Stranger Than FIction

Sometimes, I wonder if one of the ways one can tell if one is watching an original movie is if one says to him or herself, "It seems like someone else must have made this movie before...it's such a great idea."  Rack my brain as I might, I cannot think of another movie like this one.  It was released some 7 years ago.  I watched it again this week, and while I see some of its weaknesses, its originality and humor are more clear to me than ever.  It is difficult to write about this movie without revealing essential plot points.  I will not reveal the end, but if you want to be totally surprised by this great story, stop reading here and come back to my entry later :).

Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, an IRS agent with a decidedly dull and predictable life.  One day, while he is going about his routine, he starts hearing an audible voice.  While he hears it and the audience of the film hears it, no one else does.  The voice is narrating his life as he lives it.  At first, this is troubling to Harold and annoying, since he cannot make the voice stop.  Then, as the voice reveals a future key turn of events in Harold's life, Harold becomes truly scared.  He begins to seek help, but the therapists he sees merely prescribe medication for schizophrenia.  Harold understands their diagnosis, but feels he is sane and is hearing this voice.  The second therapist he sees suggests to him that he talk to someone who knows about literature, since the voice he is hearing seems to be narrating his life, as though he were living in a book.  He finds a literature professor at a local college (Dustin Hoffman) who begins to help him.  As the story continues, Harold has to figure out what kind of a story he is living, and what he is to do about it.  While Harold's fate unfolds, the author of the story (Emma Thompson) is struggling.  She is a writer of tragedies, and she always kills off her main characters.  However, she has encountered a nasty case of writer's block, and she cannot figure out how to creatively kill of the character of her new story, a man named Harold Crick.  It is her voice that Harold Crick hears narrating her life, and when the professor of literature who is helping Harold discovers who the voice who is narrating his life belongs to, he knows that Harold can only have one fate.  This is troubling to Harold because the narrator's voice and the crisis that it caused in his life has opened Harold up to living his life in a new way.  This includes falling in love with a young lady in town who owns a bakery (Maggie Gyllenhall), and deepening his freiendship with a coworker at the IRS.  Thus, Harold begins a quest to find the author of his life and convince her not to kill him.

For some reason, the words the late Roger Ebert wrote about this movie have stuck with me through the years.  This movie actually asks questions about what duty an artist has to his or her work.  If letting Harold live makes for a less artistic story, what should the artist do?  The movie is very well constructed.  There are some shots near the beginning of a young boy on a bike and of a young lady job searching that seem unrelated to the story, but come to be essential elements of the story.  As I watched the movie again, some of the scenes with the author and the agent from the publisher (played well by Queen Latifah) seem forced and not as natural as the rest of the plot.  However, since theplot revolves around the tension between creature and creator, the author's story is vital.  I simply think that many of the scenes with the two of them seem awkward, and when the story returns to Harold Crick, the soul of the movie is really there.  Also, Dustin Hoffman is absolutely wonderful in this movie.  He creates a character who is so unapologetic in his academic world.  He sees the man in front of him as a character, even though he is a real person.  As such, he is cavalier with Harold, but always in a way that is satirical and true.  Every motion Hoffman makes-every nervous twitch, every cup of coffee-contributes to the character he creates.  Will Ferrell is also a perfect choice for his role.  Ferrell always has had the strength of being "all in" with any role he does, whether in a full length film, or in a short SNL sketch.  Here, his comic abilities serve him well, but he creates a character who is so sympathetic and real that one forgets that this is the same actor who streaked through "Old School." 

In the end, the movie is great because it is original.  It has a new angle on storytelling, and the climactic moments of the movie feel truly different from anything else I have ever seen.  Not only is the movie original, however, it also is a heartfelt piece of work that is poignant and warm.  As the closing scenes flash across the screen at this viewing, I felt touched in the same way I am every time I watch the movie.  It is original indeed, but it also has a big heart, and that's what brings me back to it. 

Jonathan Winters

I have so many memories of movies growing up, but one that made an indelible impression on me was the sight of Jonathan Winters riding a crooked girls bike down the road in "It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World".  He was a truly gifted comic who came from left field on almost everything.  I remember one time seeing an episode of the Tonight Show wherein he and Robin Williams were both guests.  It was as uproarious as you would expect, but the image I will always remember from that show is that Jonathan Winters came out to the guest chair wearing a Union Civil War uniform...for no reason.

My family and I love "Mad World", though it has been awhile since I have watched it.  Maybe I will put it in again, and watch Jonathan Winters ride that bike, pummel Phil Silvers, and argue with Dick Shawn in the pit under the big W (or, the "big dubya", as Winters would have put it).

He will be missed.

In Memory of Roger Ebert

I must say that I would be remiss if I did not at least mention Roger Ebert's death on my blog.  I read him quite regularly my entire adult life, and I remember my mom and dad watching "Gene and Roger" back when I was a child when Siskel and Ebert had a show on PBS.  I disagreed and agreed with his writings, as is the case with any writer's opinion.  At the same time, much of his writings and many of his ideas about movies have stuck with me though the years.  I remember how much I respected his thoughts on Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ, even though I was not a big fan of that film.  He understood the point the film was trying to make, and respected it as a work of art, even though he seems to have left behind his Catholic faith (or so it seemed to me in his writings).  I always felt that even though I was just reading his reviews, I was sort of having a conversation with him, and much of his writing ended up sharpening my own ability to observe movies.

He wrote many things that stuck with me, but nothing he ever wrote stuck with me more than this quote, and it has become my philosophy of movie watching as well:

"It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it."

Friends with Kids

In the interest of full disclosure, this movie would be offensive to many of my more conservative readers.  It is rated R for a reason.  It has lots of bad language, and features a scene of a couple watching an adult film, and in the scene, a couple of shots of what they are watching are shown.  Was it necessary to the movie to show the video clip?  I think not, but since art itself is unnecessary, the greater question has to be does this film work and does it have something to say?  To that question, the answer is an emphatic yes.  This is one of the best romantic comedies I have seen in years.  It seems to owe a lot to Nora Ephron/Rob Reiner's "When Harry Met Sally", but it has its own voice, as so much of the content of the film deals with the realities of what happens when couples who are friends begin having children.  The last scene of the movie can be almost compared frame by frame to the last scene of "When Harry Met Sally", but the dialogue of the scene in this film is much rougher, and I think that it captures something about where we have journeyed sexually as a culture since 1989, the year that "When Harry Met Sally" was released. 

Julie and Jason (Jennifer Westfeldt and Adam Scott) are best friends.  They have a platonic relationship which has lasted for almost 20 years.  They are friends with two other couples, Ben and Missy (Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig) and Alex and Leslie (Chris O'Dowd and Maya Rudolph).  At the beginning of the movie, the six of them are out to dinner in their Manhattan habitat, and they all see a family across the restaurant with squirmy kids.  As a couple of them loudly protest the presence of the children in the restaurant, Alex and Leslie sheepishly break the news to all at the table that they are expecting a child.  The film quickly flashes forward 4 years to show the lives of these 6 after children have entered the picture.  Now, not only do Alex and Leslie have kids, but so do Ben and Missy.  As Julie and Jason make their way all the way out to Brooklyn for a birthday party for Alex ($45 cab fare), we see a new reality.  Alex and Leslie are at each other's throats about sharing the load of parenting, while Ben and Missy are downright hostile toward each other.  Julie and Jason like kids and want to have them themselves, but they do not want the future that they see before them.  So they concoct a plan to conceive a child together, then raise the child while maintaining their separate lives. 

Since this is a romantic comedy, there is a certain predictability to the ending, but it says something about the quality of this movie that I wasn't sure exactly how this movie would end.  However, it stays true to form while making some true statements along the way.  The strongest piece of writing to me was the way Jennifer Westfeldt (who wrote, produced and directed this movie on top of starring in it) contrasts the marriages of Julie and Jason's best friends.  While Alex and Leslie's marriage encounters challenges, it is clear that they love each other, and that foundation allows them to see the worst in the partner and still stay together.  Meanwhile, the picture of Ben and Missy is one where the fireworks of their relationship do not last because they don't actually like each other that much.  Once things get difficult, they are at each other's throats.  These two pictures give Julie and Jason something with which they can grapple, as they become parents and have to deal with the complex consequences of how they chose to become parents.

In the end, the movie rises above being a run of the mill romantic comedy because it has a lot of things to say about relationships and how children change everything.     Jason especially has some big things to learn, and sometimes what needs to be learned is that your best friend can also be your life long partner.  As I watched this movie with my life long partner, I saw a lot of truth.  It is amazing where you can find profound truth sometimes.