Stranger than Fiction: Postmodernism

Stranger than Fiction (2006) directed by Marc Forster is a great example of postmodernism. The whole movie itself seems to rotating around the idea of taking what we know of a movie genre and then messing with the idea. In the movie we hear a narrator narrating the life of our main character Harold Crick (Will Ferrel) whose life is completely run by his wristwatch. During the first five minutes of the film we see his entire day by the narration. Then the next day when we hear the narration we don't expect Harold to hear the voice, but he does and continues to hear it. This voice changes his life and with the help of Jules Hilbert (David Hoffman). Harold's life is completely different from his usual life. He starts to make friends, he takes a break from work, he dresses more comfortably, get a girlfriend, and learns to play the guitar. This film shows a lot of postmodern qualities that change our complete view of film.

 This film messes or plays with our knowledge of films. The first five minutes we think the film is a narration of Harold Crick's life. Since this is a narration and Harold doesn't seem to notice the voice in the beginning we assume the only the audience can hear the voice, then the first postmodernism quality is the fact the Harold can now understand this voice, which come as a surprise to the audience. Another way of messing with us is that the narrator actually meets her main character Harold.  When the narrator sees Harold she becomes in shock, which comes at a surprise to us because she is trying to kill him and the audience thinks that she knows of him. These are just a few ways in which this film messes with us.

This film shows a seemingly classical film and changes it up for the better. Most people may think this film is just a narration of our main character's life, it then changes when our main character hears the narration himself. This makes the movie a whole lot enjoy able and it brings something new to our eyes when watching it.