Ill-Informed Gadfly

“The Fountain” is an ambitious and passionate movie by a talented director, and yet it’s missing something profound. I was tempted to say “a story,” but that doesn’t quite cover it. What “The Fountain” lacks is … content. All of Darren Aronofsky’s elegant visual patterning and inventive, hallucinatory digital imagery serve to chronicle an annoyingly single-minded doctor named Tom (Hugh Jackman) who doesn’t want his wife, Izzi (Rachel Weisz), to die. He’s frantically experimenting on apes to find a treatment for his wife’s brain tumor and, in doing so, squandering what little time he has left to spend with her — something she accepts with remarkable good cheer. She loves him for his obsessiveness, even though she wishes he would come to peace, as she has, with her imminent demise. We also see Jackman in the past, as a Spanish conquistador sent by Queen Isabel (Weisz again) to the New World to find the Tree of Life, and in the future, floating in a bubble through space as he nurtures — but also nibbles on — a tree that appears to contain Izzi’s life force. Ultimately Aronofsky reveals that the flashbacks are contained within a novel Izzi is writing, and I read the flash-forwards as an amalgam of Izzi’s book and Tom’s imaginings of how a quest for immortality might extend beyond his own experience (she implores him to write the book’s final chapter). Aronofsky’s gorgeous transitions between these disparate milieu suggest a formidable cinematic intelligence that makes the movie worth rooting for. Yet they also free him from pushing the story forward or dramatizing anything beyond the futile quest for life everlasting. The movie just hangs there, looking pretty and strange and irrelevant. It has the earnestness of a teenager questioning the existence of God for the first time and the corresponding lack of emotional maturity. The solipsistic quest to conquer death isn’t the Big Question, it’s the Only Question. Humankind’s fear of death is a rich and serious topic, for sure, but Tom is such a dullard about it that I wanted to say to him: Get over it.

The colors pop and the surround sound whooshes in a Tony Scott movie. He packs the frame with action, he slows it down, he speeds it up and he cuts, cuts, cuts with unrelenting ferocity. The content is almost immaterial; no matter what, he will direct the hell out of it. Call him soulless, but he knows how to make immersive, kinetic cinema. He pours his considerable gifts for entertaining schlock into “Déjà Vu,” which injects time travel into law enforcement with opulent preposterousness. The title, and the marketing campaign, suggest that the movie will dramatize that eerie tingle you feel when something seems to have happened to you before. It doesn’t. At all. Either the title represents a willful act of misdirection, or the filmmakers settled on it because “Timecop” was taken.

Denzel Washington stars as a New Orleans ATF agent with zero private life. He’s a loner, we’re told, but we never find out why; he seems well-adjusted enough. Regardless, I appreciate a thriller that doesn’t weigh its characters down with banal psychological baggage. Washington doesn’t need it; his earthy skepticism and swaggering physical presence make him the perfect choice to ride in the front car of this roller coaster. With Scott behind the camera, he can make the act of answering a cell phone seem heroic and macho. And he’s forever applying common sense to problems that defy all logic. Investigating a ferry explosion that killed 543 people, Washington is brought into a secret FBI lab equipped with, well, a time machine. Its operators, including Val Kilmer and Adam Goldberg, can observe everything that happened four days in the past within a certain geographic area. And they can send physical objects into the past, although no one has experimented with that too much. There’s a welcome breeziness to the dialogue as the pseudo-science behind the time-travel gambit is explained, as if Scott doesn’t expect you to take it seriously. And the geographical limitations of the time-warp surveillance are spectacularly arbitrary. Our dogged heroes zero in on the bombing suspect when he starts to drive out of range. Well, um, er, there is a mobile device that can expand the range, Washington is told. Cut to: Washington in a Hummer, trying to chase a guy who was on the same road four days ago, leaving behind him a wake of destruction. Of course it’s hard to gaze into the past and drive at the same time, but his disregard for collateral damage on the roadways is amazing. Later, he will tell someone, “You’ll only be safe with me,” and the next shot will show him careening through an intersection, causing yet another accident.

“Déjà Vu,” then, has plentiful humor, both intentional and unintentional. I also got a kick out of its shamelessness. Scott mercilessly exploits the wounds of Hurricane Katrina — even staging a throwaway action sequence in the ravaged Lower Ninth Ward. And, with the ferry bombing, he inflicts spectacular new carnage on the Crescent City. Then, he has the chutzpah to end the movie with these solemn words: “This film is dedicated to the strength and spirit of the people of New Orleans.” If “Déjà Vu” were capable of being taken seriously at all, such a dedication might be offensive, but this movie is a hoot and a holler.

Richard Linklater’s “Fast Food Nation” is an eloquent and sardonic epic about America’s cholesterol-industrial complex. Working from Eric Schlosser’s nonfiction exposé of the fast-food industry, Linklater traces the impact of mass-produced burgers on several rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. The sprawling canvas only sharpens Linklater’s humor, passion and observational precision. The heroes include a marketing executive at the fictional fast-food chain Mickey’s, a cashier at a Mickey’s franchise and the illegal immigrants who work at the meatpacking plant that produces Mickey’s patties. It’s a testament to Linklater’s maturity that the marketing guy, played with weary intelligence by Greg Kinnear, emerges as a rounded and sympathetic figure. He serves as the entry point into his company’s unsavory practices when he’s sent to investigate reports of contaminated meat. “Fast Food Nation” takes place in a made-up town that’s nonetheless painted with bracing authenticity, with its commercial strip peppered by dozens of chain restaurants. Linklater shows us these soulless eateries through the eyes of the Mexican plant workers, who view them as pristine symbols of American prosperity. “Fast Food Nation” has an equally complex emotional landscape, thanks to a brilliant ensemble cast including Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ashley Johnson, Bobby Cannavale, Ethan Hawke and Bruce Willis. Even as it exposes the harrowing underbelly of Big Food, this great movie argues that we are more than what we eat.

LISTEN: Fast Food Nation

“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” – Lloyd Bentsen, to Dan Quayle, 1988 vice-presidential debate.

I never got to meet the great Robert Altman, but I know his movies, and Emilio Estevez, you’re no Robert Altman. It’s amazing that Estevez, whose directing resume includes “Men at Work,” “The War at Home” and several procedural crime dramas for CBS, would even attempt to create an Altmanesque ensemble film with 22 major characters, but here it is, and it’s a disaster — flat and desultory and appallingly cloying. Estevez presents Robert F. Kennedy as a sainted figure, and he sketches the people who witnessed Kennedy’s assassination at the Ambassador Hotel with lumbering hindsight. They speak in stultifying proclamations, as if they were aware of the significance of their actions that day. Estevez doesn’t bring these people to life; he encases them in amber.

There isn’t a single intriguing subplot; many are embarrassing. Freddy Rodriguez, Laurence Fishburne and Christian Slater, as employees of the hotel’s kitchen, play out the racial tensions of the day with clunky, after-school special dialogue. Lindsay Lohan and Elijah Wood do the same for Vietnam. The hangdog William H. Macy is spectacularly miscast as the manager of the hotel — who’s married to Sharon Stone and cheating on her with Heather Graham! Macy has none of the swagger this alpha-male needs; he plays the part with his signature needy pathos. It’s rare to see an actor so out of sync with his character — but I don’t blame Macy, I blame Estevez. He also hangs his dad, Martin Sheen, out to dry. Sheen is married to Helen Hunt, and he’s depressed, and she’s responded by cultivating an obsession with fashion — and, huh? Their scenes just dawdle irrelevantly. But then very little is relevant. You’re forced to find your amusement where you can — there were a few moments with Ashton Kutcher’s cliched but energetic hippie drug pusher and with Stone’s world-weary beautician in which I wasn’t bored to distraction.

The documentary footage of Kennedy is the best thing in the movie. His obvious intelligence and his uncompromising progressive politics are striking. But Estevez has paid tribute to him in a laughably inept movie. I wish he had just made a documentary instead of telling the story of Kennedy’s assassination through a collection of thinly imagined, gasbaggy bores.

The only good thing about “Bobby” is that it reminded me anew of the genius of Altman’s “Nashville,” which is, among many other things, a response to both Kennedy assassinations, because it looks at the funk the nation sank into in the years afterward. Barbara Baxley’s heart-rending, improvised monologue about Jack and Bobby — which drew from Baxley’s own experiences campaigning for RFK — captures the lingering trauma of their slayings with raw emotion and idiosyncratic humor. These qualities are far beyond Estevez’s reach.

The latest entry in the James Bond franchise reminded me of “Batman Begins,” and that’s not a compliment — although, to be clear, I enjoyed “Casino Royale” a lot more than Christopher Nolan’s plodding, style-challenged “reinvention” of the Dark Knight. Both movies spend a tremendous amount of time and energy telling you things you already know. By all accounts a faithful adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel, “Casino Royale” tells the story of Bond’s origins — how he got promoted to “Double-Oh” status, how he became so persnickety about his martinis and, most important, how he acquired his emotional detachment, particularly from women. The last thread gives the movie its heft; Bond’s relationship with Vesper Lynd has a kaleidoscopic complexity. It’s eclipsed in the series only by his love for Tracy — the woman who becomes his wife, and dies tragically, in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” the best Bond movie (George Lazenby notwithstanding).

Here are the three best things about “Casino Royale”: Daniel Craig, Daniel Craig and Daniel Craig. The uproar over his casting is amusing, particularly when you consider that hetero males presumably make up the core of the Bond fan base, because much of the shrill and ignorant pre-release criticism was centered on his looks. Craig is not pretty. Even in a tailored tuxedo, he’s rough-hewn and macho, with a ruddy complexion and a prominent, craggy upper lip, offset by deep-set, ice-blue eyes. It’s an interesting face, the face of a character actor, which Craig has been for much of his career. But why should straight guys care that he lacks the male-bimbo perfection of Sean Connery, Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan?

More to the point, Craig is undisputably a very good actor; he may even be a great one. You can’t take your eyes off him, and his muscularity is not just physical but emotional. He nails Bond’s coldness, his lack of polish, his resentment of the upper class even as he adopts and perfects its tastes and manners. Bond makes as much sense psychologically as he ever has, and that’s an impressive achievement when you’re playing what amounts to a cartoon character.

The movie isn’t quite worthy of Craig’s stellar work. “Casino Royale” returns to the deliberate pace that marked the ’60s Bond movies, which is a relief after the video-game excesses of the latter Brosnan entries, but its quiet moments aren’t always so rewarding. And its restraint results in a milquetoast villain, despite the casting of a fine Danish actor (Mads Mikkelsen) with a memorably sinister face. We are told the bad guy, known as Le Chiffre, is a banker for terrorists. After Bond, in the movie’s best action sequence, foils one of his nefarious investment schemes, Le Chiffre tries to win the money back by setting up a high-stakes poker tournament, and Bond, of course, secures an invitation. But we never learn who the money would go to, so we don’t know what exactly Bond would accomplish by winning. Ultimately, all the evil scheming in the movie is a giant MacGuffin, meant to test Bond’s commitment to his job and his relationship with Vesper (Eva Green), the Treasury Department accountant who stakes him for the game.

I loved Green in “The Dreamers” and “Kingdom of Heaven,” even though the theatrical cut of the latter apparently butchered her performance. She’s got intoxicating eyes and a fantastic figure. But she’s miscast here. She’s too exotic and obviously alluring to be a self-consciously buttoned-up accountant. Plus, Green is French-Swedish playing upper-crust English, and the strain is evident whenever she tries to draw out her vowels and crisp up her consonants — in other words, every time she opens her mouth.

Still, Green and Craig have pretty good chemistry, and I give them credit for being an unorthodox-looking couple. But the slipshod storytelling of director Martin Campbell and his three screenwriters, including that self-satisfied Canadian hack Paul Haggis, sells them short. Too often it falls to Judi Dench as M, a.k.a. Basil Exposition, to nudge things along.

The writers do a great job incorporating contemporary technology into Fleming’s plot. But another concession to the passage of time doesn’t fare so well. In the book, Bond and Le Chiffre duel at baccarat; in the movie, it’s Texas Hold ‘Em. It’s an obvious and pandering choice, and it backfires. Campbell and the writers have zero feel for the game; the level of play is closer to “Celebrity Poker Showdown” than the World Series of Poker. They make “tells” absurdly easy to spot, and the winners don’t outplay their opponents — the just get the better cards. Plus, and I think this is more significant, the switch to poker means the movie sacrifices the allure of drawing the viewer into an exotic and exclusive milieu. One of the cool things about Bond is that he knows how to play baccarat; he’s more sophisticated than you or me. If I’ve got a jones for Texas Hold ‘Em, I can turn on ESPN2 or set up the card table and invite my friends over.

All that said, substantial portions of “Casino Royale” really cook. Physically, Craig is the toughest Bond yet, and Campbell doesn’t shy from the aftermath of close-quarter brawling: Bond bleeds, a lot. The movie is low on gadgets and quips and high on hair-raising stakes. (The most useful accessory in Bond’s Aston Martin? A defibrillator.) And even as it trudges portentously — and in my view, unnecessarily — through Bond’s origin story, it makes him a three-dimensional figure, easy to root for but not always easy to like.

As I began a personal retrospective to honor the late Robert Altman, I decided to watch this 1974 triumph first because the jovial byplay between George Segal and Elliott Gould would make me laugh and remind me of the freedom Altman afforded his actors. And I did laugh, at Gould’s “one-armed piccolo player” gag and at the ironic hauteur of his cry for help after a nickel slot machine malfunctions: “Pit boss? Can I get a pit boss?”

But upon this viewing of “California Split,” what struck me most deeply was its despair. And what makes me smile is thinking of Altman’s bemusement at this reaction.

I always knew it was there, as an undercurrent to Altman’s fun and freewheeling chronicle of two gambling addicts, but upon my initial viewing (SPOILERS), the ending of “California Split” hit me with blunt force. (And I’m not the only one: In his critical appraisal that accompanied Altman’s obituary, A.O. Scott of The New York Times describes a similar disorientation after seeing “California Split” just a few weeks ago.) After their thrilling triumphs at the poker, blackjack, roulette and craps tables of Reno, Bill Denny (Segal) feels no elation, instead simply telling Charlie Waters (Gould) that he has to go home, and walking out with his share of their winnings. He understands that their victory is hollow, their buzz ephemeral. I didn’t realize until this viewing that the title was a pun. Bill doesn’t just take his share of the money — he splits, returning immediately to California. His friendship with Charlie — ostensibly the heart of the movie — is over.

What I came to understand this time, though, is that the movie’s real heart can be found earlier, in the crucial central passage when Charlie disappears. Bill and Charlie meet at the poker table, and they spend a couple of banner evenings together, gambling and carousing, although at the end of each, they get robbed, cutting into their winnings significantly. These letdowns don’t appear to dampen their sunny personalities or their affection for each other, but they take their toll in subtle ways. Bill and Charlie return to the poker club where they met, but it’s not the same, as they play at separate tables, surrounded by old biddies. Altman allows Segal two isolated closeups — a rare aesthetic choice for him, and one that Segal rewards him for by conveying a frightening, dead-eyed emptiness. Charlie and Bill also have their first fight, at Bill’s office, when Bill is on the phone with his bookie and Charlie advises him that the Lakers are a lock to cover a 5 1/2-point spread against the Suns at “Mr. Cooke’s Forum.” (I love this reference, because many people don’t know that Jack Kent Cooke, later the larger-than-life owner of the Washington Redskins, built the Forum, an elegant arena that was ultimately doomed because of its location, in Inglewood.) Bill doesn’t take Charlie’s assurances too well, pleading: “Where do you get your confidence?”

Some unspecified time later, when Bill tries to reconnect, Charlie’s gone. Let’s go through this sequence scene by scene. Bill stops by the house Charlie shares with two call girls (Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles) and finds out Charlie got up early that morning and left. Uncomfortable around the women without Charlie there, he splits. Next, he’s in a hardware store, and the owner is an old friend who guesses that Bill is “back with (his) old lady.” This is how we first learn that Bill is or was married. The store owner is way off, though: Bill came off to ask him for a loan. Money in hand, Bill goes to a sleazy backroom poker game; at daybreak he’s leaving, cleaned out. Then he meets in a diner with his exasperated bookie (Joseph Walsh, who wrote the screenplay), again promising that he’ll pay him soon. Next, he’s at a dive bar, drinking alone, and an obnoxious woman calls him a faggot. Bill’s misadventures climax back at the prostitutes’ house, where the sweet and vulnerable Susan (Welles) tells him she really likes him, and they kiss. Their squirmingly awkward sexual encounter is cut off when Barbara (Prentiss) comes home and fishes around drunkenly for her TV Guide, with Susan’s help. As Susan rustles under the bed, thrusting her ass in the air toward him, Bill realizes what he’s about to do and slinks away. We’re left with Barbara trying, and failing, to reassure Susan that the men who’ll be taking them to Hawaii the next day really are nice, good-looking guys.

In this efficient and heartbreaking central sequence, Altman shows the pathos of gambling addiction and establishes that Bill’s determined trip to Reno will not be a happy one, no matter the financial rewards.

And yet, and yet — “California Split” is an unbelievably entertaining movie. Altman’s choices are so surehanded. I was stunned anew at his unself-conscious genius when I saw the tracking shots that follow Bill and Charlie through the streets of Reno, on the way to the casino: Bill walks as fast as he can, and Charlie buzzes along by his side, making small talk and idle suggestions. I get the feeling little of this was scripted, that Altman just told Segal to walk with singleminded determination and advised Gould to riff on that. In these few breezy shots, which cover less than a minute, Altman establishes the physical and emotional milieu for the thrilling climax. Moviemaking — the alchemy between actors and director, between form and content — doesn’t get any better.

From François Truffaut, the most accessible of the French New Wave directors, comes a jaunty and bemused look at the moviemaking process. It’s like a livelier, less pretentious version of “8 1/2″ — Truffaut even throws in a few black-and-white dream sequences. “Day for Night” mines humor from the mediocrity of the film within the film, “Meet Pamela,” a domestic potboiler about an English bride who runs off with her French husband’s father. It’s liberating for Truffaut that there’s nothing special about the movie that he, playing a thinly veiled version of himself, is supposedly making; he’s free to explore the personal and professional lives of the people who make it. And while he shoots “Meet Pamela” with pedestrian, static setups, the world behind the scenes comes to life with grand visual panache, celebrating the dedication and camaraderie of the actors and crew. Yet there’s no particular sense of urgency in watching people make a middling movie, and that’s why “Day for Night” is a minor work for a director who made at least one seminal, ahead-of-its-time bombshell (”The 400 Blows”) and one unqualified masterpiece (”Jules and Jim”). It’s mildly surprising that “Day for Night,” released in 1973, was so revered in its day — it won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film as well as numerous critics’ awards. Yet it has honesty and texture to spare as it shows the roiling emotions of talented, creative people in the stressful but exhilarating environment of a movie set. Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Leaud (star of Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series), Nathalie Baye, Valentina Cortese, Jean-Pierre Aumont and Truffaut himself are effortlessly authentic. Truffaut creates a down-to-earth director who’s constantly putting out fires and dealing with minor frustrations, like a kitten that won’t hit its mark (”Get me a cat who can act!”) or the volcanic unpredictability of his actors. Bisset is warm and vulnerable as a movie star with a troubled past who’s married to a Svengali-like psychiatrist; Aumont exudes calm and generosity as a veteran actor comfortable in his own skin; and Cortese shows the psychic turmoil of an actor passing uncomfortably into late middle age, who uses booze to dull — and fuel — her insecurities. The DVD has some fun and illuminating special features, including a few brief archival interviews with Truffaut himself, who says “Day for Night” was propelled by his love of cinema. He’s not lying.

Few moviegoing experiences were as profound for me as seeing “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” and “Nashville” for the first time, in the theater at Newcomb Hall at the University of Virginia. The 35mm prints were scratchy and frayed but still glorious. The same goes for “Brewster McCloud,” “Thieves Like Us,” “The Long Goodbye” and “California Split,” all unavailable on DVD at the time, during a retrospective at the ramshackle American Film Institute theater at the Kennedy Center. I think Altman was the greatest living American director — an innovator and adventurer who made movies with an incomparable joie de vivre. His death last night, from cancer, at age 81, has affected me deeply, and I will use this space in the coming weeks to celebrate his varied and thrilling career. As a start, here, courtesy of asap, is the appreciation I wrote in the couple hours after his death was announced. There’s more to come, I promise.

Marion Cotillard is beautiful. Marion Cotillard photographed by Ridley Scott is delectable. In “A Good Year,” Scott’s breezy ode to sensory pleasure, he introduces Cotillard as she rides a bicycle in a loose, knee-length skirt on a sunny day, a rapturous image of the French countryside’s allure. The joke is that our hero, Max Skinner (Russell Crowe), is so busy on his BlackBerry or BlueTooth or whatever the hell it is that he runs her off the road without even noticing. Clearly a little more time in Provence is in order.

You know where “A Good Year” is going; Scott does nothing to disguise it. Max, a wealthy asshole, will be slightly more wealthy and slightly less of an asshole by the movie’s end. He’s an aggressive, slippery bond trader who inherits his late uncle’s Provençal estate, complete with a vineyard with colorful French employees who make undrinkable wine (and possibly some really, really good wine, too). He can’t wait to unload the place. We see in flashbacks, with Albert Finney as Uncle Henry and Freddie Highmore as young Max, that Max wasn’t always so soulless and that he once had the patience for simple pleasures. Unfortunately, the only lesson of his uncle’s that he seems to remember was imparted on the tennis court. Henry tells a defeated Max that you learn more from losing than from winning. And what do you learn? “Winning feels better.”

A few minor-key complications end up keeping Max in France longer than expected, the most interesting ones female. In addition to Fanny Chenal (Cotillard), there’s Christie Roberts (Abbie Cornish), a young American woman who shows up claiming to be Henry’s daughter. Christie, a self-described “wine brat” raised in the Napa Valley, would clearly be a better steward for the estate. What Cotillard is to long-limbed, raven-haired French elegance, Cornish is to blond, all-American good looks (even though she’s Australian). They both ought to thank Scott because it’s quite possible they’ll never look better on film. And, thank God, neither has the Hollywood hard body; both are fleshy in all the right places.

This is what “A Good Year” boils down to: If you like staring at gorgeous women, bold architecture and the sun-dappled countryside, you’ll have a good time. It also wouldn’t hurt to be a foodie and a wino. Remarkably, Scott manages to engage your nose, mouth and fingers as much as your eyes and ears. He sets the tone early, when Max arrives and chomps into a fresh tomato, leaving seeds all over his white shirt; he looks like a total dick (and he is), but at least he knows a good tomato when he sees one. You’ve got to start somewhere.

Scott does a good job getting his actors in the same relaxed key; there are precious few theatrics. Crowe is a quick-witted, charming boor. Cotillard (whom you may recognize from “Big Fish” or “A Very Long Engagement”) is a romantically burned, self-styled harridan, but she hints at how she might just be ready to plunge again. She’s such a natural, confident performer that she can mesmerize while doing very little. Archie Panjabi and Tom Hollander, as Max’s London confidants, also register strongly — again with little discernible effort. I had heard of Cornish but had no idea that’s who I was watching until the closing credits — a savvy move on Scott’s part, because I wasn’t listening for telltale hiccups in her American accent. But I’m not sure I’d hear any even if I saw the movie again, which there’s absolutely no reason to do. “A Good Year” is a throwaway, a beautifully directed diversion by a filmmaker whose visual gifts alone should inspire deep appreciation, even in an otherwise forgettable movie (and he’s made several of those).

(By the way, and I rarely discuss the box-office fortunes or the marketing of movies, but “A Good Year” was a big flat flop, and to me it’s pretty clear why. It’s little more than “Under the Tuscan Sun” with a dude, in other words a chick flick from a male perspective; where’s the audience for that? Plus, the poster of a sun-kissed and blissed-out Crowe is a major turnoff. Audiences respect Crowe, but they don’t love him, and they certainly don’t want to see him having the time of his life.)

Will Ferrell can do deadpan. This shouldn’t come as a revelation to admirers of the decade’s most appealing and versatile comic leading man, but “Stranger Than Fiction” is the first movie to fully exploit his quieter skill set. Ferrell stars as Harold Crick, a lonely, obsessive-compulsive IRS agent whose life is upended when he starts hearing a narrator describe his every action. He knows he’s not schizophrenic because the voice belongs to an Englishwoman and she’s not talking to him, she’s describing his actions — “accurately, and with a better vocabulary” than his own, he notes. Perplexed and enraged, he consults a literature professor (Dustin Hoffman) in an attempt to identify the author and the type of story she’s writing, and in the meantime he makes major changes to his regimented existence — a predictable, but sweet and good-humored process.

Zach Helm’s screenplay invites comparisons to Charlie Kaufman’s ingenious existential fantasies. “Stranger Than Fiction” lacks the rigor of “Being John Malkovich” or “Adaptation,” which in a way is liberating, but it also means Helm doesn’t think through his metaphysical quandaries the way Kaufman does. We are asked to believe that Harold exists, yet he’s also a character in a novel being written by the depressive Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). OK, fine. Further, Harold can hear Karen’s third-person omniscient narration, and that’s the impetus for all the changes in his life that she goes on to describe. But the audible narrator is the movie’s gimmick, not the book’s. In other words, Karen is not writing about a character who can hear her narration. So what, then, is the mechanism in the book by which Harold’s life begins to change? I don’t know. I suspect Helm doesn’t know either.

I employ this logical reasoning to demonstrate that when it comes to “Stranger Than Fiction,” logical reasoning is ineffectual. It’s better not to try and make sense of it: You’ll enjoy the movie more. If the movie weren’t so entertaining and even touching, it would be easy to dismiss as nonsense that paints itself into a corner. But Ferrell and his co-stars won’t allow that. Ferrell uses his wide-open, unthreatening face as a window into Harold’s sweet soul. There are no tricks here: Emotionally, he’s naked but precise. The strength of his performance is that he turns a character that’s borderline twee on the page — the buttoned-up taxman who sees numbers in everything — into a fully realized human being.

Thompson connects instantly as the blocked-up, near-suicidal Karen. As Professor Jules Hilbert, Hoffman nails the fragile ego of the second-tier academic and the obstinate charm of the best teachers. And Maggie Gyllenhaal brings effortless authority to Ana Pascal, the leftist baker Harold falls for as he audits her. Like Harold’s, Ana’s attractiveness is soul-deep. This is a couple worth rooting for, and when Harold makes his play, it’s hilarious and exquisitely romantic.

The other star of the movie — and I never thought I would say this — is Marc Forster’s direction. In “Finding Neverland” and “Monster’s Ball,” the German-born, Swiss-raised Forster helmed the worst kind of middlebrow awards-grabbers: mushy and smug movies that wanted you to feel smart and progressive for liking them. But what’s great about Forster’s work in “Stranger Than Fiction” is that while he clearly wants Helm’s clever screenplay to steal your attention, he’s always doing something interesting around the margins. He shot the movie in Chicago, but he largely avoids recognizable landmarks — Harold rides the bus, not the El. And he stages the action almost exclusively amid 1950s and ’60s modernist architecture, with its clean, geometric shapes and vast empty spaces. This choice underlines the movie’s argument that Harold is not cold and unfeeling, as he may appear at first glance — instead, he is adrift in a cold and unfeeling world, much like M. Hulot in Jacques Tati’s “Playtime,” another movie that uses soulless, minimalist cityscapes. The production design, by Kevin Thompson, is daringly empty — notably, Karen’s apartment has even less personality than Harold’s. I also must applaud costume designer Frank L. Fleming, who finds an illustrative uniform for every character without turning them into cartoons who never change clothes. Note how as Harold and Ana fall in love, Fleming softens the contrast in their personal styles.

“Stranger Than Fiction” is a hoot — smart, literate and warm.