Heroes Not Zombies

On the plane to Tokyo I watched three movies. The best one (the one I’ll buy on DVD to watch again and again) was “Stranger than Fiction”. One of my all-time favourite end of movie voice-overs is Kevin Spacey in “American Beauty”. I play that end scene frequently and it gets me every single time. Well, at the end of Stranger than Fiction we hear Emma Thomson as Kay Eiffel saying this –

As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be ok. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren’t any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true. And, so it was, a wristwatch saved Harold Crick.

Kay is an author whose voice Harold (played by Will Ferrell) hears in his head. Hearing voices that nobody else can hear is usually regarded a sign of mental illness but Harold refuses to believe that. The voice is clearly narrating his life as if he is the main character in a novel. That would be disturbing in itself but when the narrator makes it clear she is about to kill off her main character Harold decides he has to find her and persuade her to change the ending – he doesn’t want to die yet! It’s a clever movie based on a really interesting idea. After all, aren’t we all the main characters in the stories of our lives? Where do the stories of our lives come from? Are we both author and reader as we create a sense of self? I think so!

There’s a good scene where he goes to consult a psychiatrist who diagnoses schizophrenia but when he declines medication and asks for an alternative solution she sends him to a Professor of English Literature (played by Dustin Hoffman). I love that this is the character who helps him make sense of this problem rather than a doctor who prescribes drugs. This is a scene I think I’ll use when teaching medical students.

A big added bonus is the character Harold falls in love with, Ana Pascal, played by the wonderful, always interesting Maggie Gyllenhaal. She plays unusual, challenging quirky characters so well. Did you ever see “Secretary“? Probably one of the worst packaged DVDs I’ve ever bought – terrible cover! It’s actually one of the most challenging movies about relationships and sexuality you’re ever likely to see.

So does Harold die at the end of the movie? Dustin Hoffman makes it quite clear the novel is great with the ending which kills Harold off (and tries, successfully, to persuade Harold, that’s that how it should be left), but, he argues with the author, that with a different ending the novel would be just ordinary. What do you think of that? Is it the ending that makes a novel great? Reminds me of that Penguin project Amy blogged about.