Stranger Than Fiction

POMO!! I'm loving this movie festival that we're having. What a great educational time :)
I like the visual representation of metafiction where Harold Crick's life is being written/narrated by Karen who is living at the same time as Harold. The most intense part of the movie is when Karen writes "and the phone rings" and Harold calls her phone. On the third predicted ring, Karen picks up the phone and is connected with her character Harold. This was shocking and very exciting for both Karen and me.
There is also an existential element to the movie since Harold is trying to figure out if the voice in his head is real or not. In order to maintain sanity, he must call Karen up and hear her himself. His life is also existential because Karen has control over it and her actual typing is what makes his life the way it is. It would be so creepy to have someone planning out my life without me even knowing. But isn't that what God does? He is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. He knew me before I was born and knows my life already. So does he have the power over me like Karen does or do I have free will? This is that whole "all powerful God debate" that gets people discussing for days.
I found Professor Hilbert to be amusing because he reminded me of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Those two would go on and on with their word games. Hilbert's words are all absurd. He doesn't answer Harold's questions the right way, but comes up with new ideas instead. He distorts the words of Harold and doesn't make sense. I honestly don't know what he was ever talking about, which was so funny. He was a nice comedic contradiction to Harold who hardly talks at all in the movie.
I think that Harold's life was repetetive, bland, and monotonous in order to make him a usable character. He offered no surprises. Karen was able to control his life. His unexpected love for Miss Pascal was emphasized since it contradicted his normal way of going about. I really liked how they incorporated that in the movie. Miss Pascal makes Harold look at the world in a whole new way. Like why he pays taxes to certain things or why he shouldn't.
I found out that the movie Harold was watching in the end was The Meaning of Life. This is important to postmodernism. Harold questions why he lives and what should become of his life. Should he allow Karen to end his life for a great cause or should he continue his life and take away from the value of Karen's ending?
I think the watch symbolized the power of time. Time rules our lives. We cannot escape it, but must embrace that fact that we are going to die sooner or later and should enjoy the time we have. The watch guided Harold's life in the start of the movie, and because his watch broke and he ended up setting it 3 minutes fast, Harold was able to save a boy from being hit by a bus. We cannot manipulate time since it is out of our power to do so. The watch had a power over Harold's life, however, since it chose to save him.
The apple is a tangible, real element that appears throughout the movie. It keeps us centered in the movie since it is the only predictable and reoccuring element. The perfect apple is Harold's before he experienced love. He "takes the bite out of the apple" and a bite out of life. He finally experiences the joy and love of life when he falls in love with Miss Pascal.

I really enjoyed the movie because of the depth of the love portrayed in the movie and the new approach to fictional characters.