Stranger Than Fiction

Stranger Than Fiction is a recent DVD release that I expected to enjoy, but I ended up enjoying it for unexpected reasons.

With Will Ferrell playing the main character, I was waiting for Elf--a sweet, funny, and somewhat juvenile comedy. But Will Ferrell proved that he could be more than just funny; he actually can act. Ferrell plays IRS auditor Harold Crick, whose life is completely predictable. He knows how many teeth he has and how many times he will brush each one every morning. There is no variation in his life, until one morning when he hears a voice narrating his every action, every move: the voice of novelist Kay Eiffel, except one of the big questions for Harold for much of the movie is whose voice is he hearing, and why.

This movie asks the big questions: Is my life controlled by fate? Do I have anything to do with my destiny? Is the narrator making the events occur, or do they happen first, and she is just giving a play by play? And interestingly, another thread runs through the film about the role the small, seemingly meaningless circumstances of life play in how things turn out. In fact, what sets things in motion for Harold, the voiceover tells us, is his watch. (I'm not going to tell you how.)

As it turns out, Eiffel is a talented, acclaimed novelist who hasn't published in awhile. The hallmark of her novels is that all of her characters die at the end, and this is the problem for her as she tells Harold's story: how to kill him off. So Harold's quest for much of the movie is to found out whose voice is narrating his story, and why. And all the while, Eiffel is trying to create a poetic way of killing Harold off.

I don't want to give anything away here, but as Harold's character evolves from an IRS auditor whose life is, well, boring to someone who learns to live, he seeks advice from a literature professor played by Dustin Hoffman. He also has an interesting encounter with a baker who is making a political statement by not paying all of her taxes.

I don't know that we really get any solid responses to the big questions; the answers seem nebulous. But I suppose that for one whose starting point is not a sovereign God, no real answers is probably a more honest approach. Does fate control our lives? The answer seems at times to be yes. Do we have anything to do with controlling our fate? Yes again--maybe. I think my favorite insight of the movie is how seemingly small things can play a significant role in our lives. I hear echoes of not despising the day of small things, and I think of a God who uses weak things and weak people to display His power.

The movie is a little quirky but not so intense in dealing with the "big questions" to make it an intellectual exercise. For viewers like me who enjoy writers, plot lines, and how stories take shape, this is a fun, often insightful, and entertaining look at the creative process with interesting characters portrayed well. Get it in your NetFlix queue soon!