Brilliant, but beware the ending!

Rating: 9/10 (22 January 2007)

Two strangers, he refusing to engage with life, she grappling with death, find their lives and purposes inverted in this surprising film - one that is remarkably difficult to review without revealing the delicious loops that make it such a pleasure to watch!
Tragedy speaks of the inevitability of death, while comedy rejoices in the continuation of life (to quote)  but good storytelling weaves with both colour threads, and the bittersweet realisation that it's the very brevity of life that makes it precious informs this extraordinary film. Drawing on the toolbox of magic realism, we're made privy to the severely delimited world of Harold Crick, an IRS agent with iron grip on the numbers  the number of steps to his bus stop, the number of strokes it takes to brush his teeth, the numbers on the myriad forms with which he fills his carbon-copy working days. He is obsessive-compulsive disorder made flesh, and living in a minimalist cube decorated with all the wit and style of a concrete bunker, strongly symbolic of his own emotional state. That is, until an implacable voice begins narrating his life and impending death, disrupting the perfectly linear, measured and yet meaningless existence he's constructed. Frantically seeking to shut out the voice, he lets the world in, and finds meaning instead.
Graphically beautiful and unafraid of using both technology and beautifully framed shots filmed with lingering care to take us right into the author's mind, it's a delight to watch. Around Crick, iPod-white lines, forms, words and vectors sprout folding out, back, into and beyond the frame like virtual origami, making visible the boundaries within which he constrains himself, only to be matched and then beaten back by the rich, real colours of an alternative way of life; the moment in which he savours a cookie, perhaps for the first time, drew a collective sigh from row D this past Saturday night. The feel of the movie slips effortlessly from bleeding edge music video chic into scratched 35mm French film, and takes us along, smiling.
Dustin Hoffman and Maggie Gyllenhaal's performances gleam in the firmament, and are outshone only by the incandescence of the twin stars. Emma Thompson delivers a master class, and is matched and even sometimes surpassed by the unexpected leading light of the show, Will Ferrell. Emerging from the long dark night of cult comedy, Ferrell is incredible, and his moment of epiphany is heartbreaking, coming as it does after we've all sweated and squirmed through his clumsy attempts to connect with those around him. It's not full of angst though, and there are brilliantly funny moments  watch out for the present Ferrell takes Gyllenhaal.see if you get the joke, because I didn't until it was (slowly) explained to me! The direction, by Marc Forster, is superb, and clearly Ferrell and Forster found a unity of purpose that shines through. As the show toboggans down the slope of inevitability, we all know how it should end, but just as life always surprises us, so does the movie. You may find the ending ironic or disappointing depending on your mood. Despite thinking that someone somewhere caved in to a test audience poll, I still liked it.
This is a must-see.