Contemplating (Stranger Than) Fiction

Stranger Than Fiction

Here is a film that I almost skipped over, imagining its premise a little too cutesy to be worth the price of admission. That would've been a grave mistake, as the film is one of the more interesting, thought-provoking films to be released this year.

The film poses essentially two questions:
1) How would you respond if you were told your death was "imminent"?
2) What is the responsibility of the artist to both the audience, himself/herself, and the characters in their work?

The film avoids taking itself too seriously and trying to preach a philosophy of life. Rather, it treats it all very matter-of-factly, and the characters do about what we would expect these characters to do were they real people. Ferrell does what we expect anyone to do when they find out they'll die: he takes a vacation from work, finds love, and does all the things he always wanted to do, but was too afraid to break his routine and find time for them, such as buying and learning to play a sea foam green Stratocaster.
I often wonder how many people's lives are so entrenched, so hopeless, so self-defeated that even were they to be told their death was imminent, they would do nothing out of the ordinary until they perished.

The respect for the characters exhibited by the very talented director Mark Forster (of Finding Neverland and Monster's Ball fame) is exactly one of the ideas of the film. Karen Eiffel (played by Emma Thompson) is an author writing the story of Harold Crick, an IRS drone played by Will Ferrell, who one day begins hearing her narrating his life, but only he can hear it and he hears her say some about his "imminent death" (I know what you're thinking, and no, Charlie Kauffman did not write this). He enlists the help of lit professor Dustin Hoffman to help him figure out what's going on. Through a series of tests they determines that he is in a tragedy. Hoffman compiles a list of possible authors who could be writing his story. In the meantime, Ferrell, takes a vacation from work for the first time, falls in love with a baker he was supposed to be auditing, played by Maggie Gyllenhall, and starts "living" his life for the first time. He sees Emma Thompson on TV and realizes she is the author narrating his life. He tracks her down and asks her why she is going to kill him and asks her not to write the end of his story yet, because he is finally happy, for the first time in his life. She tells him she's already written it, but because she hasn't typed it yet, it hasn't happened. She feels the only proper thing to do is to show it to him.

He reads it and acknowledges that it is a masterpiece of tragedy and tells her that he accepts his fate because it is her penultimate piece of fiction. Eiffel has a contradiction in conscience. She know Crick is just a character in her book, and yet here he is, also a living man who's existence she completley controls. She has to decide between killing him and killing her book. What about the audience/publisher? Does she owe them the best book possible, no matter what?
At the beginning of the film her problem is "I can't kill Harold Crick", because she has writer's block. At the climax of the film her problem is still "I can't kill Harold Crick", but now the statement takes on a new significance, in a sort of narrative symmetry that displays a fine grasp of storytelling technique.

She makes a decision (which should be no surprise to anyone who is familiar with American cinema) and while it may seem unsatisfying to some, I think it is the best possible ending.

The idea of the artist's responsibilities is rarely discussed, let alone in a work of art itself. I recall a conversation about whether Kill Bill or Sin City had more responsible depictions of violence. I was in the camp that Kill Bill did because it presents violence in a cartoonish fashion with no real attachment to reality, while Sin City presents its violence with a certain grisly realism, which I argued would be apt to sensitize the audience. Realistic violence played for entertainment value is, in my estimation, less responsible than over-the-top violence reminiscent of Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons.


In this case, the author character has to decide whether or not to kill off her Harold Crick character. She has never thought about it before, but now it is thrust in her face. What right does she have to create and then take away a life, she asks herself.
Societally, we willfully accept the killing of characters in books/tv/movies, but not so in real life. Why is it that we are so indifferent toward a fictional character? Murder is still murder, whether it happens on screen/page or on the street, isn't it? We allow ourselves to question the actions of characters on a moral level, we tend be queasy when too many characters are killed, or the deaths are elaborate, but what is the difference between this author killing one man, Shakespeare killing off a dozen characters in Hamlet, and Spielberg killing thousands, if not millions, in War of the Worlds? The taking of life is the taking of life is it not? Granted, it's not taking a "real" physical life, but it is taking a life, and for one reason or another we are okay with it as long as we call it tragedy, comedy, or drama.

The creator of that work of art has rationalized in his/her own mind that for the purpose of their work of art, the taking of a life is justifiable and I think that deserves examination.

The responsibility to the audience is another idea at work. Does the creator of a work have a responsibility to put forth the best possible end result for the intended audience, even at a compromise of their own original vision, ideals, or values? If the author finds killing reprehensible, how can he/she right that within himself/herself to kill off characters without remorse for the sake of a profit/success? Do the ends justify the means? WWJSMD? (What Would John Stuart Mill Do?)

I suppose, as a converse, you could ask what right the artist has to create life and then leave it incomplete. Life is a cycle of birth to death, and if the author does not kill the character, he/she is left in a state of constant being with no end and is thus never really alive because death can never come. Or does the character go on living independent of the story as written?

Either way, in some sense, it's playing God. Then we get into questions of whether or not fiction is at all justifiable and I don't want to go there right now; mainly because that's a discussion in which I would be out of my league.