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Marc Forster debuted with,
Everything Put Together (2000), that began his collaboration with
cinematographer
Roberto Schaefer,
followed by
Monster's Ball (2001), written by Milo Addica and Will Rokos.
Finding Neverland (2004) is a biopic adapted from Allan Knee's play "The Man Who Was Peter Pan" (1998).
The psychological thriller Stay (2005), written by David Benioff,
Stranger Than Fiction (2006),
written by Zach Helm and photographed as usual by Roberto Schaefer,
is an inverted thriller that straddles
the border between comedy and tragedy. It basically talks about itself.
Alas, it is given a silly happy ending,
although even that mediocre ending is mirrored inside the plot of the movie
(the book being written is given a mediocre ending, although for different
reasons).
There are nested metaphors: the literary critic hails the original ending as a masterpiece, indifferent to the death of the character; the famous author has already killed too many "heroes" in her novel and is de facto a serial killer; the publisher only cares for a new bestseller;
the everyman is not a literary critic but understands that his death as a hero is better than a mundane insignificant death after an insignificant life;
and the humble employee does not become a "hero" because he accepts his fate in the name of art or because he saves a child, but because he stops living like a machine and starts living like a human being.
The character who materializes and confronts his creator is a humane working-class version of Frankenstein's monster, but he has to die to fulfill his creator's
objective.
Harold is a very efficient employee of the tax agency, whose life is regulated
by his wrist watch. He lives a lonely but highly precise life, all based on
numbers. At work he is known for his superhuman ability to make multiplications on the fly.
While he repeats his daily routine, one day a totally unrelated boy receives a gift by his parents: a bicycle.
We also see a totally unrelated Black woman walking to work.
While Harold is brushing his teeth, he hears a female voice narrate his act of brushing his teeth. The voice starts following him, and keeps narrating what he is doing and how his life is (dull).
At work he is absent-minded, for the first time in his career. He is assigned
the case of a cute baker, who has not paid her taxes in full. Pascale shows all
her contempt for Harold's lousy job.
We see that
the narrating voice is the inner voice of a famous writer, who is afflicted by writer's block: she cannot find the way to "kill" the character of her new novel.
She is getting neurotic about it. She even walks to the edge of a roof to experience what it would feel like to have her character fall to his death.
One day Harold's infallible wristwatch goes beserk when the attractive baker is nearby and Harold sets it back to a time that turns out to be slightly wrong.
Just then
Harold hears the voice say that he is about to die, but she does not say when or where or how (because she has not figured it out yet). Harold is terrified and, realizing that this must be related to literature, asks a professor of literature for advice. The professor (Dustin Hoffman) is clueless, of course.
He is only interested in the fact that it is not clear if the novel that Harold is part of is a comedy or a tragedy, and Harold himself starts wondering whether his life (including this mysterious voice) is comedy or tragedy.
Meanwhile, the writer sits in the rain by a river imagining another way to kill her character Harold: a child riding a bicycle jumps in front of his car on the bridge and the car crashes into the river.
Harold begins to realize that his life is indeed dull and pointless. He falls
in love with the irreverent and lively baker. Pretending to just be doing his job, checking her files, he hangs around her place. She cooks cookies for him but he sticks to the department's rules that forbid employees to accept gifts.
She begins to like this weird lonely stiff man.
Harold asks again the professor for help and the professor suggests that he spends one day doing absolutely nothing to see if he, Harold, is creating the story or someone else is. Harold spends a day watching TV and nothing else, and out of the blue a crane destroys his apartment: they had the wrong address.
He has to move in with a colleague.
The writer continues to write his story and sends him to a guitar shop because Harold had a passion for guitars as a young man. The writer then visits a hospital and comically asks a nurse to see dying people because she needs inspiration to make her character die.
Finally Harold finds the courage to tell the baker that he loves her, and she
reciprocates.
The voice has given him a life and a girlfriend. But he is still obsessed that the same voice has predicted his imminent death.
The professor now believes Harold and is trying to guess which living author could be writing Harold's story.
During another visit at his office, Harold hears the voice come
from a TV set and sees the woman with that voice. It is actually a ten-year old
video: the professor knows
her, she is a distinguished writer. Nobody knows where she lives. She has disappeared.
Harold finally knows her name and, having access to her taxes, easily tracks her phone number.
He calls her just as she is typing that he is making a phone call. It takes her a while to accept that her character is calling here. Now she is the one who is
terrified: her character is alive. She invites him to her place.
He explains to her what is happening to him and begs her not to kill him.
The writer is terrified too: maybe all of the characters that she killed in
her previous books were real people who died for real.
She gives Harold the manuscript to read how he is going to die.
Meanwhile, we see the unrelated child leaves his house on a bicycle.
After reading the manuscript, which he considers a masterpiece,
the professor thinks that Harold should simply accept his destiny: the writer's
novel is more important (in the grand scheme of things) than his mediocre life.
Harold himself, after reading the novel, comes to agree and is willing to
accept his destiny.
Harold has a last dinner with Pascale, knowing that he is about to die.
The following morning the wristwatch is a few minutes off (for the
first time in his life) and this causes him to be at the wrong place at the
wrong time: the child on the brand new bicycle runs in front of a bus, driven by the Black woman, and Harold jumps to save him, but is hit by the bus.
We see that the writer is struggling on the typewriter. She still hasn't written the last word.
Harold does not die after all. The writer changes the ending so that he is merely
wounded. Pascale takes care of her hero at the hospital. The writer visits
the professor and lets him read the new ending. The professor thinks it is just
passable, not a masterpiece anymore.
Harold was saved by the wrist watch: a piece of the wrist watch got stuck in
his body and stopped an artery from bleeding to death.
The Kite Runner (2007), adapted from Khaled Hosseini's novel,
Quantum of Solace (2008)
Machine Gun Preacher (2011), adapted from Sam Childers' book "Another Man's War"
World War Z (2013), horror movie loosely based on Max Brooks' novel (2006)
All I See Is You is (2016)
Christopher Robin (2018), written by Alex Ross Perry, Tom McCarthy and Allison Schroeder,
A Man Called Otto (2022), written by David Magee
White Bird (2024), adapted from Raquel Palacio's graphic novel (2019),
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