Harold Crick, in the movie Stranger Than Fiction, faces many troubles as he discovers a voice is narrating his life, telling of his inevitable death sooner than he would like. In his situation, you'd have questions too. He wants to know if he can change his fate, and tries drastically to do so, but finds out the voice is still there, and he's still doing things that will lead to his death. The only way he feels that he may actually be able to stop the narration is by contacting the author who is telling his story, and ask her to stop. After he finds her, he asks her to change his fate. She does in the end, so in some ways people see this as an indication that they can change their fate. The matter is really up to us; some believe we have this power, some don't.
Harold also wonders if he has the freedom to choose for himself, and stop the story. He tries making extraneous decisions, like doing nothing at all, but he finds out that these actions are part of the story, too. Everything he tries to do to mess up the story end up just going along with it. Harold feels defeated, and starts to accept his fate like it is, learning the lesson that even if we think we can choose for ourselves, we have no way of telling that those choices are not a part of our fate. We don't know if we're really choosing or not.
The movie Stranger than Fiction tries to address some common questions of fate and free will, but ultimately does not bring us any closer to making a firm decision on which belief is correct. The truth is, we'll never know if we make our own choices, if we can change our fate, or if there is such thing as fate. And maybe we weren't meant to find out.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
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