Those same visual motifs are also reflected in the work of costume designer Frank Fleming, whose designs, Forster says, were vital to enhancing the film’s alternately comic and dramatic performances. “What I like about Frank is the he really understands characters and how to use his work to help the actors give even better performances because of how they are presented visually,” comments the director.
Fleming started with Harold Crick’s clothes, which at the start are regimented and nearly colorless urban uniforms. Then, slowly, Harold begins to break out of the mold. “For Harold’s outfits, I was always trying to convey a sense of rigidity and repetition,” Fleming says. “Only in the last act does he break his self-imposed conformity and allow more light into his life, which we suggest with a subtle shift in terms of the clothing’s color and structure.”
Shifting gears, Fleming concentrated on the far more liberating clothes worn by Ana Pascal – who also sports tattoos created by makeup artist department head Lisa Layman. “With Ana, we wanted to balance her sensuality with her toughness,” explains Fleming. “It was important to convey her strength of character and yet also make her seem aesthetically approachable and warm, so that you could imagine Harold Crick falling in love with her.”
Fleming depicted the other characters’ nuances through his creations as well — from Karen Eiffel’s rumpled, un-self-conscious garments to Penny’s put-together fashion pieces, and especially the wardrobe of one of his favorite characters, Professor Hilbert. “In terms of Dustin Hoffman’s character, what was important to me was to convey a sense of worldliness, and also to step outside of the way audiences might expect to see a professor,” Fleming continues. “The palette for Dustin is very soft and monochromatic, with elements of light, which perhaps offer a slight glimmer of hope.”
The job of conveying the film’s design on screen was the job of director of photography Roberto Schaefer, who has worked with Forster on all of his films. The script for STRANGER THAN FICTION, however, was different from the others, according to Schaefer. “I thought it was very funny, very clever and had a lot of visual ideas that we could play with that would make it really interesting cinematically.”
Once he and Forster began discussing the film in depth, Schaefer was particularly excited about the inspiration of Tati’s PLAYTIME. “Story-wise, PLAYTIME and STRANGER THAN FICTION have little in common. What we were really responding to was the idea of using architecture, urban environments and all the symbols of modern society to create the feeling that Harold was completely at odds with the world around him,” he notes. (Only later did Schaefer and Forster learn that PLAYTIME is one of screenwriter Helm’s favorite films.)
Schaefer also utilized Chicago’s reflective steel and glass towers to further explore the metaphor of reflecting on life and one’s place in the world. “The city of Chicago itself was a great influence,” he says, “because it’s absolutely gorgeous. Sometimes it was a challenge to shoot with so much glass around, but I think it really worked out well and makes a definite architectural statement.” Although STRANGER THAN FICTION is far from an effects-driven comedy, visual effects do enter the picture in the sequences in which Karen Eiffel places herself – much to Penny’s horror – into various scenes of sudden death, including a shocker of an underwater car crash. “It was really important for those scenes to feel one-hundred percent real,” comments Kopeloff, “and Kevin Haug’s effects team made it look simple.”
Movie Database
In Theaters
