Late last year, I watched Stranger Than Fiction. I enjoyed it immensely and found myself thinking long and hard about a number of things afterward, so I thought it deserves a review. Spoilers abound so check out the movie before reading on if you don’t want it ruined.
Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is an IRS employee who lives an incredibly consistent, predictable life. This all changes one day when he begins to hear a voice narrating his actions. The voice belongs to an author named Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) who is writing her latest book about a man also named Harold Crick. By listening to what she says, Harold learns that he will soon die. He begins searching for her in a desperate bid to stay alive.
Harold enlists the help of literature professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) to figure out what’s going on. Together, they gradually eliminate possible types of stories as they attempt to discern whether Harold’s life is destined to be a comedy or a tragedy. While all of this is happening, Harold also begins auditing a woman named Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Though initially hostile toward one another, the two gradually glow closer and become romantically interested.
Harold eventually finds Karen and begs her to spare his life. She gives a rough draft of the story to Professor Hilbert. After reading it, he tells Harold that the death she has written for him is more meaningful and poetic than any death that could naturally happen to him. Harold comes to the same conclusion after reading it for himself and encourages Karen to finish the story as she has drafted it.
Having accepted his fate, Harold walks to the bus stop as usual. He is hit by a bus while saving a boy on a bike and is taken to the hospital. Rather than kill him off, however, Karen decides to save his life by having a piece of his watch stop him from bleeding to death. Ana is relieved that he survived and Karen tells Professor Hilbert that she will rewrite the book to match the new ending.
I knew almost nothing about Stranger Than Fiction other than the basic plot. Almost everything in the movie was a surprise for me, which was nice as I prefer to go into a movie knowing as little about it as possible. This was one of the deeper, richer movies that I watched toward the end of last year. I don’t know why but I was watching a lot of lighthearted movies at the time. This was a nice change of pace and felt like just what I needed: not too heavy and not too light. The central message I got was to live life as best as possible for ourselves and those around us as long as we can. When our time comes, we can then face death with peace and acceptance rather than fear and resistance.
One of the few things I didn’t fully like was the ending. I would have preferred an ending in which Harold died saving the boy. I like movies that remind me that life doesn’t always involve happy endings and such an ending would have been a nice way for this movie to conclude. The story seemed to be building toward a grim finale so having him live felt forced to me. Not as forced as some happy endings in other movies but still forced. However, it felt less forced when I considered another aspect of the ending. Harold stepped out to save the boy despite knowing it would cost him his life and Karen rewrote the ending of her book to save Harold despite knowing it would cost her her masterpiece. He was willing to sacrifice himself to save the both the boy and the book but she chose to sacrifice her original story to save both Harold and the boy. That realization gave me more appreciation for this ending and I think it works fine when viewed from this perspective.
Stranger Than Fiction is a solid movie that has something for almost everybody. If you haven’t seen it yet and if anything I’ve discussed above sounds interesting to you, I encourage you to check it out. Even if it’s been spoiled for you, it’s still well worth the watch.