Stranger Than Fiction

The envelope sat on the counter for almost a week. Then my wife and I decided to go ahead and watch the movie Stranger Than Fiction. We sailed through the first 24 scenes of the 28 scene movie and then because of damage to the disc, could go no further. A complaint at the website and viola two days later the bride and I get to see the last 4 scenes.
This is story Mr. Harold Crick, an IRS auditor with a life run by the precision and comfortable predictability of numbers. The story is being narrated by the author of the story, of whom Mr. Crick unbelievably becomes aware. In short time the narrator lets slip into the story, the agent's impending death. Hearing his life's narration in his mind is pretty upsetting to Harold.
The characters are:

• Harold Crick, the main character is played by Will Ferrell, he of Saturday Night Live fame and considerable physical comedic ability. Ferrell plays the part with a control that fits the character, who is pretty much a dullard that blooms.
• Karen Eiffel, the author is played by Emma Thompson, a woman that is struggling with her creative sanity. Thompson is good both in your ear and in person.
• Ana Pascal, this is a baker that Crick is auditing, she is a Harvard Law dropout and mother earth type woman. Harold falls in love with this character plaed by Maggie Gyllenhaal.
• Professor Jules Hilbert is played Dustin Hoffman, a literature teacher at a local college. Hilbert become Crick's guide to finding the voice in his head, the narrator.
• Dr. Cayly, is with us briefly but I note here because he is played by one of my favorite actors, Tom Hulce. Dominick and Eugene which he did with Ray Liotta is the brother's movie of all time.
• Penny Escher is played by Queen Latifa, a kindhearted author's assistant, assigned to help Eiffel finish her book.

By learning his fate, Crick finds the author and pleads his case for life. They learn that actions only occur to Harold as they are being typed. Eiffel gives the rest of the story with the outline for the ending written. Harold reads the story learning that he dies saving a little boy from being hit by a bus. After deep consideration Harold accepts that this is his destiny and moves to complete his journey. Eiffel, having met her character, has painful misgivings about killing him. Harold does, as written, steps in front of the bus and saves the boy. Eiffel changes her mind, and Harold wakes up in the hospital, tended by his new love.

Score 32 of 50 A very sweet underlying thread about the goodness in people. I recommend watching.

Character Development 7 out of 10. The main character evolves from a robotic tax man to a man willing to give his live for a child, to serve what is right.

Acting 7 out of 10. Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson are both good. Will Ferrell is surprisingly controlled.

Photography, cinematography 5 of 10. Intentionally stark, there are some oddities with feet, if you pay attention. I suspect that the intention is to make clear that all of the story is in the personalities not the surroundings.

Writing, script 5 out of 10. Entertaining, and not at all what I expected. The writing in the beginning did not make clear if the movie was going to develop as an all out comedy or as something more intelligent.

Concept 8 out of 10. Farcical yes but true to the original premise.

I think the writer has some obsession with mathematics, when writing this I noticed that many of the character's names had coincidences in mathematical history:

• Blaise Pascal was a 17th century French philosopher, mathematician who created a geometric arrangement of the binomial coefficients in a triangle. It is for him that the metric unit of pressure equal to one newton per square meter was named.
• Hans Conrad Escher von der Linth was a Swiss scientist, civil engineer and politician and M.C. Escher was the artist that created those interesting pictures of misaligned stairwells.
• David Hilbert was a mathematician that developed the Hilbert Transform, which oddly enough is some that I use professionally in vibration analysis.
• Gustave Eiffel was the structural engineer that designed the Eiffel Tower.
• Gösta Mittag-Leffler was a famous Swedish mathematician.
• Arthur Cayley was a 19th century British mathematician. He proved that every square matrix is a root of its own characteristic polynomial, this is called the Cayley-Hamilton Theorem. This is close, I think the writer made a spelling mistake.