Stranger Than Fiction - movie review

Last night, I saw the movie - Stranger Than Fiction, starring Will Ferrell. It has a very good supporting cast, including Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman and Queen Latifah.

http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/strangerthanfiction/index.html

I wanted to write this review last night, but I have to tell you that this movie is challenging both intellectually and emotionally. I tried very much to pay attention to the nuances and subtle, albeit, deep messages, that it posed. It took me overnight to properly digest and reveal my feelings about it.

Just this process is enough for me to recommend this movie.

If you are thinking this will be a "slapstick comedy", because it stars Will Ferrell, it is most certainly not. It is quite the opposite, but it has incredibly subtle humour that makes you lightly laugh at the absurdity of it.

The premise is that the main character - IRS agent Harold Crick, hears his life being narrated inside his head. It concerns him, so he is referred to a literature professor at the local university - played by Dustin Hoffman. btw - the narrator inside his head is a fiction-writer, played by Emma Thompson. Along the way, he falls head-over-heals in love with a woman he is auditing.
It's a wonderfully puzzling entanglement that takes some time to fully appreciate.

What I took away from this was that we all have a "narrator" inside of us that is telling us what to do. Of course, we dont actually hear the narrator, but he / she is there guiding our daily, often mundane existence. I can certainly relate to this, and it inspires me to be more conscious of missing "living my life" because of blind, unconscious, familiar and safe routine.

For example, Harold is auditing a woman who owns a bakery. Though he is very attracted to her at first sight, his inner routine and embedded code of ethics keep him from telling her how really feels about her. Sensing this, she offers him some cookies she baked just for him, but he refuses, out of sense of duty to his job. But really, it is a blind following of his inner narrator. The point of this is that we so often get caught up in daily routines that are so deeply embedded within that we tragically miss the opportunities for happiness that are standing right in front of us.

There are so many other messages this movie gave me, but going into them all would be a bit impractical, and then not much left to surprise if you were planning on seeing it.

At the end of the movie, I felt at tear roll down one cheek. It touched me that much.

PS - I'd like to thank "V" for recommending this movie to me. You were right, it is a 9 out of 10.