Stranger than Fiction (2006)Had it in my pc for quite some time and finally had the time to watch it. Can't believe I had actually neglected such an interesting movie, silly me. Well in a nutshell, the movie's about a man named Harold Crick who realizes his life is being literary written as he woke up one fine day. As an auditor, being a compulsive counter and an obsessive time-saver had never been more interesting when he begins to hear someone narrating his life to him. The show goes on until the writer decides to end the novel (featuring a Harold Crick) by killing him. Rather difficult to put it in words how that's going to happen, so I recommend you watching the movie. =)
What caught my attention is how the writer finds inspiration in the movie. She's portrayed as a person who needs to feel and see what she's about to write about. For example, when she needed to kill Harold Crick in her novel, she went to different situations, different heights in such that she could feel/see how it would be like to jump off a tall building. She puts herself in the shoes of the character she is killing off and imagines it before judging if the cruel fate she's deciding for the character made any sense or had any impact. What could be better than a beautiful death?
It seems that writing a good story/novel is not all about sitting in front of a type writer or a piece of paper and just write what ever that comes to your mind that's related to the story. Feeling what the story describes, experiencing it first hand.. It all made sense. For instance, how could one describe the rain in detail if he had never tried feeling the rain falling on him, it's pressure, drenching himself in it, feel it trickle down his body, listening to the harmony of water falling from the sky.. I mean, wow, to what extent did great writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Paolini, Jeffrey Archer, Dan Brown, etc.. ever go to tell their story with such depth I wonder. And the amount of credit that certain writers get seemed rather little despite the effort they put in their work.
I believe people these days are more absorbed into money making that they have been blinded to such amazement. Why do parents want their kids to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, dentists, businessmen, etc? Because they believe these are the kind of future that guarantees the cash coming in to support one's family/life. As the coming generations become more and more tied down to this sad fact, will the beauty of literature, art of poetry, masters of story-telling dwindle and eventually reach death due to ignorance as it doesn't make that much money? I'm certainly pained by this fact, more when I do not have the oppurtunity to pursue this field which seemed more meaningful to me.
Ah well, as an acquaintance of mine has once told me, you can't change anything by just saying it (or even writing about it for this matter). Actions speaks louder than words indeed. The journey I need to embark to be part of this love in the art of written works seems like fantasy (building castles in the air?) and rather unlikely when I'm done with my current studies for engineering. However, I do hope this would remind me what I've always wanted to do, and also plan to do (or at least always dreaming/thought of doing).. Wish me luck! =)
Now, back to more reading and watching (while being mesmerized/impressed in the process) like all of us do~
What caught my attention is how the writer finds inspiration in the movie. She's portrayed as a person who needs to feel and see what she's about to write about. For example, when she needed to kill Harold Crick in her novel, she went to different situations, different heights in such that she could feel/see how it would be like to jump off a tall building. She puts herself in the shoes of the character she is killing off and imagines it before judging if the cruel fate she's deciding for the character made any sense or had any impact. What could be better than a beautiful death?
It seems that writing a good story/novel is not all about sitting in front of a type writer or a piece of paper and just write what ever that comes to your mind that's related to the story. Feeling what the story describes, experiencing it first hand.. It all made sense. For instance, how could one describe the rain in detail if he had never tried feeling the rain falling on him, it's pressure, drenching himself in it, feel it trickle down his body, listening to the harmony of water falling from the sky.. I mean, wow, to what extent did great writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Paolini, Jeffrey Archer, Dan Brown, etc.. ever go to tell their story with such depth I wonder. And the amount of credit that certain writers get seemed rather little despite the effort they put in their work.
I believe people these days are more absorbed into money making that they have been blinded to such amazement. Why do parents want their kids to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, dentists, businessmen, etc? Because they believe these are the kind of future that guarantees the cash coming in to support one's family/life. As the coming generations become more and more tied down to this sad fact, will the beauty of literature, art of poetry, masters of story-telling dwindle and eventually reach death due to ignorance as it doesn't make that much money? I'm certainly pained by this fact, more when I do not have the oppurtunity to pursue this field which seemed more meaningful to me.
Ah well, as an acquaintance of mine has once told me, you can't change anything by just saying it (or even writing about it for this matter). Actions speaks louder than words indeed. The journey I need to embark to be part of this love in the art of written works seems like fantasy (building castles in the air?) and rather unlikely when I'm done with my current studies for engineering. However, I do hope this would remind me what I've always wanted to do, and also plan to do (or at least always dreaming/thought of doing).. Wish me luck! =)
Now, back to more reading and watching (while being mesmerized/impressed in the process) like all of us do~
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