Best Movie I've Seen in Awhile
I very much concur with this positive review of Stranger than Fiction. The film does perpetuate the lie that premarital sex is a positive good, but sadly that's not unusual. I don't want to give away the ending, so I'll type the rest of this review in invisible ink (which won't be invisible if you're reading an XML feed).
*** SPOILER ALERT *** (highlight the white text below to view):
Hollywood sees redemption as passé. Corny and syrupy. Just as the Resurrection is embarrassing for Jesus Seminar scholars, happy endings are for Hollywood screenwriters. Nihilism and tragedies are hot, happy endings and resurrections not. So how to deal? To admit mediocrity up front? Dustin Hoffman's character, the lit crit in the movie, says the writer's new, happy ending made the book only "average". He saw the author's re-writing as resulting in the loss of a poetic, lasting, tragic work of art.
But in the end the author determined it was more important to bring joy. She argued that she never intended the character have foreknowledge of his death and the joy he brought to others made her keep the character around.
Not surprisingly, real-life screenwriter Nicolosi hated it. This might be one of the cases where if you're too familiar with film-making, many films are ruined for you. Reminds me how many Scriptural scholars find no joy in Scripture, getting hung-up on technical details while missing the whole point.
I liked the Christ parallels. Ferrel knowingly gives his life for a child. Beforehand he goes to Hoffman and says, basically, "is there any way this cup can pass?". Hoffman replies in the negative and explains the poetry of it, the rightness of it and how the book will last forever. Ferrel's character acccepts this and sacrifices himself for the child and the art - and yet he does not die but lives. Sound familiar?
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