Okay, we’ve never been big fans of comedian Will Ferrell. We guess it’s just not our type of humour, but credit to him for stuff such as Anchorman (2004).
For Stranger Than Fiction (2006), he took a stab at serious acting and it really paid off. We think he did a terrific job with this, with guidance from director Marc Forster.
The film also has a unique high concept, where an IRS agent starts hearing disembodied narration of his life. As he attempts to deal with encroaching madness, he makes some startling revelations about himself.
Stranger Than Fiction and the Exploration of Absurd Inevitabilities
Harold Crick (Ferrell) is a middle-aged IRS (Internal Revenue Service) clerk who leads a lonely life that follows a relentless routine.
He has an uncanny mathematical ability (the personality traits here suggesting he may be autistics, or a Hollywoodised version of certain ASD ticks).
One day, Crick starts hearing the voice of a woman (Emma Thompson) narrating his every move. Eventually, the woman narrates that Crick’s death isn’t far off.
And the voice continues.
This is the best bit of the film, the opening 30 minutes or so (of 113 minutes total) where we, the audience, sympathise with Crick’s plight.
We watched the film quite a long time ago now, but certain scenes really stick with us. Just the earnestness of Ferrell’s performance, downplaying all the mugging for the camera he normally does.
This bit in particular. In the comments on this video someone says they find this bit “funny”, whereas we see it as rather sad—a beleaguered soul starting to snap.
His performance fits in with the “comedian doing a serious role” genre. The likes of Peter Sellers started that off with a role in Being There (1979).
Robin Williams advanced on that (see 2002’s One Hour Photo), as did Jim Carrey with the likes of and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).
Whilst Ferrell’s performance isn’t as outstanding as the above, it’s still the best performance he’s ever done. He occasionally does serious roles and had another stab in Everything Must Go (2010), a weak film that even the awesome Rebecca Hall (see 2016’s Christine) couldn’t enhance.
But in Stranger Than Fiction he’s the best thing in the film.
Panicked and distressed, Crick seeks help from a psychiatrist (Tom Hulce of Amadeus fame) who refers him to a literary specialist.
This doesn’t cure the condition but Crick, whilst investigating a baker called Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal) develops an attraction to her and the pair have a chemistry.
When he buys a guitar and sings a bit of a song, she proper swoons for him (as we all know, men with acoustic guitars are irresistible to women).
Yes, then, Stranger Than Fiction has a clever concept.
It just doesn’t quite know what to do with it, meandering off all over the path as the film develops. Unlike Synecdoche, New York (2008), which reminds us of this film, it’s not pretentious.
However, it does run out of a steam a bit. And you’re left a bit bored by the end and wishing it had developed in a different way.
That’s our feeling about it, anyway. The arrival of the author Karen Eiffel (Thompson) later on, who’s dictating Crick’s life, does lift proceedings a little.
And for fans of whimsy, there’s a happy ending with Crick celebrating his newly invigorated life with Pascal.
The film was well received by critics, though, and verged around the 4/5 and 7/10 territory. Which we think is pretty fair. Full marks for the high concept creativity, even if it goes a little wonky later on.
As is often the case online, you can also find people on YouTube hailing the thing as an “underrated masterpiece”.
It isn’t an underrated masterpiece.
However, all these years on and it’s worthy of a watch to catch up on the very high standard of Will Ferrell’s performance. Which he jokes about in the below interview.
Off its $30 million budget, the film wasn’t a huge hit—some $53.7 million in return.
We guess Ferrell’s regular audience of goofball comedy flicks may have been a bit put off by his sudden appearance in a film drenched in existential dread.
It was shot on location in Chicago, Illinois, with
During scenes, Ferrell wore an earpiece. Emma Thompson’s lines were fed to him, so that helped him understand the disorientating nature of having someone there narrating his every move.
Since its launch in 2006 we feel its become dwarfed by a lot of the rest of Ferrell’s work and he hasn’t gone on to do anything else like this.
