Bobby raises an interesting point about the ending of Stranger Than Fiction. If you haven’t seen the movie and you don’t want to know how it ends, stop reading now and don’t read the comments on the original Stranger Than Fiction post.
In many ways, Stranger Than is thoroughly postmodern, breaking down barriers between author and subject, inverting expectations, and toying (for lack of a better term) with features of modernity (boy meets girl story, the prevalence of Mies van der Rohe architecture, characters named for mathematicians, the playful GIU interface/overlay imposing structure on an unstructured world).
But I wonder; at what point does posmodernity lead to such an inversion of expectations regarding “Hollywood endings” that stories go full circle back to the Hollywood ending? The viewer recognizes that a story is postmodern (or perhaps quirky) and begins to anticipate that the story will not have the kind of ending where everything is wrapped up in a nice package. That is to say, this kind of quirky story usually (or in its best form, so the viewer thinks) has an ending that is, well, not fully resolved. Stranger, though, inverts the postmodern form itself, providing a happy ending—which is in reality the unexpected ending.
All that to say, as I watched the movie I was pretty certain that Harold would die. So when the author finds a way for him to live, that actually inverted my expectations regarding how a quirky, postmodern movie would play out.
Like I said in the beginning, Stranger Than Fiction would make a great discussion starter (there are many other things in the movie worth discussion if you don't enjoy discussions of postmodern story telling). Or maybe I just can’t enjoy a movie without over thinking it. But that’s why you love me.
Wow, this is like a real blog post. It must be the cold medicine.
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3 comments:
MrG and Bobby,
I thought he would die, and then was disappointed that he didn't. I do suspect that a sad ending would've made for a stronger box office by the way. Certainly it was a disappointment.
I have not seen Adaptation.
Oddly enough, I had dinenr with my graduate school mentor and he asked me if I had seen it. I told him of my disappointment with the ending and told him that the film shied away from death. He responded (in theological terms) "You mean that the film is afraid of the cross?" I've been thinking about his response for awhile.
Ralph Woods (of "The Gospel According to Tolkien" fame) has said that one reason why "Christian" movies are so uniformally dreadful is because of their inability to convincingly portray evil. When you count swear words and measure hemlines, it is difficult to portray the real world convincingly.
I wonder if there is not some of that at work here. As a society, we are anesthetized to the idea of pain and a popular movie cannot sustain its success without protecting the audience from avoiding that pain. Few realistic portrayals of sacrifice and hardship are successful.
Unfortunately, I think that the church is worse than the world on this avoidance of pain.
Gents,
Good and helpful points. Very insightful. I need to re-watch Adaptation and Melinda & Melinda.
Many thanks.
I actually thought Emma was going to end up scripting her own death, which would enable WF to live on. This parallels more theological and would have been that zinger to supply the intrigue needed to sell at the box office.
Have emma write great novels, & she partners w/ Queen who puts the final death sequence into them. Emma- after getting to know WF- to save him, has him do something that causes Emma and Queen to die.
But as an engineer what do I know...other than there are 23*45=1035 tiles in our bathroom.
FI
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