Stranger Than Fiction #16: Why are we watching this?

Is this for you?

If you like documentaries that feel like they were taped over an old wedding video, you’re in. If you need a plot or, you know, a point to what you’re watching, stay far away. It’s essentially a human curiosity cabinet. 🎥

I wasn't sure what to expect from Stranger Than Fiction #16. It’s not exactly cinema in the sense of The Fighting Sap or Piccadilly Jim. There’s no arc. No lessons. Just… stuff.

The segment about the goat in the New York slaughterhouse? Man. It’s haunting in a way I didn't sign up for. The goat just walks out there, does its thing, and walks back. Like it’s clocking into a shift at a factory. It felt heavier than it had any right to be.

Odd little rhythms

There’s a segment about a bus in St. Paul carrying nine kids. That’s it. That’s the whole bit. It’s a tiny, cramped, loud thing. It made me think of the visual chaos in Torrid Toreadors, but stripped of all the actual comedy.

The pacing is all over the place. Sometimes it lingers on a shot of a street corner that feels like it’s been abandoned by the crew. Other times, it cuts away just when I was starting to understand why the Philadelphia guy was standing where he was. It’s imperfect. It’s messy.

• Soap Lake suds. Why is the water like that? Nobody explains.
• The guy selling baseballs. He looks like he’s been doing it since the dawn of time.
• The silence in the background of the St. Paul bus scene is... weirdly loud.

Honestly, it felt a bit like watching The Tale of a Shirt, but if someone replaced the shirt with a sense of existential dread. I kept waiting for a narrator to pop in and tell me how to feel. Thankfully, nobody did.

It doesn't try to be high art. It barely tries to be a movie. But I couldn't look away. Sometimes you don't need a story. You just need to see a guy in Philly chasing a foul ball. That's enough for a Tuesday night, I guess. 🤷‍♂️