by PrairieFire of irtr.org
November, 2006
Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is an IRS auditor whose banal paper pushing life is turned upside down when he hears a voice narrating his day. Harold Crick decides he isn't crazy because the voice is always correct and, as we later learn, the events are narrated in "the third persyn omniscient." Rather than seeking mental help for schizophrenia, Harold Crick seeks the help of Professor and literary critic, Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman). Help becomes especially urgent because Harold learns from the narrator that he is about to die. Professor Jules Hilbert begins to give advice to Harold Crick in order to discover which author is narrating the events in Harold's life in order to prevent Harold's demise.

After discovering that Harold is stuck in a plot driven by events beyond his control, Professor Jules advises Harold that he might as well follow his stifled lifelong dreams since his death is beyond his control. Harold takes the advice of Professor Jules and follows his dream of learning how to play the guitar and he decides to follow up on a womyn who has peaked his interest.

Soon after hearing the voice, nervous-schoolboy-like Harold is sent to audit an anarchist owner of a bakery, Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Ana is being audited because she refuses to pay certain taxes to support imperialism. Harold asks if she is an anarchist. She responds in a typical individualist way by saying that joining an anarchist group would defeat the point of being an anarchist. This is the kind of typical sophistry we hear all the time on the street. Her anarchist "politics" are advertised to insiders by a strategically placed Food Not Bombs flyer in her bakery and she announces she attends a needle-point group, also typical among white anarchist lifestyle-ists. She gives cookies to homeless people who stumble into her cafe. Harold plays the role of the nervous innocent school boy with no tact. Although Ana has given the straightlaced tax man a hard time, she is fully won over when Harold plays the only song he knows; it just so happens it is one of Ana's favorite songs. She jumps on top of him as he strums away. They have sex, not surprisingly, this odd couple quickly fall in love.

Is Harold is stuck in a tragedy or comedy? is the question asked by Professor Jules. Will Harold die or is there some piece of information the omniscient narrator is hiding that might save Harold so he can live happily ever after? As the evidence mounts that Harold is stuck in a tragedy and death is imminent, finding who the narrator is becomes all the more important. While Professor Jules is eliminating possibilities as to who is and who is not the author, Harold happens to see an interview with author Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) about her decade long uncompleted magnum opus, Death and Taxes. It just so happens that Kay is Professor Jules' favorite author. Jules has been sending the depressed, reclusive, and death obsessed author unanswered letters for years.

After decades of struggling with an ending to her story, Kay finally has a flash of inspiration about how to end the story, "how to kill off Harold." While she is typing the last pages of Harold's life, Harold manages to hunt down the reclusive Kay who is stunned that her character is flesh and blood. Harold pleads with Kay not to kill him. However, the ending of the book is too "perfect." The ending of the manuscript is so perfect, that Ana, Professor Jules, and Harold reluctantly and in tears come to the conclusion that he must die to complete this perfect romantic tragedy. The ending is just that beautiful.

Is his last day according to the draft manuscript, Harold sees a boy in front of a bus. Harold saves the boy, but gets hit. Amerikans don't like sad endings, so predictably, as Harold lays bloody on the pavement, the film cuts to Kay coming into Professor Jules' office. We learn that there has been a sudden re-write and Harold is saved by the dramatic intervention of Kay through a deus ex machina: although Harold's s artery was severed, a fragment from his watch lodged strategically in his flesh to keep him alive. Not surprisingly, the movie ends with Harold's tragedy being avoided.

Stranger than Fiction puts forth the standard view that life has become one-dimensional for the paper pushers of the first world. Harold's boring days of paper-pushing and counting bathroom tiles are ended as the narrator intervenes and, also, as Harold finds love. Typically, Harold is jolted out of his stupid routine by a flawed but godlike author who announces his death, and, by love. The idea that love conquers the banality of one-dimensional life under imperialist capitalism is a kind of pop version of Marcusean utopianism. Love and fear of death may mix things up for depressed labor aristocrats, but no sub-reformist lifestyle change will overthrow imperialism. The movie is typically individualist through and through.

Another example: Anarchist Ana broke the tax laws because she doesn't want her money to support defense spending. Harold advises anarchist Ana of a way around the tax laws by deducting the costs of the food, cookies, she gives away to homeless people who stumble into her cafe. Anarchist Ana, in response to Harold, says she does not want to write off the cost of the free food, "the point is break the rules." Harold responds that she does more good out of jail and that he loves her. In the context of the movie, this is just one kind of sub-reformism coming into conflict another. It is one thing to organize a tax-protest movement against war, it is another to tax-protest as an individual in order to be morally clean. It is one thing to try to feed the poor systematically, it is another to just hand out cookies to whatever hungry persyn happens to be in front of you. The few overt "political" acts witnessed in the movie are locked into an individualist sub-reformism. If anarchist Ana wants to hurt imperialism, she'd do better to organize a tax-protest movement against the war, or better yet, organize for Maoist revolution. Alas, she is stuck in isolated moralism, she even says that going to meetings defeats the whole point of breaking the rules. Despite what "individualists" may think, there is no shortage of amerikans who think just as self-proclaimed "individualists" do. It is a far greater act of rebellion to actually join an anti-imperialist movement. Ana's "politics" are mostly just a prop to compliment straightlaced Harold.

The movie is slightly clever in the sense that it comments on plot, character development, genre, and literary devices. For example, it comments on the relation between author and critic and text: The protagonist Harold's story evolves because he is a "mutual acquaintance" of both critic and author; it evolves as he runs between the two.

What makes this movie interesting is its commentary on literature. Stripped of the clever devices and commentary, it is a love story. The part of the movie that hooks amerikans is: Man is lonely. Man enters life crisis. Man wakes up. Man falls in love. Man almost dies. Man lives happily ever after. A clever movie about literature that didn't have the sappy love story element would not sell in amerika. The film ends with typical lovey-dovey reflections on the world, love conquers all and cookies are little miracles type of blather.

[Web Minister adds:
We imagine that even many "pc" liberals will be troubled by a movie showing a womyn falling in love with her tax auditor. It's another example of what Catharine MacKinnon calls the "eroticization of power" that we do not need.

This whole movie is partly about the subject of allegorical writing. Prairiefire has sent us allegorical writing material in the past, but we do not believe there is any here in this review. We encourage IRTR to run their own news service.]