Lilith Saintcrow

Every once in a while, something extraordinary happens and instead of doing a Thursday Revue, I do a review on whatever ding-dang day it happens to be. Because, well, this is my blog. I can do that sort of thing.

This weekend I went to go see Harsh Times because I love me some Christian Bale. Unfortunately the movie was Beavis and Butthead with guns, and we didn’t stay to see all of it. It was terrible. (I just CANNOT imagine sharp, handsome Bale saying “Dude!” all the time.) Which says something, considering I paid seven bucks EACH for a ticket. It was money ill-spent.

So I was nervous when buying the tickets for Stranger than Fiction. It was, after all, Will Ferrell. And my movie karma might have taken a drastic turn for the worse. But…it’s about a writer who has to kill a character, only the character is a real man–and he’s hearing the writer narrate.

This, I thought, would be right up my alley. And the Surly Teenager actually begged to be taken to a movie with no car chases, explosions, or nudity. Surely the End Times were upon us, and I needed to get this movie seen before the Apocalypse.

But still. Will Ferrell? The only thing more annoying than the man is his movies, and the only thing more annoying than that are his talentless SNL sketches. (I happen to think SNL was great until Eddie Murphy left. Then it all went downhill.) Anyway, I had my fingers crossed and my toes crossed too, hoping for a miracle.

I was not just served a miracle. I was served a mind-blowingly fantastic miracle.

Yes, it’s Will Ferrell. Yes, it’s Dustin Hoffman. But the director must have tranked ‘em both, because neither of them overact. It’s like The Truman Show, which was another one of my pleasant-surprise movies. Plus, there’s Emma Thompson, playing a writer, and Queen Latifah as her assistant. Even if the rest of the movie sucked like a giant big sucking hole, those two would be worth seeing over and over again.

Okay. Here’s the story. Harold Crick (Ferrell) is an IRS agent. He is also a man so inured to his routine that he is one of the walking dead. Then, one day, a voice starts speaking to him, narrating his life. The voice belongs to Karen Eiffel (Thompson), who hasn’t finished a book in ten years. She’s got this idea, you see, and there’s just one problem.

She has to figure out how to kill Harold Crick. In the book. And since he’s hearing the narrating and she’s right about everything else about him (including how many times he likes to brush his teeth in the morning) he’s getting a little concerned.

Ferrell turns in a startling performance. There is no crazy-man, no silly voices, and none of that stupid teenage cheerleader sh!te he used to do with that weird-necked woman on SNL. Instead, Ferrell plays…a regular guy. A guy so regular he’s never needed bran, a guy so regular he is the single most boring human being on the face of the earth. Which, you will have to admit, takes talent. Harold is the viewer, being drawn down the rabbit hole and finding out that the things he thought were the most solid (including his grasp on his own life) are made of air.

Ferrell is, dare I say it, spectacular at playing an ordinary Everyman. But it’s Thompson who made the movie for me. There are scenes in there where I was the only one in the theater laughing, because I bet I was the only writer there. (The other people did laugh at several points–not where Ferrell was doing anything stupid or crazy, because there was no stupid-crazy, just when the situation got so absurd it could only BE real.) There’s a scene with Eiffel and her assistant (the long-suffering Queen Latifah) in an emergency room. Eiffel is doing research on ways to die, and she finally corners an emergency-room nurse and asks where all the dying people are, not the people who are going to get better. It SO reminded me of my own life. I almost wet myself laughing.

Christ, that sounds bad, doesn’t it? But if you’re a writer, you know what I mean. Sooner or later everything becomes material. (Like when I was hanging upside down in the truck after the accident and part of me was gibbering in panic, the mother part of me was figuring out how to get out of the seatbelt, and the writer in me was going Oh. So that’s what it feels like.) Other people don’t understand, but writers will completely grok most of Thompson’s scenes. (It’s like the Selkie saying of one of her characters, “I wouldn’t want to speak for him…”)

Parts of the movie really hit home for me, because of my struggle (and impending deadline) on the fifth Valentine book. I’m terrified, okay? I’m scared I’m not going to be able to pull the book off. I’m scared the Readers won’t like it. I’m scared I’ll wimp out without realizing it. I’m scared of saying goodbye to these characters who I’ve shared so much with.

But near the end of the movie, when Eiffel is at her typewriter struggling with the implications of her actions–because Harold Crick, this character inside her head, is actually a real man–I found myself whispering.

“Come on. Take the leap. You can do it.”

The struggle was for Eiffel to do something new, to step out into space and trust the work to carry her. You can get comfortable as a writer, and when the Muse serves up a heapin’ helpin’ of something new (because she does so like to throw us off track, she’s a tricky wench) we tend to forget that the work always carries us. Part of being a writer is flinging oneself out into space and trusting the work to catch us. It’s hard because it must be done again and again, and human beings prefer comfort. We prefer the known and familiar.

But a writer has to jump. We aren’t truly happy until we do, and as soon as we’ve done it and the work catches us like a parachute in motion, we wonder why we were so scared and feel the exhilaration of flying once more.

Not just writers. Ordinary people have to jump too, as Harold finds out when he falls in love with a government-hating baker (played nicely but with no real fire by Maggie Gyllenhall.)

Dustin Hoffman reprises the same thing he did in I Heart Huckabees, playing an English professor Harold turns to for help in understanding what’s happening to him. (The scene with the list of stories Harold ISN’T in is hilarious, not just for writers.)

The real question of the movie is, if you know you’re going to die, are you going to make your life worth something? As Hoffman’s character points out, we’re all going to die. Nobody is prepared for it, and we all create this amnesiac little trick of forgetting we are mortal creatures. Being perishable should remind us to do the imperishable things–love ourselves, love our loved ones, live like life is a precious gift. It’s amazing how often we forget to do what we are made for and settle for doing only what we think we deserve to get away with.

So. If you are a writer, drop everything and go see this movie. If you’re in love with or living with a writer, go see this movie. Hell, if you’re breathing and have a few bucks to spare, GO SEE THIS MOVIE. It’s two hours long, and none of it is wasted. It’ll be a good two hours, I promise.

Trust me on this one.

Then, when you’re done seeing the movie, find someone you love and tell them you love them. Because after all, that’s what really matters.

Thank God someone put it in a movie. Otherwise nobody would believe it.

Related posts:

1. Thursday Revue
2. It’s Been A Good Ride So Far
3. A Conversation With Danny Valentine

This entry was posted on Monday, November 13th, 2006 at 11:23 am and is filed under Deep Thoughts, Real Life, Reviews, Writing (About). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.