I recently watched this movie and I found it to be not only entertaining but very moving.
I was attracted to it by the fact that it was Will Ferrell in a serious role, and that has always interested me. Some of my favorite movies have included comedians playing dramatic characters. I can think of Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting for instance, or Jim Carrey in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Here's the trailer:
The movie was made prior to the awful contamination of Holywood by Postmodern ideas and you can tell. The movie also made me think of a few ideas that I wanted to share with you guys, but that may require me to spoil parts of it so...
The movie is currently on Netflix (at least in the US), but can also be rented on several other platforms, overall I enjoyed it very much.
I was attracted to it by the fact that it was Will Ferrell in a serious role, and that has always interested me. Some of my favorite movies have included comedians playing dramatic characters. I can think of Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting for instance, or Jim Carrey in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Here's the trailer:
The movie was made prior to the awful contamination of Holywood by Postmodern ideas and you can tell. The movie also made me think of a few ideas that I wanted to share with you guys, but that may require me to spoil parts of it so...
So the movie itself revolves around the relationship of the main character, and its creator. The main character is the actual main character in a book and his creator is the book's author. The author is experiencing writer's block because she can't find a way to kill him. Killing her main characters being the signature move in her novels. She writes tragedies and this has made her famous.
The movie begins when Will Ferrell's character becomes aware of the book author narrating his life as it happens, this lends itself to a few funny situations that are comical but don't turn the story into a comedy, the underlying sense of it all is serious. At some point Will realizes that he's to die, as the narration he has been aware of for some time announces it, this creates a desperate sense of helplessness and he seeks psychological help, Dustin Hoffman plays a wonderful therapist who is initially trying his best to help, to keep him alive, to solve the riddle.
This is until he finds out that the author in charge of Will's life is one of his favorites, and her strength being tragedies he then enters a conflict that is only resolved once Will tracks and finds the author, confronts her and unable to read the rest of his story, he hands it to the therapist. Once the therapist reads it, he talks to Will, and tells him that the story is the author's masterpiece, that he should just simply die or rather quit attempting to stop it. This is probably the best scene in the entire movie, and this is the scene that made me truly remember this movie, for several reasons. This leads to Will reading the book and finding out how he's to go. He then talks to the author and congratulates her and agrees to go through with it, he agrees with everyone.
As the plot above was taking place, Will finds and meets a girl that he falls in love with, and whom he realizes is falling in love with him, this of course increases his desire to stay alive, his life didn't have much meaning before this.
But that one scene, when the person that was in charge of helping him make sense of what was happening to him actually begs him to die (for his reading pleasure), the author wants him to die successfully, the aurthor's assistant wants him to die, the publishing house.. everyone. It made me think of this concept of facing one's own mortality.
And not in a hedonistic type of way, not in the let me go and say goodbye to the world, indulge and be selfish, it was a humble acceptance of destiny, so to speak, one that wasn't jolly or happily accepting of it, it was a sad acceptance, but humble. And it occurred to me that, perhaps, it's in that mindset, (not one that denies the sadness of the reality of some of our situations or the world itself, or shies away from recognizing the tragedy of life, or shuts its eyes to darkness and sorrow. But one that looks at it and accepts it, and accepts how it makes one feel, but still flows with it), that one begins to really live.
Which is adequately enough, the ending of the movie as the author changes her mind at the last minute to save Will.
The movie begins when Will Ferrell's character becomes aware of the book author narrating his life as it happens, this lends itself to a few funny situations that are comical but don't turn the story into a comedy, the underlying sense of it all is serious. At some point Will realizes that he's to die, as the narration he has been aware of for some time announces it, this creates a desperate sense of helplessness and he seeks psychological help, Dustin Hoffman plays a wonderful therapist who is initially trying his best to help, to keep him alive, to solve the riddle.
This is until he finds out that the author in charge of Will's life is one of his favorites, and her strength being tragedies he then enters a conflict that is only resolved once Will tracks and finds the author, confronts her and unable to read the rest of his story, he hands it to the therapist. Once the therapist reads it, he talks to Will, and tells him that the story is the author's masterpiece, that he should just simply die or rather quit attempting to stop it. This is probably the best scene in the entire movie, and this is the scene that made me truly remember this movie, for several reasons. This leads to Will reading the book and finding out how he's to go. He then talks to the author and congratulates her and agrees to go through with it, he agrees with everyone.
As the plot above was taking place, Will finds and meets a girl that he falls in love with, and whom he realizes is falling in love with him, this of course increases his desire to stay alive, his life didn't have much meaning before this.
But that one scene, when the person that was in charge of helping him make sense of what was happening to him actually begs him to die (for his reading pleasure), the author wants him to die successfully, the aurthor's assistant wants him to die, the publishing house.. everyone. It made me think of this concept of facing one's own mortality.
And not in a hedonistic type of way, not in the let me go and say goodbye to the world, indulge and be selfish, it was a humble acceptance of destiny, so to speak, one that wasn't jolly or happily accepting of it, it was a sad acceptance, but humble. And it occurred to me that, perhaps, it's in that mindset, (not one that denies the sadness of the reality of some of our situations or the world itself, or shies away from recognizing the tragedy of life, or shuts its eyes to darkness and sorrow. But one that looks at it and accepts it, and accepts how it makes one feel, but still flows with it), that one begins to really live.
Which is adequately enough, the ending of the movie as the author changes her mind at the last minute to save Will.
The movie is currently on Netflix (at least in the US), but can also be rented on several other platforms, overall I enjoyed it very much.
