Why write this blog

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It is a way of giving my other self, my unconscious and perhaps artistic self, a way of expressing itself, and thereby helping me working things out. It is somewhat cathartic in a positive way. :)

14 September, 2009

Little things will change your life

I think I may have just watched the best film ever, why it took me quite so long to watch it is mystery.
Stranger than Fiction is not your average movie. There's just so many levels and layers and metaphors you can extract from it that I cannot possibly name them all, I do have but a glimpse of them, I shall have to watch it a lot more times before I can fully comprehend all its message.

Nevertheless, I can comment on what it means for me now or what I got out of it after this one first viewing.

It is a genious tale of someone that realises that his life is not his own, and that in consequence his death is already decided. When it will happen he does not know, which is not different from any of us on a daily basis, but he does find out that he is to be terminated soon. Not only that, but he is character in someone's novel. He seeks his "maker" and confronts her with his plight in the hope he will not be killed off. How much can you draw from this comparison to each and every one of us, whether we are religious, believers or not, about our secret desire to not die, and to meet our God, gods and somehow convince them that we shouldn't die?
Amidst it all, it is also a simple and common life and love story about somebody realising his life is not satisfactorily enough and that it should probably change somehow, but doesn't know how, until he hears his own life story in his head narrated by his "maker". He does make changes and turns his life around, to such an extent that the prospect of him dying so soon after changing so much is an absolute tragedy.
This aspect of tragedy and its role in literature is also present. Read Roger Ebert's excellent review of this film and its uncanny role in discussing the arts.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061109/REVIEWS/611090301/1023

The film is absolutely brilliant, and excellently acted may I add by Will Ferrell especially, and it ends with a monologue from the author about why in the end it decided to change the fact of the character and save his life.
A much more endearing and beautiful exposé of the importance of small things than I could possibly ever achieve.
As she says, the little things will change your live.

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