Summer Homework

Part 1: Stranger than Fiction (2006)

Last week, Ted Gioia shared his list of “the nine best films on the creative life from the 21st century,” which prompted two thoughts. First, this is the sort of “best-of” list that I appreciate most. While I understand the motives behind certain other publications’ lists and their ability to provoke discussion, disagreement, and spectacle, I often find them overwhelming. It’s vaguely interesting to see how many of them I’ve read (fewer than I’d normally think) or what people say about them, I suppose, but beyond that, mega-lists don’t really do much for me.

A top-5 or top-10 list, though, and one that’s tied to a very specific theme, feels like it invites me to think about the theme, to negotiate the list (if I were to include X, what would it replace?), and if I’m particularly intrigued by the theme itself, I can actually spend some time with it. This sort of list feels human in an important way.

My second thought, then, was to give myself a very human assignment. Part 1 of the assignment was to revisit one of the films on the list that I’d already watched (I’ve seen 5 of them), and to choose (and watch) one of the remaining 4 that I hadn’t¹. Gioia’s list contains the following films, and he provides brief descriptions and clip embeds for each, so it’s definitely worth following the link above. But here’s the list, along with IMDB links²:

The End of the Tour (2015), American Splendor (2003), Adaptation (2002), Capote (2005), Frida (2002), Stranger than Fiction (2006), Whiplash (2014), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Maria (2024)

For my rewatch, I chose Stranger than Fiction and since I’ve been thinking about writing, I ended up choosing The End of the Tour for my new one. I’m still in the middle of the latter, so I’ll only complete the first half of the assignment today.

Stranger than Fiction (2006)

This is a fun little movie that feels like the type of film that seldom gets made anymore. According to IMDB, it cost an estimated $30M to make and only grossed about $55M, and that sort of return is probably too thin for today’s environment. Although the main actors received a sprinkle of nominations, the movie itself doesn’t feel like it’s shooting for awards. It relies on a clever premise and teases it out in a way that may be a little predictable, but it’s also got some wit to it that made me glad I’d rewatched it.

There are two main stories. The primary character is Will Ferrell’s Harold Crick, a bland IRS employee who wakes up one day to find that a (British, female) voice in his head is narrating his day’s activities. At first, this is distracting, but there are also places where it perhaps begins to influence his behavior. At the same time that this is unfolding, we’re also introduced to Karen Eiffel, the (relatively successful) novelist who’s currently struggling to finish what will be her first book in ten years. That struggle boils down to her inability to come up with a suitable death for her main character, Harold Crick. (Her novels are well known for the fact that the main character in each dies at the end.) It’s her voice that Harold is hearing, but it’ll be a while before the characters learn what we know from the beginning.

That’s really all the movie does to set up its (magical realist) premise. Eiffel doesn’t know that Crick actually exists, while Harold doesn’t learn until later about Eiffel. No explanation is offered for their connection. At first, Harold consults a psychiatrist (Linda Hunt), who diagnoses him with schizophrenia but begrudgingly admits that, if this is in fact a narrative voice, Harold might consult with a literature professor. He does, and manages to convince Prof. Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) that there is something strange happening³.

Harold finds out from the narrator (“little did he know”) that he’s going to die soon, which changes the stakes for the story, and leads to one of my all-time favorite exchanges. Prof. Hilbert implies that perhaps there’s nothing that Harold can do, and if so, then it gives him the chance to do anything he’d like—for example, he could eat pancakes for the rest of his life.

Harold: What is wrong with you? Hey, I don't want to eat nothing but pancakes, I want to live! I mean, who in their right mind in a choice between pancakes and living chooses pancakes?

Hilbert: Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes…

Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of the literature professor may be my favorite part of the movie. He plays Prof. Hilbert with just a hint of quirkiness and disconnect, the kind of person for whom the puzzle of Harold’s circumstances doesn’t ever quite register as reality. Hilbert’s focus on the “literature” of the situation provides a comic foil to Ferrell’s obvious earnestness about wanting to avoid an untimely death. But it’s never quite callous enough to keep Harold from seeking his advice on multiple occasions.

Stranger than Fiction isn’t an especially deep movie, but there is a bit of depth to it. Last episode, I mentioned critical distance, and both of the main stories in the movie involve that sort of scaling. In the case of Harold, it’s a familiar one to us: his story dramatizes the (cliché) question about how we might live our lives if we knew that our remaining time was limited. Harold is forced to take a step back from the immediacy of his daily existence by the narrative voice in his head. Meanwhile, a mirrored development happens with Karen Eiffel. After a career of maintaining critical distance, the existence of Harold (and their eventual encounter) collapses the distinction between the worlds she creates in her novels and the world she inhabits as a reclusive writer. (In certain ways, Prof. Hilbert ends up being the personification of critical distance.) Neither of these plots is Inception-level stuff, but together, they hint at the kinds of questions we ask ourselves about our lives and the multiple scales we occupy when we think about them. The movie does just enough to get us to think without getting into the metaphysical weeds and distancing ourselves from the characters themselves, I’d argue.

There are a couple of other characters and subplots I haven’t referenced, nor do I want to spoil⁴ anything for those who haven’t seen the movie. I mentioned above that this sort of movie—kind of a mid-range, low stakes mix of comedy and drama—has faded from the Hollywood repertoire and that alone was enough for me to enjoy re-watching it. I found it on Amazon Prime for free (other than having to suffer through some ad-blocks), and recommend it as a bit of light fun.

It may be a few days, but I’ll be back soon with the second half of this self-imposed assignment. See you then.

1. I’ve put the movies in the order that Gioia offers them. He doesn’t present them in ranked fashion, so I’m not sure if there’s any implied order. What I did notice, though, is that the dividing line fell quite cleanly for me between those I had and those I hadn’t seen. I began having serious health issues around 2012, which caused all sorts of changes both major and minor in my life. So the ones I’ve seen were the five earliest and I haven’t watched the four most recent. I’d also point out that the first five movies pre-date the release of the iPhone (and social media as we currently know it). There’s something relaxing for me about watching movies that take place before the invasion of mobile telephony, I must admit.

2. I used to use IMDB for its reviews, but their value has been all but obliterated for the same reason I don’t consult Goodreads, Yelp, et al. The single best reason to use IMDB is that it’s almost always accurate about where movies are available for streaming (and thus accessible to me).

3. We might say that he convinces Prof. Hilbert to suspend his disbelief. There’s a great scene where Harold explains that the voice uses the phrase “little did he know,” which Hilbert explains is the sign of an omniscient narrator, suggesting that it’s not just Harold making things up.

4. I’m not sure it counts as a spoiler when the movie’s almost 20 years old…