Movie Review

“Stranger Than Fiction”

     An auditor for the Internal Revenue Service, living his entire life based on the timing of his wristwatch and an IRS agent whose every move is documented by a disembodied female voice begins to affect his entire life, from his work, to his love-interest, to his death.


     Stranger than fiction is a comedy, drama, romance and fantasy movie, a film directed by Marc Forster. The film stars Will Ferrell as Harold Crick (auditor of the Internal Revenue Service and a socially isolated IRS agent), Maggie Gyllenhaal as Ana Pascal (to whom he is attracted and became his girlfriend), Emma Thompson as Kay Eiffel (noted author and the voice narrating to Harold Crick every action) and Dustin Hoffman as Jules Hilbert (a professor who helped Harold Crick to find a solution to his problem).


     An uptight tax official who lives an almost parodist life by his watch until he hears a disembodied voice narrating events as they happen. He consults a literature professor who begins analysing the text, checking off genres and archetypes, and having him look for clues as to whether his story might be comedic or tragic. Professor Hilbert suggests that Harold try to follow one of comedy's most elemental formulas, a love story between two people who hate each other. His suggestion leads Harold to initiate an unlikely romance with a free-spirited baker named Ana Pascal. As Harold experiences true love and true life for the first time, he becomes convinced that he has escaped his fate, as his story seems to be taking on all the accessories of a comedy in which he will not, and cannot, die. But Harold is unaware that in a Karen Eiffel tragedy, the lead characters always die at exactly the moment when they have the most to live for.


     The film “Stranger Than Fiction” must have to be seen because it inspired to the extent that even though your life is just a documented but then you still live it to the fullest, forget that your life is only documented but at the end it is a happy ending.