Stranger Than Fiction
Dec. 6th, 2006 07:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat[As an aside, figured out the heat problem, the landlord has been turning down the thermostate during the days thinking we are all at work. Sigh. Informed him that I'm at home job-hunting. And this week has not been a good one. Today was by far the hardest, two rejections. One that was my fault. The other that was something I'd hoped for, and did not work out. So to cheer self, went to the movies. Fairly cheap - $7.50. Yes, it is scarey when 7.50 is considered a discount. This probably means movies will go up to $12 soon. Also, according to the News - The Iraq Study Group came back with a bad report card regarding the Bush Administration's record in Iraq. It was a bi-partisian study group commissioned by all three branches - so about as impartial as we can get. Stated there was no hope for "victory" in this situation. Best we could hope for was not find ourselves cartwheeling into the abyss. The study's report reminded me a great deal of Francis Ford Coppola's haunting depiction of the Vietnam War by way of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness - Apolcalypse Now. But there was hope at the heart of it - hope for a peaceful non-victorious resolution. Just hope the powers that be listen.]
Saw possibly one of the best movies I've seen this year since The Prestige, a film that like The Prestige may not be for everyone, it is more of a character study, and more metaphorical than literal in nature, and I've learned that most people think literally. I think metaphorically. Which is why I feel I'm often at odds with people. Course it's not as simple as that. It's more I think metaphorically when they are thinking literally, and I think literally when they are thinking metaphorically.
At any rate, was feeling mildly hopeless today. Panic attacks the last three nights - you know lying awake staring at the ceiling at 3 am, wondering if you can climb what appears to be an unclimbable cliff and why the frigging hell you attempted the climb to begin with? James Butcher describes the feeling quite accurately in his novel Grave Peril - where he states there are different types of fear - the leaden fear that gathers in the belly and weighs heavy on your shoulders and neck, coming late at night, with all the problems you can't solve or feel unsolvable, filling you with a feeling of hopelessness and despair making sleep almost impossible.
So went to the movies. Movies historically have been used to escape ourselves and enter someone else's world. Although I'm not sure that's possible. I think it's an illusion. The movie basically gives our emotions an outlet - a filter, and sometimes if we are really lucky the themes of the movie will answer questions and emotional turmoil inside ourselves. ie. It speaks to us. The best films speak to you. Those are the one's I think that people buy on DVD or see again, or remember long afterwards. And I can't help but think we sublimially choose those films - we certainly know enough about them to be able to make that sort of choice. Not always, perhaps. But sometimes.
The theater was sparse, since the film I chose, Stranger Than Fiction had been out a while. And it was a 2:15 pm show on a weekday. Hence the cheaper price. Only four or five people were in the theater. Most of them sat by themselves. Little islands in a sea of empty seats. Fitting if you know that the film is about people who are in a way islands in of themselves. Except for the lead, who may or may not be merely a figment of someone else's imagination.
Stranger Than Fiction is not what you would think. It is not a comedy. Even though that's how it has been marketed. It is a dramedy. I cried and laughed during it, although that could partly be due to hormones and overall mood. Unlike a lot of recent comedies - it is not interested in blasting the audience with joke after joke after joke. It is interested in something deeper - a sort of metaphyiscal musing on the nature of characters and authors, mortality and the quality of life. What makes life worth living? Why does an author kill a character? Why do some people die and other's live? What is the point? At the heart of it is this statement, which stays with me, now, long after the film is over, and made me feel better. It's a simple statement, almost obvious in its simplicity, yet the writer who finally discovers it finds it in way that provides it with a deeper meaning - which is why films can at times be more powerful than books - because they are a marriage of visuals and words.
It is the accessories of life, the small ordinary things that we take for granted, often don't notice, and rarely see, that save our lives when we lose all hope. They are the answer to our hopelessness. They are the small picture not the big one, but often, what makes life worth living, what keeps us going, give us comfort when things feel hopeless and impossible. Such as Bavarian iced cookies, a random gesture of kindness, a card in the mail, a touch of a hand, a kind voice, or even spending a day reading a quality piece of fiction, engrossed in it. Or say something as small as a wristwatch.
This is not the exact wording, it was better in the film. My oral memory sucks beans. But it is close enough. The film is about a writer who is writing about an IRS tax man, except the IRS tax man actually exists and her writing determines what happens in his life. She is in an odd way his God, his fate. Or the one determining it. Yet, yet, he appears to have control in how he reacts to it. His awareness changes his fate. It's a musing on fate, writing, god, and well free will. We may not have control, the movie seems to state, over the big events such as when we will die, or who we will fall in love with - but we do have control in how we react to it. How we decide to accessorize. How we decide to live.
The film is a must-see for writers, I think. Because it plays with themes most writers - of fiction at any rate - will identify. The pressure to write a masterpiece. The decisions involved. Writer's block. Overcoming it. What causes it. The despair and loneliness. The fear of killing off a character and the decision to do so. In the film, Karen Eiffle, a best-selling, literary novelist, who tends to write modern books about ordinary people who die in ordinary somewhat mundane ways - is struggling with writer's block. She cannot figure out how to kill her current protagonist, Harold Crick. She does research. Visits a hospital. Sits out in the rain watching cars go over a bridge. Contemplates jumping off a building. Her life is built around her writing, there is nothing external to it. She does not answer her letters, even though she enjoys them. She lives in a shell, unaware of the world around her. The world notices her, but she does not appear to notice it or for that matter believe that she is affecting it in any way. She lives outside of it. Enter an assistant who bugs her but attempts to help her end her book. Becoming in an odd way a sort of companion. And then finally Harold Crick - her character, who much like Pirandella's characters in the classic play Six Characters in Search of An Author - confronts her face to face, a living human being, and asks - "why are you killing me? I want to live." And Karen Eiffle is overwhelmed. Suddenly she discovers that she is not, as she thought, just a ghost, outside the world, leaving no imprint no effect - her characters deaths affecting no one but herself. She asks her assistant, "how many people have I killed? Eight. Eight people." Characters of course. Not real. As far as she knows. And she's struck with a dilemma, should she kill this one?
I bawled at the end of the film. Sobbed. My tears catching in my throat. Wiping them. Embarrassed. Sitting there in the sea of seats by myself. Not unhappy tears, oddly enough, but happy ones. For the film ended on a hopeful note. The novelist who up until now, always killed her characters and always thought of herself as not part of the world, not affecting it - realized she was. And realized that her lead, a boring IRS tax man, had a purpose, a point. Just as a wrist watch did. Or a book. Or a professor of literature. You do not have to do "great and influential" things, you just have to live your life the best you can. To meet it and your death calmly, straight on. To be aware.
The film answered a question for me today. It told me that hope could be found outside of myself. Sometimes in something as simple as a pointsetta sitting on my coffee table. Or a shared film experience with five other people each individual islands unto themselves. And as a writer it answered another question - that when killing characters, think hard, do not do it willy-nilly. Treat the character as a living breathing being. And ask yourself how killing them affects their universe.
I highly recommend Stranger Than Fiction, next to The Prestige - I think it may be the best film I've seen this fall. Certainly made me think quite a bit. It also came at the right time. The right moment. The right mood. Providing me with hope, when I found myself falling into hopelessness. Movies that do that are worth treasuring, I think.
Saw possibly one of the best movies I've seen this year since The Prestige, a film that like The Prestige may not be for everyone, it is more of a character study, and more metaphorical than literal in nature, and I've learned that most people think literally. I think metaphorically. Which is why I feel I'm often at odds with people. Course it's not as simple as that. It's more I think metaphorically when they are thinking literally, and I think literally when they are thinking metaphorically.
At any rate, was feeling mildly hopeless today. Panic attacks the last three nights - you know lying awake staring at the ceiling at 3 am, wondering if you can climb what appears to be an unclimbable cliff and why the frigging hell you attempted the climb to begin with? James Butcher describes the feeling quite accurately in his novel Grave Peril - where he states there are different types of fear - the leaden fear that gathers in the belly and weighs heavy on your shoulders and neck, coming late at night, with all the problems you can't solve or feel unsolvable, filling you with a feeling of hopelessness and despair making sleep almost impossible.
So went to the movies. Movies historically have been used to escape ourselves and enter someone else's world. Although I'm not sure that's possible. I think it's an illusion. The movie basically gives our emotions an outlet - a filter, and sometimes if we are really lucky the themes of the movie will answer questions and emotional turmoil inside ourselves. ie. It speaks to us. The best films speak to you. Those are the one's I think that people buy on DVD or see again, or remember long afterwards. And I can't help but think we sublimially choose those films - we certainly know enough about them to be able to make that sort of choice. Not always, perhaps. But sometimes.
The theater was sparse, since the film I chose, Stranger Than Fiction had been out a while. And it was a 2:15 pm show on a weekday. Hence the cheaper price. Only four or five people were in the theater. Most of them sat by themselves. Little islands in a sea of empty seats. Fitting if you know that the film is about people who are in a way islands in of themselves. Except for the lead, who may or may not be merely a figment of someone else's imagination.
Stranger Than Fiction is not what you would think. It is not a comedy. Even though that's how it has been marketed. It is a dramedy. I cried and laughed during it, although that could partly be due to hormones and overall mood. Unlike a lot of recent comedies - it is not interested in blasting the audience with joke after joke after joke. It is interested in something deeper - a sort of metaphyiscal musing on the nature of characters and authors, mortality and the quality of life. What makes life worth living? Why does an author kill a character? Why do some people die and other's live? What is the point? At the heart of it is this statement, which stays with me, now, long after the film is over, and made me feel better. It's a simple statement, almost obvious in its simplicity, yet the writer who finally discovers it finds it in way that provides it with a deeper meaning - which is why films can at times be more powerful than books - because they are a marriage of visuals and words.
It is the accessories of life, the small ordinary things that we take for granted, often don't notice, and rarely see, that save our lives when we lose all hope. They are the answer to our hopelessness. They are the small picture not the big one, but often, what makes life worth living, what keeps us going, give us comfort when things feel hopeless and impossible. Such as Bavarian iced cookies, a random gesture of kindness, a card in the mail, a touch of a hand, a kind voice, or even spending a day reading a quality piece of fiction, engrossed in it. Or say something as small as a wristwatch.
This is not the exact wording, it was better in the film. My oral memory sucks beans. But it is close enough. The film is about a writer who is writing about an IRS tax man, except the IRS tax man actually exists and her writing determines what happens in his life. She is in an odd way his God, his fate. Or the one determining it. Yet, yet, he appears to have control in how he reacts to it. His awareness changes his fate. It's a musing on fate, writing, god, and well free will. We may not have control, the movie seems to state, over the big events such as when we will die, or who we will fall in love with - but we do have control in how we react to it. How we decide to accessorize. How we decide to live.
The film is a must-see for writers, I think. Because it plays with themes most writers - of fiction at any rate - will identify. The pressure to write a masterpiece. The decisions involved. Writer's block. Overcoming it. What causes it. The despair and loneliness. The fear of killing off a character and the decision to do so. In the film, Karen Eiffle, a best-selling, literary novelist, who tends to write modern books about ordinary people who die in ordinary somewhat mundane ways - is struggling with writer's block. She cannot figure out how to kill her current protagonist, Harold Crick. She does research. Visits a hospital. Sits out in the rain watching cars go over a bridge. Contemplates jumping off a building. Her life is built around her writing, there is nothing external to it. She does not answer her letters, even though she enjoys them. She lives in a shell, unaware of the world around her. The world notices her, but she does not appear to notice it or for that matter believe that she is affecting it in any way. She lives outside of it. Enter an assistant who bugs her but attempts to help her end her book. Becoming in an odd way a sort of companion. And then finally Harold Crick - her character, who much like Pirandella's characters in the classic play Six Characters in Search of An Author - confronts her face to face, a living human being, and asks - "why are you killing me? I want to live." And Karen Eiffle is overwhelmed. Suddenly she discovers that she is not, as she thought, just a ghost, outside the world, leaving no imprint no effect - her characters deaths affecting no one but herself. She asks her assistant, "how many people have I killed? Eight. Eight people." Characters of course. Not real. As far as she knows. And she's struck with a dilemma, should she kill this one?
I bawled at the end of the film. Sobbed. My tears catching in my throat. Wiping them. Embarrassed. Sitting there in the sea of seats by myself. Not unhappy tears, oddly enough, but happy ones. For the film ended on a hopeful note. The novelist who up until now, always killed her characters and always thought of herself as not part of the world, not affecting it - realized she was. And realized that her lead, a boring IRS tax man, had a purpose, a point. Just as a wrist watch did. Or a book. Or a professor of literature. You do not have to do "great and influential" things, you just have to live your life the best you can. To meet it and your death calmly, straight on. To be aware.
The film answered a question for me today. It told me that hope could be found outside of myself. Sometimes in something as simple as a pointsetta sitting on my coffee table. Or a shared film experience with five other people each individual islands unto themselves. And as a writer it answered another question - that when killing characters, think hard, do not do it willy-nilly. Treat the character as a living breathing being. And ask yourself how killing them affects their universe.
I highly recommend Stranger Than Fiction, next to The Prestige - I think it may be the best film I've seen this fall. Certainly made me think quite a bit. It also came at the right time. The right moment. The right mood. Providing me with hope, when I found myself falling into hopelessness. Movies that do that are worth treasuring, I think.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 01:43 am (UTC)Possibly the only two uplifting films I've seen this year.
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Date: 2006-12-07 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 04:23 pm (UTC)Pirandella's characters are more or less stereotypes - the mother, the father, the son - simplistic. Which is, and it has been more than 20 years since I saw or read that play so my memory may be off here, part of the point. The fact that the characters did not want to be those stereotypes. At the same time they depended on the writer to direct them to tell them how to behave. They didn't want to do it themselves. (Whedon plays with the idea a bit in Angel at times and I've seen other shows play with it as well.) STF is more interesting, because the character doesn't know at the outset, then discovers the voice narrating his life, then realizes that he is a character in a book yet simultaneously real and existing outside of the book. Creating several unanswered questions that Pirandella doesn't play with - "what if God didn't know that we were alive and outside it's brain - and just telling a story", "can you exist inside and outside the story simultaneously?" "Can we change the ending - is there an ending to the narrative, is it always in flux?" Fascinating film.
Keeps playing with my brain. And yet another one that most of the mainstream critics didn't seem to get - they are all busy complaining about how it is a one-joke movie and not that funny. Sigh. Completely missing the point of the movie or what it was about. I've just about given up on movie critics.