Stranger Than Fiction [open spoilers]

Cafe Society
1

Saw this tonight (last night?) at the Boston Common Loews. The wife scored free passes to a preview.

I didn’t want to see this and I thought Will Farrell would be in full jackass mode so I’d hate it. In actuality, this is the best performance I’ve ever seen from Mr. Trojan (boo!). He was awesome. He was funny because he played it so straight. His nerd-IRS pal (don’t know the actor’s name) was funny as well, especially the expression on his face when he opened the envelope and saw the Space Camp brochure. Great performances from Emma Thompson and Maggie Gyllendall (sp?) as well, Hoffman wasn’t very annoying, and I’m not sure what the point of Queen Latifah’s character was. Tom Hulce was unrecognizable as the new-age IRS HR shrink.

I loved the camerawork on this film. Definitely had an arthouse vibe to it, and I loved the storyline. It did drag a bit early when Farrell was trying to audit Maggie G. but quickly picked up.

I think I spotted a continuity error. I swore that Farrell bought the seafoam Stratocaster and it was a lefty, and he played it lefty. Then he played righty at Maggie’s house. Was I mistaken? At the end of the film, he’s rocking out in the store - and the Strat is a righty. He definitely was a lefty when he filled out the IRS forms.

Nice story and ending, though I saw it coming. This movie had the vibe of Being John Malkovich and Me, You, And Everyone We Know. I usually see three or so movies in the theatres a year and I wasn’t disappointed.

2

Saw it tonight as well and was very disappointed when the film pulled its punches right at the very end.

3

I just saw this and loved it. It reminded me a bit of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I also love, because of the “interconnectedness with realizing it” bit. That and the little numbers and measurements that flashed on the screen when he was counting things. I really didn’t feel that it “pulled its punches” in the end. I mean, she was killing a dude and knew it. Plus, it implied that he will still have to die, just not when he can predict it.

4

boy, this thread sunk like a stone… nobody saw it besides me, hawksgirl, and JohnT?

I wonder how it will do at the box office?

5

I saw it. It was kind of Charlie Kaufman-esque. Reminded a little of Eternal Sunshine. I thought it was pretty enjoyable but I’m not sure a lot of the eternal logic holds up. I have questions about the narrative of the book in relation to Will ferrel’s “real” life.

Like when Farrel called the author on the phone and she’s typing “the phone rang,” and her phone really ings. Was she actually “narrating” that he was calling HER specifically? If so, then how did she know? She wasn’t supposed to know he was a real person yet. There were some other scenes like that where she appeared to be narrating his reactions to knowing he was in a book before she was supposed to know he really existed. It didn’t make sense.

The movie is still fairly entertaining (and Will Farrell is dialed way down). I agree the ending seemed like a cop-out but the movie itself sort of recognizes that and acknowledges it by acknowledging that the book would have been better if Ferrell had died but that sometimes a middling happy ending is preferable to a “masterpiece” tragic ending.

Maggie Gyllenhaal (is she related to Jake?) helped the movie work for me. She was a likable character.
Does anybody know the name of that song Ferrell was playing on the guitar that got Maggie G. so hot and bothered? I might have to try that on the wife.

6

I mean intenal logic, not “eternal.”

7

Simple. We wouldn’t have been able to learn much about Emma Thompson’s character unless there was someone with whom she could engage in dialog.

Saved, for me, by two factors: a) They admitted that it ruined what would have been a much better ending, and b) He was saved by his watch (a shard from his watch blocking the blood loss), and element that was introduced early on and continually referenced through the film- his watch was a pivitol character throughout.

A song chosen by (probably) one of three people: either the screenwriter, the director, or the Music Supervisor.
Whoever it was, I was very impressed.
I Go The Whole Wide World, a pretty obscure song by an artist who has, at best, a cult following: Wreckless Eric.
The Wreckless Eric performance has a quirky charm to it, as it’s difficult to gleen whether or not he’s taking himself seriously, though the performance comes across as earnest nonetheless.
The charm is completely lost in the version recorded by The Monkees on their 1987 album, Pool It!. Mickey Dolenz sings the cheesy lyrics as if they are meant to be either a) genuinely funny, or b) actually really cool.

Will Ferrell’s performance is great! It’s innocent and sincere and totally fits his charcter.
In addition to that, it was a wonderful song to choose for Will Ferrell’s charcter in that it’s totally credible as a song that could be played by someone who had just recently learned the guitar- it’s just the same two chords back and forth (although, Ferrell would have been muting the strings the way he was fingering the chords- he was obviously taught the right chords- just didn’t quite get his fingers in exactly the right place to get a good sound).

I would actually say that the inclusion of this song is the most impressive song choice I’ve seen in a motion picture since probably forever!

8

A lot of critics have mentioned the Kaufman-style similarities, and they’re certainly there, but I walked out of the theatre thinking of Woody Allen. The artist has a moral decision to make about his/her art, i.e., Bullets Over Broadway.

Is the creation of a great piece of art worth deliberately causing the death of a person? Does the artist create his/her own moral universe (to quote Sheldon Flender)?

The ending was in no way a cop-out, it was the whole point of the story…

9

I saw this tonight, and I was pretty disappointed. I could see how it was inspired by Charlie Kaufman’s stuff, but ultimately I thought it was a pale imitation – I’d love to see what Kaufman himself would have done with the premise (which was, indeed, pretty interesting).

One of my big problems with the movie was that I didn’t like a lot of the characters. Yeah, I know, you don’t have to like all the characters in a movie, but there’s a problem when you don’t like characters who you’re clearly supposed to like. Primarily, I hated Maggie Gyllenhall’s character. She was horrible: the first thing we see of her is her screaming abuse at Harold Crick, practically assaulting him. And she kept it up, acting petty, stupid, and self-righteous. I don’t care what her political beliefs were, she was not a nice person, at least for the first half of the film. In the second half of the film her character did a complete turnabout and she suddenly turned nice, which made no sense, and wasn’t enough to counter her early scenes.

Dustin Hoffman’s character was a jerk as well – pretentious, self-righteous, and cold. Why the hell would he tell Harold that he had to kill himself to maintain the integrity of the book?? Assuming that Harold actually WAS supposed to be a flesh and blood human being, that’s just a heartless thing to do. Think about the reality of telling someone that, to their face. Especially because what little we can see of this masterpiece that’s supposedly worth dying for is pretty crappy. (More on that later.)

Emma Thompson’s character was pretty unpleasant as well, but that’s a more forgiveable because I don’t think we’re supposed to like her in the same way we’re supposed to like Hoffman and, especially, Gyllenhall.

Ferrell’s and Gyllenhall’s romance made no sense. There was no spark between the actors, and I did not believe that those two characters would actually fall in love.

Finally, what we saw of Emma Thompson’s book made no sense. What was it about, if not the exact plot of this movie (remember the scene where Thompson is typing about the telephone ringing and it does – she is evidently dictating this part of the action). Okay, so her story is about a strait-laced man who can hear his life being narrated, gets things shaken up a bit, and falls in love with a nutso pastry chef. And that story arch necessetates that Harold has to die…why? The means of Harold’s death was even more infuriating: after he has supposedly lightened up and learned to enjoy life, for one single morning he has to go back to his number-crunching ways to be at his busstop so that he can get run over by a bus…?? This is the part where I particularly wish I could see how Charlie Kaufman would have done it: I suspect he could have made Emma Thompson’s novel logical and compelling – compelling enough, even, to perhaps justify Dustin Hoffman’s character telling Harold he has to die for it.

10

Rodgers01 I disagree with almost everything in your post (not that you are wrong, just that I have a different opinion). I fell in love with Maggie Gyllenhall’s character. She was a wonderful, nurturing person who took a principled (if poorly thought out) stand against the govt. At first she saw Harold Crick as a stand in for the govt. and then gradually saw him as an individual. The scene where she gave him his first cookie was wonderful and oddly erotic. When Harold Crick offered to pay for the cookies he became a govt. representative again and it was devastating for her. I thought their romance was one of the best I have seen on-screen in years.

Dustin Hoffman’s character was a completely neutral observer. He was concerend only with the integrity of the novel. The matter of fact way that he said Harold had to die was really funny, and consistent with his role in the absurd situation.

My only nit was that they did not develop the “character” of the watch more. I thought the out was going to be to make the watch the protagonist rather than Harold, thus making it OK to keep Harold alive and “kill” the watch.

11

I really loved this film. I was afraid it would be another Will Ferrell makes an ass of himself movie but it played it fairly straight and gave a good performance. The bits with the watch and the onscreen number graphics were really cute. I loved Maggie and how just by putting on a sweater and covering her tattoo she transformed instantly from this punk anarchist earthy baker girl to a sophisticated woman. Will’s choice of gift was clever and very touching.

I think the Harold in the book doesn’t know he’s being narrated and the author interprets his actions differently. In real life Harold is cursing the heavens because of the narration, but the author thinks he’s cursing the heavens because he’s just fed up with his life. When he’s seeing the professor he’s not being narrated, so that’s not part of the book. It begs the question of what is happening when he calls the author. But I think it puts a nice spin on the story - so much can happen during the time of the story that the author is not narrating, and the author might interpret the character’s actions differently than the character themselves.

I love Latifah but she didn’t have much to do here except be someone for the author to talk to. Everyone else was pretty well served by the story. And I liked the role that the watch played during Will’s death scene. Plus, a killer soundtrack.

12

Yeah, that’s how I saw it. There was lots to Harold Crick’s life that was not narrated, there is no reason to expect author Kay Eiffel to have any knowledge of what he was doing when she wasn’t narrating him.

So, put me in the camp with the folks who want to know what she thought she was narrating when she ended up narrating the phone call.

13

I haven’t been able to figure out whether Harold in the book being written by the author knew that his life was being narrated or not. Most of the evidence seems to point to not, since the narration starts and stops when he stops and starts his brushing. The soundtrack was kick ass too. I love me some Spoon.

14

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]

Maggie Gyllenhaal (is she related to Jake?)…/QUOTE]

Yup. Brother and sister, them.

They both played in Donnie Darko as (gasp!) brother and sister.

15

Yeah, reading reviews of the movie, I can tell I’m against the grain here. I dunno, I just couldn’t get over how miserable Gyllenhall and Hoffman’s characters were initially. Watch the trailer here for a clip of it – Gyllenhall screaming (admittedly a funny idea, but a long way from making that character sympathetic again) and Hoffmann rudely trying to close the door on Harold. They just seemed like assholes. I dunno; maybe I was just in a mood or something…

16

I agree with you there, but I was won over by their characters at the points where I was supposed to be won over (I’m such a good audience member). Namely the scene on the bus for Gyllenhall and in the 10 seconds (well, more than 10 seconds) after the door thing for Hoffman.

17

It was an adult movie. Adults don’t see movies the first weekend. :slight_smile:

I’m very torn about the movie. Will Farrell did an excellent job of portraying a shell of a person, an inflatable doll with no insides, all surfaces. Yet by the climax of a novel whose ending is supposed to be heartbreaking, his interior should be filled all the way through. He never showed that. That missing 75,000 words of narration would do that in a book. A few scenes toward the end made him into more than an automaton but I wish there had been more.

The song bothered me. Harold the character, totally unhip, unmusical, would never learn one obscure cult song even if it was two chords. That was the writer/director talking directly to the audience bypassing the character. It worked in Moulin Rouge but not here.

I can’t agree that Hoffman’s character was poorly done. Hoffman played the character with gravitas plus eccentricities and it was just what the part needed. No resemblence in my mind to Huckabees. His attitude toward Harold’s death was clearly because he knew that Harold would be saving the boy and he wanted to convey that without telling him exactly.

And it would have been a better movie if Harold died. I knew he wouldn’t from the very beginning just because it was a Hollywood Movie and in Hollywood Movies the hero and star does not die. It might have been better for Emma Thompson that she didn’t kill him off when she found out he was real, but everyone on screen was right. Harold needed to die. There is no ending without that.

The film did feature the biggest continuity error I’ve ever caught on screen while watching. The dinner scene in which Harold and his friend were talking had two separate camera setups; one over the friend’s shoulder and one over Harold’s shoulder. Yet the foods on Harold’s plate were completely different in the two takes. So this white half-moon thing keeps popping up from one angle and disappearing from the other angle every single time they switched perspectives, which was on every line of dialog.

Overall I liked the film. Different, original, and, well, adult. The flaws didn’t kill it for me. And it’s hard to imagine a film that would more make you want to write after seeing it. Time to get back to that novel.

18

Just saw the movie today; liked it a lot.

No – it’s the novelist, Kay Eiffel, talking directly to her reader.

No – it would have been a better book if Harold had died. The movie is not that story – it’s the story of that story. The question of whether to kill a character who’s also a real person for the sake of art doesn’t exist within the book within the movie – but it does within the movie about the book, and both Harold and Kay make the noble, self-sacrificing choice.

I have to agree that the novel Death and Taxes doesn’t sound that interesting or profound in itself. In fact, the dialogue in the movie sounds better than the bits of the novel we hear narrated. Makes me wonder if the screenwriter, Zach Helm, isn’t a frustrated novelist who’s found that he’s better at concept and dialogue than at descriptive prose.

19

We saw it last weekend and really liked it.

The worst part of the move was that hideous tattoo on Maggie’s arm. Looked like a massive skin infection.

20

I hate to tell you this, but Peter Pan wasn’t real and Tinker Bell was just a flashlight.