Stranger than Fiction

Official website.
Upon first inspection this story synopsis sounds fairly dull however, the film's scope is huge. It tackles fundamental questions about who controls the characters and steps outside the conventions of storytelling by blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction. It's heavy material for a comedy but, to bring such ideas to a broader audience, humour seems the best way to go.

We are introduced to Crick by a narrator, a common device, but then Crick starts to hear the narrator's voice in his own head. He learns he's due to be killed-off and tries to transform his life's genre from the tragedy shelf to the Rom-Com section. Further complications emerge when he realises the book would be a masterpiece, immortalising his name in the process, but only if the author is allowed to kill him off.

These ideas come from the structuralism school. This line of thought examines and challenges the fundamental structure of things. It can be applied to maths, linguistics and psychology as well as art. When applied to fiction, written or filmed, it asks whether the characters are real even within their own fictional world and if they, or the author, have control over their fictional lives. Sometimes a novel or film becomes self-referential when the writer suddenly breaks with convention to address the reader or viewer directly.

This leads to a subversion of the traditional relationship between the writer, the character and you, the audience. Yes, you, sitting there reading the Studio Artois website. I hope we're getting these concepts across without sounding too pretentious (and nothing works better than an example!), but you're clearly not stupid or you wouldn't be here in the first place!

John Fowles, author of 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' said fiction writers "wish to create worlds as real as, but other than, the world that is" and that's exactly what is happening in Stranger Than Fiction. Other films have tried to tackle this concept and the most commercially successful all used a humorous lightness of touch to soften the blow.

Perhaps the best known example is The Truman Show (1998) in which Jim Carrey's character discovers his world is just a TV show. It was also Carrey in the vastly popular Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), A film does not need to be 'arthouse' to tackle such ideas. Stranger Than Fiction should be given the label 'smarthouse' - films that entertain but also offer plenty of stimuli for the discerning viewer.

Pushing the borders of reality and storytelling. In The Number 23, due out next year, his character reads a book which he believes is all about his life.

It's no coincidence Carrey and Ferrell are cast for these roles as both are used to playing over-the-top, unconventional and totally unrealistic characters such as Ferrell's 'Buddy' in Elf (2003) and Carrey's eponymous role in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994). There's nobody better to take us on an existential journey into the absurd.

Other films have taken a higher-brow approach to these ideas. Spike Jonze's films Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) - adapted by Harold Pinter from Fowles' novel - and Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000) all received critical acclaim for their innovation but this very cleverness will alienate some of the audience who want entertainment without the headache. A film does not need to be 'arthouse' to tackle such ideas. Stranger Than Fiction and Eternal Sunshine should be given the label 'smarthouse' - films that entertain but also offer plenty of stimuli for the discerning viewer.

It's perfectly possible to avoid brain-strain while still subverting the structures of the form. Just look at the simple visual gag at the start of gangster spoof Johnny Dangerously (1984). After the opening credits we see a street scene with date '1935' apparently superimposed over the road, then a car comes along and smashes the numbers to bits as it turns out they weren't a caption but polystyrene numbers placed on the road.

To work with such intellectual concepts without scaring off the mass market, wrapping these ideas up in a comedy dressing makes it more comfortable for the audience and leaves them feeling in control. We know comedies like Stranger Than Fiction are absurd and so don't truly suspend our disbelief to accept the film as real. In conventional drama, you are asking the audience to accept the film's reality and invest in it emotionally. If you then deconstruct the very artifice you've just presented, you risk unsettling the audience, resulting in the same betrayed outrage as if you made them sit through two hours of story only to say "it was all just a dream."

Ref: www.studioartois.com