Stranger Than Fiction

3.5/4 stars

Every time one of these comes out, one of these movies where an SNL clown has been improbably cast as an actor and more or less reveals themself to be one, there's a temptation to view the whole movie through the lens of that disconnection. Adam Sandler has done a few of these lately, and while he's certainly shown himself capable of serious acting, those films have often been somewhat overpraised due only to the element of surprise. So, I'm going to address the Will Ferrell issue first merely in the interest of getting it out of the way, not because it is or should be the central influence on one's appreciation of Stranger Than Fiction.

In some sense what Will Ferrell normally does is much more difficult than what he does here. Removing the limitations of sense and believeability and managing to be hysterically funny within a framework where the audience expects the outrageous is no easy task, many comedic performers burn out quickly (Ferrell sometimes does too). In Stranger Than Fiction, the reinstatement of those limitations does much of the work. Ferrell's persona allows him to be noticed merely by not attempting to be noticed. He's playing the straight man for once, with Emma Thompson and Maggie Gyllenhaal as his foils. This is of course, the same effect as described above in action. Still, Ferrell immerses himself a new character and gives a good performance.

This is the first time I've seen Maggie Gyllenhaal as the heroine of a romantic comedy (one of the genres into which this film falls), which is a shame. I'm afraid she might be the type of actress who is too talented to want to take such roles often, which is too bad, because that's the reason romantic comedies are so often left with lesser actresses. She's cute, charming, lively and engaging, a personality that can pull the Ferrell character from his passivity. Emma Thompson is also brilliant, in an acerbically depressive part that turns out to be in some ways the heart of the film. She doubles as a narrator, which is less of a test, but no less of a delight.

I know that the film's unique plot may not be so unique, but it makes you think anyway, it raises questions and that makes it worthwhile. For instance, if Thompson's author character created Ferrell's Harold Crick, and the Gyllenhaal character is perfect for him, does that mean she necessarily created her as well? Can a fictional character be the perfect partner for a living person? I especially like the ponderance of the moral implications of killing a character off. I sometimes think that the artists of the 20th century have transformed the memento mori from a moral lesson to a cliched artistic crutch, a way to achieve easy poignancy and the appearance of meaning. As the movie says, isn't someone like Harold Crick (and indeed, many other ill fated heroes) worth keeping around?

The visuals in this film are also well worth mention. There's the obviously cool effect of the numbers, charts and lines that follow Ferrell's character around, aiding the narration. There's also the near perfect blandness of his surroundings, and his personal appearance that invokes a Magritte painting (with clear intention). Many of the other characters seem to live in different movies. Thompson's reminded me of Paul Haggis's film Crash, with its combination of clinical appearance and lethal dangers. Gyllenhaal's bakery is somewhat fairytale-like, while the Dustin Hoffman's character's office invokes a more refined, academic atmosphere (and I'm sure smells of rich mahogany).

There's a lot of great stuff in this movie, and while it's still really just entertainment (its metafictional components raise questions, but offer no true artistic thesis), it's also well crafted and thought provoking drama.

The Dark Knight

4/4 stars

When Spider-Man 2 came out, and in the years following, I've been one of many moviegoers to treat it as a guide on what the superhero film looks like at its best. Now, after my second viewing of The Dark Knight, there is no doubt left in my mind that Nolan's new film has supplanted the wall-crawler's second outing as the apogee of that genre. As it was with Raimi's Spider-Man series, the first installment existed to make way for the second, because an origin is an obligatory part of a superhero series, not because the best storytelling takes place there. Having reminded the audience of the already familiar characters and setting with the first movie, the second seems to be where the real work begins. Spider-Man 2 was the best at the time because we had never seen a truer attempt at a character-driven yet iconic superhero tale. The Dark Knight succeeds in many of the same places, through the synthesis of the most potent images and story elements that the source material has to offer. The film's influences will be appreciable to those familiar with them, particularly the graphic novels The Long Halloween and The Killing Joke, but also quite noticabley Michael Mann's exceptional film Heat, all of which are consulted, rather than copied, to create an entirely new story. But where Dark Knight surpasses the earlier film is in offering characters who are not just fully developed and faithful renditions of their comic book counterparts, but take on the role of mythic figures, battling to shape their world, as they were originally envisioned. This movie is a full-blown epic, with all the moral gravity and tragic poetry that such a title implies. The city of Gotham as delivered by Nolan is a living organism, and the actions of Batman, and The Joker (yes, Heath Ledger is excellent), and Harvey Dent and Jim Gordon carry weight and consequences therein. Seven Batman movies have been theatrically released in my lifetime, but the latest two have risen easily to the top of the pile. Christopher Nolan has saved the franchise from obsolescence and embarrassment, while intelligent and inspired films like The Dark Knight, the Spider-Man series and V for Vendetta continue to save the superhero genre from irrelevance.

Written July 21, 2008.