'Stranger Than Fiction' rings true

I watched “Stranger Than Fiction” last night and was blown away.

From its perfect cast, especially Will Ferrell as Harold Crick and Emma Thompson as writer Karen Eiffel, to its low key and near-surreal poignant tone, the film hit all the right notes. It's understated, articulate and unique – in execution and tone if not in plot.

Ferrell plays Crick, an IRS auditor, with a low-key, guarded earnestness that emphasizes Crick’s extreme awkwardness and loneliness. He discovers while brushing his teeth one morning that someone is narrating his life. That someone is Eiffel, a reclusive writer of tragedies who hasn’t published a book in a decade.

Thompson’s portrayal of Eiffel’s eccentric desperation to find the right ending for the near-completed book stands in stark contrast to Ferrell’s Crick, who spends his days obsessively counting time, steps and numbers. Crick is shaken from his routine by discovery of this literary choreography of his life and, in the process, comes in contact with feisty baker Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal). In Eiffel’s masterwork, the glimmer of hope provided in Crick’s life by the arrival of Pascal will serve to accentuate the tragedy of his impending death.

And as if the gods of casting had not been kind enough to the production, Dustin Hoffman appears as a professor of literature who helps Crick track down the identity of his life’s narrator. Queen Latifah also turns in a well-crafted, low-key performance as an assistant sent out by the publisher to ensure Eiffel’s book stays on track.

There are moments in this movie that ring true and unimpeachable in their capture of the human condition. Crick’s shy but earnest guitar and vocal rendition of The Monkees’ “I'd Go the Whole Wide World" is powerful. Likewise, his awkward gift of flowers (in reality, small bags of various flours with different colored tape closures) to baker Ana is perfect. The humor is subtle and clever.

The movie sated my appetite for intelligent language, my penchant for the offbeat and resonated with the shy and supremely awkward nerd who still resides within me.