentive to believe that Harold's demise would go towards a bigger, artistic cause. We are forced to cheer for someone who only writes only joyless, morose tragedies (sorry, masterpieces) and then inexplicably has a change of heart.
The layering of the story, with Eiffel as the grand orchestrator and the narrative therefore altering depending on her mood, is something that the director might hide behind if the film draws criticism. What better method of dismissing any flaws by claiming they are the bland, uninspired ideas of the fictional struggling writer themselves? But at the end the film still manages to sabotage itself. Eiffel has presumably had a change of heart and wants to pen a more heartfelt, inspiring tale. That slow-mo montage with the sunshine and daisies and everything happy is as telling as it is. But where really is the change? Ferrell is played straight unlike his comedic man-child; too straight, in fact, because even as he throws himself in front of a bus or proclaims his love for the first time ever or even strums a guitar solo he is still the robotic character that has steadily worked its way through life all these years. There is no real motivation within but from Eiffel's pen, as if huge puppet strings are pushing him to do these things. Stranger than Fiction falls victim to its own clichés; it wants to portray real life as exciting and spontaneous as fiction, but ends up just re-visiting the same riffs over and over. There may be an intention to subvert somewhere hidden inside, but it is smothered by the simple existentialism crisis it presents and then quickly waves away. None of these characters have any substance and therefore agency to them. Ana is an uninspired caricature of the hippie that dropped out of college to start her own business - she has a few tattoos and wants to break tax laws because they are obviously some sort of government evil and that would go against her lifestyle. All it takes is a little guitar to make her jump straight into bed with a cardboard cutout. Though Harold Crick is let out of the cage to live his life, the film ironically is uptight - it doesn't allow for any other ending other than that overly saccharine, neat resolution. Many films have approached the idea of purpose and control within and outside the story. The Truman Show was one; that had visual meaning and layers that this does not. Adaptation was another, also about a writer unable to finish a story. But it did not take the easy way out.