Saturday, 9 March 2013

Day 68: Stranger Than Fiction



Harold (Will Ferrell) is an IRS agent who has gone about his life with painstaking certainty, leaving little room for adventure. That is until his life suddenly becomes narrated by an author who always kills the heroes of her stories, Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). Or perhaps, more importantly, until he meets a woman who is everything that he is not but is everything he wants and needs in another person.

My favourite thing about this is that when Harold realises his life up until now has been the very epitome of mundane and pointless, he fights back. You know there’s a serious problem when you don’t fight against it. Thankfully he does and is better for it. Professor Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) tells him that if he is going to die soon and he knows he is going to die soon then he should live the life he has always wanted while he still has time left. So, obviously, because this blog is basically an excuse to talk about mememe, I’ve had a think about what I would do if I was to live the life I always wanted. And I’ll put it here so I can look back at it in a year and think ‘why don’t I just bloody do it?’

Right so I know this is just a massive cliché and I just don’t care, I would quit this life and I would go travelling by myself. But not the travelling that needs lots of money and hotels and insurance. I want to do it with no money so I have to rely on the kindness of strangers. And these strangers might not always be kind but I’m sure they’d always be interesting. I’d listen to the stories of everyone I met and I’d try to help make new stories. I think that’s it, I think all I want is to be able to roam the world and listen to the stories that people have to tell. Apparently I’m a big hippie at heart, who knew?

I was so happy when he decided to live his life. I think perhaps the scene with Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is the sweetest thing. She is a baker who he is auditing and they have an awkward relationship where they clearly like each other but his work gets in the way of anything happening. Eventually he packs in all the work barriers and he goes to see her after she’s shutting her bakery for the night. She asks him what he’s carrying and he says “I brought you flours.” and they are actual bags of flour and if you don’t think that’s just the cutest thing then you have a heart of stone, I tell you. She still isn’t too sure about whether to go for it but she invites him back to hers, and she manages to convince him to play the guitar despite him being nervous. She’s watching him playing and singing and you can see in her face that she’s gonna go for it then she kisses him and all is right with the world. I actually cheered. I get kinda caught up in fiction, y’know?

This kind of story is really great. I’ve always wanted to write a book where at least one of the characters is aware of the author but I’m obviously not talented enough to do that, it is so complicated. Emma Thompson is wonderful (as always!) in this film. And Queen Latifah! She can do no wrong. Also, I’m not entirely sure how she did it but somehow Maggie Gyllenhaal managed to make talking about baked goods sound like dirty talk. Anybody else get that? No...?

9/10

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