{"id":28208,"date":"2020-04-04T10:04:51","date_gmt":"2020-04-04T15:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=28208"},"modified":"2020-04-04T10:04:51","modified_gmt":"2020-04-04T15:04:51","slug":"belated-movie-reviews-564","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/04\/04\/belated-movie-reviews-564\/","title":{"rendered":"Belated Movie Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harold Crick, like a lot of people, has his work in the back of his brain, and as a tax auditor for the IRS<\/strong><\/em>, it involves counting and numbers. Which is fine.<\/p>\n

Except someone is commenting on it. In a slightly snide tone.<\/p>\n

In his mind.<\/p>\n

And Harold doesn’t like it.<\/p>\n

But Harold has a bigger problem: the voice is that of his author, Karen Eiffel, who is narrating his life, and she tip-taps his ups and downs on her old electric typewriter, constructing a masterpiece of literature – although she doesn’t know it. And there’s something else she doesn’t know, or cannot figure out.<\/p>\n

How Harold should die<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dude. I’m a professor of literature. That means I have to shower in public facilities.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Stranger Than Fiction<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (2006) plays with the barrier between an author and her characters, asking questions concerning art, primarily the priority art takes in the ladder of importance. As Harold tries to understand what’s happening to him, going from therapist to auditee to therapist to, finally, a literature professor, he asks himself Why me?<\/em> And that leads to questions about the people he audits, and how he can, perhaps, help them.<\/p>\n

And how treating them better brings positive results to his own life.<\/p>\n

But an offhand bit of literary foreshadowing<\/em> clues Harold in to the fact that his story is coming to a sudden end sometime soon, and this lends urgency – as if he needed more – to discover if she really exists. When he finds that Eiffel lives in his own city, things become a bit more interesting, as this is one thing she hadn’t expected.<\/p>\n

And brings the question of the purity of art<\/em> vs the value of a life<\/em> into salience.<\/p>\n

This story is treated somewhat lightly, like, say Groundhog Day<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (1993), and perhaps this is why the final behaviors of Harold, while highlighting the masterpiece of literature which is Eiffel’s work, also might be seen as excusing them from suffering the consequences. But, slightly more grating, the entire ending is plopped in the audience’s lap. To my mind, most stories require an ending, a final commentary on the consequences of the actions of the characters. But some stories ask questions for which there may not be a final answer. Karen Eiffel had thought she was merely writing a story, a serious story, yes, a story that drove her to smoke and stand on the roofs of tall buildings, contemplating long falls, but just a story. Then Harold, who she knows intimately as a good and improving man, knocks at her door.<\/p>\n

And she finds she holds the power of life and death over him. The storytellers ask, What should Eiffel do?<\/em><\/p>\n

But that’s the wrong question. Slyly different is this question: What would you do?<\/em><\/p>\n

And by providing an answer to the first question, the storytellers lose the opportunity to open a conversation with their audience.<\/p>\n

What would you do?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harold Crick, like a lot of people, has his work in the back of his brain, and as a tax auditor for the IRS, it involves counting and numbers. Which is fine. Except someone is commenting on it. In a slightly snide tone. In his mind. And Harold doesn’t like \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28208"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28210,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28208\/revisions\/28210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}