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Who would have thought that Will Ferrell, master of fatuous farce and stupid stunts, could pull off a star turn in one of the most profoundly theological films of 2006? Judging from the tepid reviews of Stranger Than Fiction, not many. Theologian Sharon Baker and film critic Crystal Downing want to set things right.
Stranger Than Fiction builds upon an experience reported by many novelists, in which fictional protagonists start taking on lives of their own, behaving in ways that their authors did not originally intend. When Dorothy L. Sayers was asked, in 1936, to explain how she invented her famous fictional detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, she described him as independent from her control almost from the start: "My impression is that I was thinking about writing a detective story, and that he walked in, complete with spats, and applied in an airy don't-care-if-I-get-it way for the job of hero." Tired of his "breeziness" after four novels, she developed "the infanticidal intention of doing away with Peter, that is, of marrying him off and getting rid of him." However, once she created a woman worthy of him, she couldn't follow through with her plan, believing that her new female protagonist deserved a man better than Peter, necessitating five more novels to make him worthy of her.
Stranger Than Fiction is also about an author with infanticidal intentions. Kay Eiffel (played by a stupendous Emma Thompson) is a novelist who always kills off her protagonists. In her current project, Death and Taxes, she plans to do away with an IRS agent named Harold Crick. Problematically, this protagonist (played by Ferrell) overhears her plan.
Of course, we don't know this when the film begins with a voiceover: "This is a story about a man named Harold Crick … and his wristwatch." We soon discover that temporal and mathematical precision seem to control Harold's life—down to the way he counts brushstrokes while cleaning his teeth. In fact, all the characters and the streets in the film are named after famous mathematicians, as though to signal the predictable arithmetic that defines Harold's world.
Not too far into this provocative film, however, we begin to wonder who exactly controls Harold's life: Harold, who programs his watch and obsessively counts all his footsteps, or the narrator, who tells his story? Harold wonders the same thing when he starts to hear the voiceover that we have been hearing—a narration that breaks the convention of film by breaking into his life. We, like Harold, are forced to ask some questions. Is the voiceover dependent upon Harold's choices, or are Harold's thoughts and actions the results of the narrator's imagination? Seeking answers, Harold visits a literary critic, Professor Hilbert, who tells him, "You don't control your own fate." Is he right? Stranger Than Fiction arouses uncomfortable stirrings that accompany the asking of life's ultimate questions: Am I in control of my life? If not, who or what is? Or, as Harold asks, "Is my life going to be a comedy or a tragedy and who makes that decision?" Harold, in other words, becomes obsessed with understanding the mind of his maker.
In 1941, Sayers published The Mind of the Maker, a work of literary theory which suggests that the relationship between an author and her creations parallels the relationship between God and human creation. Stranger Than Fiction adeptly illustrates her theory in the relationship between Harold and his maker, Kay. At first oblivious to his creator, Harold suddenly becomes aware of a guiding presence in his life. Nevertheless, after his moment of revelation, Harold sometimes hears Kay's narration and other times does not, just as we are sometimes intensely conscious of God's guiding presence in our lives and other times not.
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