Stranger Than Fiction (4½ Stars)

I'm returning to this film only nine days after I last watched it. Do I have an excuse? More to the point, do I need an excuse? It's an incredible film. I first saw it at a friend's house. I knew straight away that I had to see it again, so I ordered it on Ebay before I went to bed. It took a week to arrive because the seller was in England. Now I have the Blu-ray in my hands.

Even more than the first time I watched "Stranger Than Fiction", I've been thinking about the philosophical implications of the film. What if my life were being scripted not by a master being (God) on another plane of existence, but by a neurotic writer who lives just a few miles away? Would I even want to know? It seems like a freak of nature that allows Harold Crick to hear Karen Eiffel's voice narrating his life. It's a book she's been writing, on and off, for ten years, so she's been watching over his life for a long time, long before he became conscious of it.

I know Emma Thompson, of course, but this is the first film in which I've ever really paid attention to her. Her performance as the writer Karen Eiffel is outstanding. She's unaware of the power she has over life and death. She's already written eleven novels, and in each book the main character died. Were all of them real people whose deaths she unwittingly caused? That's suggested, but not followed up. If that happened to me, I would be traumatised. I wouldn't be able to live with the knowledge that I've caused one person's death, let alone eleven. On the other hand, being the victim of an all-powerful novelist wouldn't bother me. I'd just ask her to give me a good death.

Harold Crick has to die. The whole novel has been leading up to his death. It's too late to change it, without spoiling the ending. How can he spend the last few days of his life? He can learn to play the guitar, or he can fall in love. He should forget the guitar. That's not something he can do in a few days. Falling in love only takes a moment.

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