Stranger Than Fiction Movie; Will Ferrell; Psychology of
Stranger than Fiction; Psychoanalysis of Stranger than Fiction; Meaning of
Stranger than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction has been recommended to us so many
times that when the Reluctant Wife and I talked about watching it, we assumed
we had. It is Will Ferrell’s “serious”
movie and many many have suggested it is worth viewing. The particular suggestion this time came from
a patient who was noticing the ways in which episodes in his life kept
repeating themselves with variations and suggested it as a work that played
with the issues that are part and parcel of time travel. A quick read of the plot synopsis clarified that we hadn't, in fact, watched it. Intrigued, we decided to enter the world of
Harold Crick (Ferrell).
Harold Crick is an IRS agent. He is meticulous, organized and bland. He has no significant attachments to anything or anyone except, Emma Thompson’s narrating
voice-over seems to intimate, his watch.
That this mechanical man should be connected to a mechanism makes sense
in a sort of sterile and reductive way.
Is he really this bland?
By the way, I used to live across the street from an IRS
agent. She was anything but bland – and her
husband – OMG – he was brilliant – he had written some amazing books – and tempestuous. He would fly into a rage on regular occasions
when people would turn around in his driveway (we lived at the end of a dead
end with no turn around). While the
agent was not as volatile as her husband, she was not nearly as bland as Harold
– they were an intriguing, vibrant and slightly scary couple.
The odd thing about the narration of Harold’s life is that not only can we hear it, he can, too. When he stops the actions that are being narrated (like brushing his teeth while he counts the brushstrokes), the narration stops, too. This is, not surprisingly, eerie and more than a bit distracting.
Wanting to get at the basis of what is going on, Harold
consults with a psychiatrist. She,
rather flat-footedly, diagnoses him as schizophrenic and wants to prescribe
anti-psychotics to make the voice stop.
Harold, to his credit, does not agree with this diagnosis. She, somewhat oddly, then suggests that he
consult with a literary maven (though I am a psychologist, I would have talked
to the guy. Was this a commentary on the
state of psychiatry where, if I don’t have a pill to help you, I can’t be of
use? I know that some psychiatrists are
much more versatile than that, but I do think this may be a common perception
of the field at this point…).
Thank goodness, for the sake of the movie, Harold finds Jules Hibert (perfectly played by Dustin Hoffman), a professor of English Literature. They engage in a conversation and matter of factly conclude that Harold is a character in a novel – and that he should find the novelist in order to find out what his fate will be.
Meanwhile, Harold has been assigned to the case of Ana
Pascal (Maggie
Gyllenhaal), a quirky baker who, on a variation of Thoreau’s moral
rejection of the government, has intentionally not paid her entire tax bill
because she only wants to support a portion of what the government is doing
(though I think she significantly understates the portion of the federal budget
that is related to the armed services).
The mechanical Harold is, of course, taken with the do-gooding Ana and,
this being Hollywood, the do gooding, vivacious and attractive Ana is curious
about what sort of heart beats in the breast of this mechanical man.
Harold’s research with Hibert, meanwhile, takes a dark
turn. As he tries to determine whether
he is in a comedy or a tragedy – and sees signs of both (e.g. this must be a
comedy because he is smitten with Ana and she might be with him), Hibert
delivers the judgement, once they determine that the author is Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson, of
course), that he will die – soon – as all of her characters die at the end of
her books. Hibert enjoins Harold to live
the remainder of his life as fully as he can, Crick proceeds to do this – while
also setting off to be in touch with his author.
We, of course, have been following the author, Eiffel, as
she tries to figure out how best to kill her character. This dilemma has caused her to miss deadlines
that the publisher has imposed and so they have sent out Penny Escher (Queen Latifah) to help
her finish the book. Eiffel has the
elements – there is a little boy, and a bus driver, and a concerned father –
and there is an apple, but how these elements come together is escaping her –
tormenting her even. Escher doesn’t care
about art or hang ups – she is a midwife and works to get the baby delivered.
Just as the ending has fallen into place, and as Eiffel is
writing it out, Crick calls. Unnerved,
but convinced that she is actually talking to her character, Eiffel gives him
the manuscript. Crick, unable to read it
himself, delivers it to Hibert.
Hibert, with a straight face, pronounces it Eiffel’s
masterpiece and he clarifies to Crick that he must accept his fate, which is to
die, because to do otherwise would interfere with the artistic integrity of
Eiffel’s work. In order to create an
immortal version of himself, Crick must die.
And, by the way, he will die anyway – so why not die heroically?
Meanwhile, Crick has stated his desire for Pascal. He has also played the guitar and sung for
her – and Pascal has discovered that his heart is not just interesting but
desirable, and they have become lovers.
Crick, by virtue of having set his watch wrong, arrives at
the bus stop early, in time to be able to save a boy from being run over, but
puts himself in harm’s way in the process.
This should, of course, be the end of the film and we should
get a voice over from Eiffel that will wrap this up and we will understand
something about the human character that will, from the perspective of Hibert,
be masterful. But that is not what
occurs. Eiffel is impressed that her
character, despite knowing his fate, has accepted it. She has a crisis of confidence.
How many other characters has she killed? What has been the cost of that? But more, centrally, who is this character
named Crick. As she was narrating his
life, he was an automaton. He brushed
his teeth 37 (or was it 87?) times on each side. He was as mechanical as his watch. Or was he?
Did he not fall in love? And,
more centrally, did he not embrace his fate – not simply have it happen to him?
The questions in the last paragraph are mine. What occurs onscreen is that Crick wakes up
in a hospital bed (improbably but quite beautifully looking down on the Wrigley
building in Chicago). He has been saved
by his watch which has miraculously broken apart and inserted itself into the
severed artery that was to have killed him but, thanks to its intervention, his
life was spared, though he will now have to be nursed back to health by Pascal.
We are left to puzzle over this turn of
events.
Hibert reads the book that includes Crick’s survival, and
Eiffel asks his opinion. He deems it a
good effort – but it is clearly not the masterpiece that it would have been. Eiffel acknowledges that she has discovered
that Crick was more than she had measured him to be, and sparing his life and
ruining the masterpiece became necessary.
Btw, before turning to an understanding of the film, we were
very glad to have watched it. I think
it, like the book, is not a masterpiece (and I will get to the virtues of that
in a second), but it is a deeply textured film and the characters are quite
delightful. But the reluctant wife and I
agreed that the best part about it is that it is layered – and that the
pleasure of watching it is going back over those layers to think about and
discuss them. In what follows, and in
what I hope to be the spirit of the movie, I hope to get at a few of those
layers, but implore you to enjoy experiencing the layers that I have not
included, have missed, or that you experienced differently from me.
The character names to this story are, I think,
important. They are all famous
scientists. Eiffel is the author – or chief
engineer. She would create a monument –
austere in its perfection. Hibert is the
mathematicians who posed 23 problems at the beginning of the twentieth century,
most of which were solved, but some still await a solution. Can Eiffel prove what she sets out to? Pascal is the father of modern science and
sets it all in motion, but I am struck by his wager – that it is better to bet
on God existing, for if he does, you will profit in the afterlife and, if not,
you have not lost a great deal. Escher,
of course, creates (resolves?) paradoxical images, and Crick discovers the
blueprint of being human.
If Eiffel’s vision of Humanity is that it is a mechanism –
one where we run like clockwork - Crick proves her wrong – destroying the
symmetrical and therefore beautiful elaboration of the human condition. The way that he does this involves embracing
his fate – saving the boy at the risk of his own life – not reflexively and
thoughtlessly, but knowingly. He knows
that he will die, but chooses to save the life of the child anyway. Not because he is programmed to do this by
his reflexes, but by something that lies much deeper in the DNA of his
character – valuing human life.
Eiffel’s vision, then, must be one that Crick, the character
in the novel and in the film, fits perfectly.
We are pre-programmed to function in the ways that we do. Indeed, Crick seems to be a cyborg – he can
perform mathematical feats without batting an eye, routinely solving complex
multiplication and division problems for his fellow auditors – but only until
he begins to worry about his fate. As he
discovers his humanity, he becomes distractible and distracted. He no longer runs as smoothly as he was
before.
Was it just me, or was the intimacy between Crick and Pascal improbably comfortable? Even as he was portraying a man who was awkward, the time spent with Pascal became increasing natural. Will Ferrell, the comic actor who plays absurd situations with a dead pan normalcy, seemed in his element here; unfazed by the improbability of the love that emerged from within him – but also that emanated from Pascal. Doing his job, which he did with a kind of arch disregard for the characters that he caught cheating the government, led him into a warm haven – the baker provided the cookies and milk that his mother never had – and he blossomed. It was as if a natural developmental path that had been blocked by an impersonal world had created an attachment in a person who had been devoid of an awareness that attachment was of value.
I think that the underlying theme of this film (and many
others) is that it is attachment that makes us human. Eiffel is moved – she becomes attached to her
character – by his heroism. We know even
less about her back story than we knew about Crick, but she is clearly
wrestling with the inevitability of death – in her characters’ lives, but also,
we assume, in her own. She chain smokes
throughout the film, something that is no longer chic in the movies and looks,
in her character, to be a driven need – a deeply felt addiction – rather than a
tool to elongate a scene or to enhance the mystery of a character, as was the
case in Hollywood of old.
Eiffel resolves the dilemma of death much as Hibert does, by thinking about it as an inevitability and one that forms the structure of our
life. Crick’s DNA, which leads him, with
the help of Pascal, to a different conclusion.
This means that Eiffel has to restructure her understanding of the human
condition (Hibert seems less convinced), and so we are left to wonder, how much
does Eiffel rewrite her character so that he becomes worthy of saving? This is the time travel wrinkle that my
patient was referring to. But that opens
up a whole new door.
The patient was experiencing aspects of his life as he has
experienced them before, but he was getting a second chance at them, or a third
or fourth or fifth. Partly we
re-experience our lives through transference – we recognize in our current
relationships aspects of previous relationships. And in this déjà vu, we get a second chance
to work through what we have done before.
We count on this in therapy, where the patient experiences the therapist
as a person from their past, and the therapist teaches them new dance steps, or
they figure them out together, as Eiffel and her character seem to do. Couldn’t this dance end in a different way
than all the previous ones?
But we also get a chance to rework those steps within the
relationships that we are lucky enough (or cursed enough) to experience across
the span of our lifetime. A parent or a
spouse or a child can be re-experienced and known in a new way for the first time. I had this opportunity recently with my
mother – whose character I thought I knew well, but in a conversation, one like
many many we have had before, I heard her describe herself in a new and
different way, and this helped me appreciate her in new and different ways, and
this required that I rewrite the ways in which I had been characterizing her at
various significant moments in our shared lives.
So, in this way, Eiffel, who is worrying over her character
throughout the film, would have had to rewrite her character once having met
him. She would have had to have him meet
Pascal, perhaps for the first time, and realized that he was capable of much
more than she had given him credit for.
And she would have, in the process, provided him with the kind of person who
could care for him, who could nurse him back to health after having been injured
by Eiffel.
So, did Eiffel discover Crick’s humanity not from his
interaction with Pascal, but from his decision to follow through with his death
– with his fate – knowing that this was what Eiffel had in mind for him and doing
it anyway? Was it Eiffel’s becoming
attached to her character that led her to fail to produce the great novel and
movie, but that humanized her instead – and she thus ended up being able to be
generous with him because, after all, we do die, but it is how we live that is
the measure of our character, not how we die.
So, if this is the case, this is, indeed, a comedy. It is a celebration of what life has to offer
– not a tying together or our fate, death, with the failures in our
character. Yes, we will die. Yes, we have flaws, including humming through
life mechanically, not noticing the loveliness that is all around us. None of us can escape our fate. And our fate – death – can be associated with
our flaws. And we can celebrate life –
though this is messier, and the symmetry is out of balance, it is lighter – it
is a comedy.
But just because it is a comedy – just because a little bit
of therapy has helped us avert a lonelier and more noble end, it doesn’t mean
that it can’t be complex and filled with twists and turns that fold back on
themselves and that have both a certain symmetry and a certain pleasure to
discovering their nooks and crannies, even if they don’t have the catharsis of
the discovery of our limits.
OK. That should be a
wrap, but I have to confess to something.
Writing this piece in the second summer of Black Lives Matter going
mainstream, waiting for the other shoe to drop on COVID with its delta variant,
and watching the world rev up to reanimate our self-destructive plunge into
global warming, I had an inkling, as I started this post, that there was
something off about it. That it was out
of step with where I am, and where we are.
That we are, or should be, in a place of disruption – moving from
something that is broken to something that is fixed. This movie provides what is, in many ways,
the same old fix. We need more loving. Don’t we need a new paradigm is what I think
I was feeling as I started into this.
Having arrived at the end, I’m not sure that there is
another one that will work for us. We
are mammals. We are pack animals. If we can learn that we are all of the same
species, if we can move away from thinking of ourselves as divided into races
and sexes and diagnoses (if this film had been made now, Crick might have
carried a diagnosis of or might have had more aspects that suggested he was on the
autistic spectrum), and we include each other in our definition of who should
be loved – is that enough? Shouldn’t we
have to wrestle with the demons that have put us in this place?
Of course we have to wrestle with our demons to achieve a
new ending. We have to engage in the
dance again – and again. But we also
have to have a sense of why we are engaging in that dance again – and why we
keep trying to figure out how to learn new steps. We need to know that there is a space – an imaginary
hospital be in the old building across the street from the gleaming white
Wrigley building – where we can convalesce and discover within ourselves a new
life, where we can transform our mangled but heroic selves into the people that
we were meant to be.
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Not much psychoanalysis in this summary
ReplyDeleteHmm... I don't know how to respond to this criticism. If you mean there isn't much psychoanalytic jargon, I would agree with that. I think, however, I meant to be comparing the movie to a psychoanalytic process throughout. My apologies if that wasn't clear...
ReplyDeleteAs an autistic worker in the equivalent of IRS in my country, that movie was a pretty surprising watch. I relate to Harold about many things (except the instant calculus thing, I'm rather average in this domain), and I'm relieved he got to live his own life and save the boy.
ReplyDeleteI wish he had an explicit diagnosis, Will Ferrell plays the role so well.
I'm glad to hear that you related to Harold and were relieved by his being able to live his own life and save the boy.
ReplyDelete