For a long time I wanted to
write about these two movies, and didn't intend to write in English, but I
found fb status about the first movie I wrote long ago in English. So I took it
as a draft then it came that way!
Stranger than fiction
Stranger than fiction, I watched this movie many times. I like it, although the story is not real and impossible to happen, but it makes you wonder, How will you feel when you find that every move you take is documented by a disembodied voice you always hear and then discover that your life is the subject of a book currently being written by a best-selling author who always kills their heroes?!
Will you fight against that fate which will kill you? Or you will accept willingly to be killed just because you liked the end which the author wrote, that will kill you and find it great end, like what Harold Crick did?!
You can find the story of the movie at many sites on the web, and maybe many of us watched the movie and know its story well. But let's talk a little about it.
Stranger than fiction
Stranger than fiction, I watched this movie many times. I like it, although the story is not real and impossible to happen, but it makes you wonder, How will you feel when you find that every move you take is documented by a disembodied voice you always hear and then discover that your life is the subject of a book currently being written by a best-selling author who always kills their heroes?!
Will you fight against that fate which will kill you? Or you will accept willingly to be killed just because you liked the end which the author wrote, that will kill you and find it great end, like what Harold Crick did?!
You can find the story of the movie at many sites on the web, and maybe many of us watched the movie and know its story well. But let's talk a little about it.
The movie is about Harold Crick (will Ferrell), who works
as an auditor for some company. Harold is living a boring dull automatic life,
every move in his life based on the timing of his wristwatch, there is a
certain time for waking up, for reaching bus stop, for getting to work, and
there is a certain number of times of brushing his teeth!
Harold Crick was a man of infinite numbers, endless calculations, and remarkably few words.
As narrator said in the begging of the movie.
Harold Crick was a man of infinite numbers, endless calculations, and remarkably few words.
As narrator said in the begging of the movie.
Harold who discovers one day that every event happens to him,
and every move he takes is being narrated by a voice of a woman. That can hear
but can't communicate with!
The psychiatrist who turned to tells him that it's
perhaps a schizophrenia case, but she sees if there is really a voice, and
there is a narrator he should visit an expert in literature.
So he goes to see professor Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) to
help him find the author who writes his life. But at first he must help professor
Hilbert by listening to the narrator well and determining if the work is a comedy
or a tragedy!
Then Harold starts his search for the author who chosen him without all the people on earth to write his life!
I don't want here to tell the story of the movie, I just want to stop before some points, and I will do after this simple review of the second movie.
Life or something like it.
Here is the same topic and the same plot in another form.
Harold knew he will die as soon as the author finishes writing the end, while Lanie Kerrigan had only seven days left for her to live. as the prophet Jack predicted to her!
I don't want here to tell the story of the movie, I just want to stop before some points, and I will do after this simple review of the second movie.
Life or something like it.
Here is the same topic and the same plot in another form.
Harold knew he will die as soon as the author finishes writing the end, while Lanie Kerrigan had only seven days left for her to live. as the prophet Jack predicted to her!
The TV reporter Lanie Kerrigan
(Angelina Jolie) who works hard to reach her wish and ambition of appearing on
network television and who used all her life and time for that, finds herself
has only seven days to live!
It Started when she went to
make an interview with prophet Jack- who claims that he can predict everything-
to ask him if he can predict the score of a football game will be played that
night. Prophet Jack didn't predict the football score only, but also told her
that she has only seven days left to live!
Lanie refused to believe him,
and accused her partner, the cameraman Pete Scanlon (Edward Buerns) that who
asked prophet Jack to tell her so.
But when the predictions of
Jack came true Lanie goes to him and asks him for another prophecy so that she
can prove whether he was wrong or right. So he tells her about an earthquake
will happen in a certain place and in a certain time. And his prophecy comes
true!
So Lanie becomes sure of her
upcoming death, and from that moment she started to look to life another look,
to deal with people around her another way, to change the path of her life to
well-use what left of time for her to live.
Maybe the wisdom here, or the most important question
is, why we wait till the end to come then start to remove our fear? to start
doing the things we were fearing to do?to change routine or habit we used to do
fooling ourselves into believing that it is the best way to do it while we want
from our inner soul to change it?!why we decide to live just when our life
starts to end?!
And find ourselves begging life to give us another
chance, to give us longer time. While we are repeating:
I could change!
I could quit my job!
I could go away!
I could be someone else!
I could quit my job!
I could go away!
I could be someone else!
As Harold said.
But in grand scheme it wouldn't matter!
As professor Hilbert Said.
But in grand scheme it wouldn't matter!
As professor Hilbert Said.
"Little did he know that this simple, seemingly
innocuous act would result in his imminent death"
That was the phrase that
Harold heard at the first time he heard that voice.
The confusing phrase: little
did he know! If we just knew a little about our deeds reaction or what future
will bring to us, that depends on what we are doing in our recent present, or what is fate
planning for us, absolutely we will walk in our life another way. Will live it
not let it use us.
And we should ask ourselves, what we should work for?
Harold maybe thought that he is
living a perfect life, and any small change would break its perfection. His
smart life, his life and everything in it was specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and
timed, so why would he change it?!
Lanie also was perusing this
life, she was dreaming of appearing in network TV, she wanted to become famous.
But when all this came to her she left it, and decided to liberate herself.
Because she wanted to die as a free person!
When she knew that she will die
she seek consolation in her family and in her famous boyfriend, but she got a
little from there. She found all this, and her life also, in her partner,
cameraman, Pete Scanlon. Who used to say to her that her appetite for success
and fame will never end, and tells her to live ever moment of her life and to
do whatever she always wanted to do. He tried to introduce her to a new
approach to life. So, at the end, she settled with him after her return from death, and tells
him in the end of the movie while they were watching a baseball game that one
part of her has died, the part which didn't know how to live a life.
In the other side we find Harold won a good
relation, love relation in fact, with Anna Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who was
attracted to, and was auditing her bakery taxes, but he didn't take any serious
step to bond with her as a couple until he knew that he is going to die, when
he decided to change his life. He used to think that she hates him, but when he
got courage and went with her to her house :she fall in his love, even he went
to professor Hilbert and told him It's a comedy!
And when he asked him, what? A
comedy?
And Harold replies him, the
woman, the one who hates me. Anna Pascal?! She is falling in love with me!
And
finds it a miracle. And that's why it's a comedy! And said that the voice
confirmed it in the middle of the night. As if the writer wanted to give Harold
some good thing before killing him!
In the other hand we see Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson)
changes her style of writing when she discovers that she is controlling
somebody's fate, somebody's life, that life that she spent too long time in search
for a way to end it after getting writer's block!,
that she can save it for him, or kill him because it's necessary to write a good end!
that she can save it for him, or kill him because it's necessary to write a good end!
And she wonders talking to herself how many people I have killed?!
It's the idea that we may be responsible for some
other's fate or lives while we are completely ignorant about that.
The two movies handle the idea of meaning of life, the value of the things around us, and what we should work for, what we should ignore and what deserves to pay your life for.
The two movies handle the idea of meaning of life, the value of the things around us, and what we should work for, what we should ignore and what deserves to pay your life for.
