Stranger Than Fiction & Meeting our Maker

Not too long ago, I watched Stranger Than Fiction again and it hit me in a new light. The late movie night was a great reward after a highly productive run of sending submissions out. Even better, the film is not only great at dark humor, but also has a knack for emphasizing an appreciation of all life has to offer, spurred on by an acknowledgement of an author, or a story, or some meaning in the chaotic, hardworking world.

In the film, Harold Crick is very analytical and efficient at his job as an IRS agent, albeit socially awkward and alone. Then everything changes when he hears a voice, narrating his actions in life. And he cannot shake the distraction.

The narrator’s voice comes from an esteemed tragedy writer Karen Eiffel, who is stuck writing a story about Harold Crick, dealing with writer’s block on how to end the story and kill him off. Little does she know that Harold actually exists, in the same universe and city as she does, and her writing is controlling aspects of his real life.

Harold overhears from the ominous, matter-of-fact narration that he will die soon, and starts to panic, seeking help from a literature professor to analyze whether he can change his fate.

Thanks to the professor’s advice, to experiment how much control he has over his story, Harold’s entire routine changes. He starts to pursue Ana, an intriguing baker he audits, who inspires him to think outside of the box on what is considered civil duty and success. Over a plate of cookies, he hears how Ana failed her college courses and yet, as she excelled in baking for her classmates, helped everyone else do better in school. Harold takes some time off to begin pursuing guitar, not knowing how much time he has left. This leads to his music bringing the two of them closer together. When his home undergoes wild and unexpected reconstruction, he spends nights over at a coworker’s house. Soon, Harold is no longer eating alone, and in fact able to see his coworker’s more imaginative side, becoming friends over topics like hypothetical situations, superpowers, and space camp.

Things just start getting good, when the narrator/author Karen Eiffel finally figures out how to detangle her writer’s block and kill him. Fate is still set in motion, and Harold begins to panic and proceed trying to track her down.

Eiffel, a depressed person herself with an uncanny ability to express tragedy in profound literature, is incredibly unaware of the consequences her writing has on a real person’s life. So imagine her complete shock when she sees the man that matches her entire description, a real person begging her not to kill him.

There are a lot of things this film reminds me of on a meta level. I’ve been reminded to think of life like a story, that when you have faith, you get to participate in this larger narrative, where everything (or at least, many unexpected things) happen for a reason for a beauty we do not always get to see. Even Jesus Himself has begged God the Father to let this cup pass from him, to change the story so he doesn’t die, but with an ultimate giving in to the larger story at hand that would extend beyond his human life.

When we think of martyrs or people who have sacrificed so much along the way in order for liberation to reach us-–we may think, how brave. I know they didn’t want to, but ultimately their sacrifice made for this grand scheme of things that makes such a beautiful story and helped us all.

Granted, this comes from a much more modern, individualistic, Western culture, but I would like to gently ask another question: does the Author care more about making a masterpiece of a big, beautiful story; or about our lives on an individual, intimate level with all their nuances and discoveries, all their complexities and soul-searching we give to one another?

And I don’t think it’s a question we can easily answer. On the one hand, we might jump to say the Ultimate Story matters more, for we are merely mortals living in mist, made from dust, who will return to dust. Of course what matters is something that will outlast us and extend into eternity, helping other people. On the other hand, we might also jump to say of course each individual soul of humanity matters, because in the grand scheme of history in all of creation, in all the massive universe, Jesus came to a specific time and place, to demonstrate human relationships with one another. And to model a personal relationship with every person since.

To say God cares more about The Story and a perfect plan seems to throw out care of the individual and all our prayers for what’s important in life, all the begging we might do for things in our lives we’ve grown to love and care about.

To say God cares more about the individual person, though, can come from a place of privilege and romanticizing of the self’s success and romances above a greater movement towards, say, justice and peace, that might require some sacrifice from us.

Perhaps, somehow, it’s both at the same time.

In Stranger Than Fiction, there is that huge question of whether a beautiful story/work of art matters more than a human life. A story will be immortal after all, and a mere person will still eventually die and perhaps in less significant ways. But on the flip side, once you meet a person face to face, with this love of life, gratitude for their narrative, and eventual willingness to sacrifice that for another person to get the same chances, there is something to be said about the meaningfulness of a single human soul and their selfless, loving choices in a cruel universe.

I’ve seen many christian reviews of this film already that emphasize its message that Harold Crick’s resignation to sacrificing his life leads to him being rewarded with resurrection. While that is still a beautiful part of the story, I’d like to offer a different approach considering the character of the Author.

The author character Eiffel in Stranger Than Fiction is not a direct allegory for God. (If it were, it’s not a positive look for God). She herself is isolated, depressed, distanced, stubborn, and not receptive of the company of others. She writes bestselling tragedies, but she is also romanticizing matters of suicide and death as a reflection of her own depression. She does not take help when offered.

In contrast, our God is one of giving community, joy, involvement, and blessings of life. Our God delights in our life so much He offers eternal life. He is also a God that can be moved by prayer and change His mind (the way Brant Hansen puts it in his book Blessed are the Misfits, Jesus is paraphrased encouraging prayer by saying: “Go ahead and hassle me. It WORKS.”) God is also an empathetic God who comforts and encourages those who are sent to do big sacrificial things for the good of others, and does not abandon them.

The character Eiffel is, rather, only a human being like the rest of us: a struggling artist, a flawed creator, who is confronted with the ones she has impact over.

Because artists, like any other human with power, must bear responsibilities for their vision and the effects they have on others. Because every human has certain plans that will change when we know more of what God already knows.

After meeting Harold Crick face to face, she muses on all the other novels she had written, but with a different light. Her language changes. Rather than romanticizing their deaths or feeding into this nihilistic view of the world, she starts to reflect on how kind, how interesting, how sweet those other people she had written were, and this immense guilt shadows over her that in romanticizing death she killed real people.

Don’t worry, writers, this is not to say you can never kill off your characters or write anything negative. Eiffel’s arc is more of a testament to how our language and what we focus on in storytelling has impact on readers. The way we tell stories of others has an effect, the way we appreciate things in real life has an effect. Our lives and what we create affect other lives and what they create. And when there is a real human being before us, an Image of God directly affected by our actions from a place of power and privilege, we ought to be moved to create in a way that cares for them and honors one another. This doesn’t mean don’t write tragedies or only focus on the positive, but rather in all things, be life-affirming. Be human-affirming. Be moved by the humanity of those who will hear you, for we are all made in the Image of God.

Harold, who wanted to save his life, ends up giving it up for the grander meaning.

Eiffel, who wanted a grander meaning, ends up restoring lives for the sake of a human being.

Both had to be moved by love of life, both had to change plans, both had to appreciate things outside of their original isolated bubble. Both chose to sacrifice something in caring about people besides themselves, and both ended up participating in continuity of joy because of it. A good preview of the continuity into eternal life, I think, is when we realize there is so much more blessing to the lives we’re creating right now on Earth.

Stranger Than Fiction is about a man who changes his life for the better when he realizes he wants to truly live and has a limited time on Earth. It’s about inviting community to interrupt our seemingly perfect, limited human plans. And on a grander scale, it’s about a creative human being invited to change her view of others and approach the story she tells differently.

In a poignant near-ending scene, Eiffel meets the literature professor who advised Harold throughout the film. The professor is disappointed that the book she ended up writing was “okay” instead of a tragic masterpiece, and Eiffel comes to terms with being okay with “just okay.”’ She releases herself of perfectionist expectation and complete solemnity about life, and she is satisfied with not taking it too seriously, instead writing something happy for once. She breaks her own habit and reputation because she is invited into telling a new narrative, with a new view of life. She is alright with rewriting the entire book with this new perspective. She realizes there is so much more to life, and that temporary little things aren’t meaningless but “here to save our lives.”

This is a character who earlier, in the background on TV, firmly states that she does not believe in God, and is rather nihilistic about everything coming to an end. After being moved by another person she affects, an extraordinary encounter with an ordinary person, she ends her book on the note that little pleasures in life are in fact a gift from God:

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.

Granted, “thank God” is easily a figure of speech and Eiffel’s religious life is not paramount to the film. But whether it’s literal or not, there is that shift in perspective that changes everything. In allowing herself to be surprised and moved, she starts to affirm life with gratitude and wonder.

What is faith if we don’t let it move us into community, gratitude, and wonder? Why must it all be taken seriously to the grave?

So go ahead, open your eyes. Listen to the call towards dreams. Love wholeheartedly. Find reassurance, lean into love where it is given, embrace good days and bad days. Be imaginative. Be pleasured. Be not alone. Change your plans, change your entire outlook on life, change your perspective to recognize innocence and passions. And there is no silly gratitude too small if something brings you delight, just as the Creation of the world in simply existing, brought God delight.

We can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies.