PG-13 
“Stranger Than Fiction” is such a funny, sad, touching, thoughtful and original movie that it could easily get lost among the louder fare at the multiplex this month. I hope not. We need more films this full of wit and spirit.

Starring Will Farrell and Emma Thompson, “Stranger Than Fiction” is miraculously free of dialogue, but instead bursts with actual conversation. The laugh lines are organic and brilliant—when something witty is said, the line seems to emerge not from the actor or the script, but actually from the character—and the emotions are so finely tuned that their release is exhilarating. While all of this may force the audience to pay attention more than they are used to in an American film, the “Stranger Than Fiction” experience is also an unusually satisfying one.

In “Stranger Than Fiction,” Will Farrell plays an IRS tax auditor named Harold Crick who lives one of those odd, movie-like lives in which he has no family and his apartment looks like a hotel room. He’s also obsessive compulsive in the extreme.

As we meet Crick, he’s counting how many times he brushes his teeth sideways and up and down, how many steps it takes to cross the street and how efficient he is when he ties his tie. We know this because his inner life is being related to us by the voice of an off-screen narrator. Also, to help us out during these scenes—in a rare instance when the filmmakers seemed to have lost faith in the material—the screen gets cluttered up with visuals explaining Harold’s inner thoughts.

The narration feels quite traditional until, in the middle of a toothbrush stroke, Harold stops brushing and the voice suddenly stops. He brushes and the voice continues. And then, speaking into the bristles of the brush, he says, “Hello?” Harold can actually hear the voice.

The lovely English tones belong to one Kay Eiffel, a British writer with an epic case of writer’s block, played by Emma Thompson. We first see her standing on top of a tall building. She’s clearly in distress and obviously thinking of committing suicide. She does jump—but this turns out to be one of many instances when the writer is vividly imagining scenes for the book she’s desperately trying to complete. It turns out her book is about an IRS agent named Harold Crick, and she has all the details of his life correct. This obviously causes Harold alarm, and even more so when the narration portends Harold’s death. Upon overhearing this, Harold goes off on a metaphysical search for this person who is narrating his life and, in effect, wants to kill him.

Hollywood has a history of creating films about losers who learn about the joys of life when the end seems near. This “stop and smell the roses” concept typically becomes a tedious and schmaltzy exercise. For every “It’s a Wonderful Life” there are a million other forgettable movies, sometimes starring Robin Williams or Billy Crystal, and they are unbearable.

But here, everything seems wonderfully real. Since Harold is a tax auditor he must, of course, on occasion make someone’s life miserable. He’s in the midst auditing a young woman named Ana Pascal, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, a baker who deliberately won’t pay the portion of her taxes that she believes pays for things she does not support. Their friendship, tentative at first, of course, slowly unfolds through small, human moments. There is no burst of fireworks here. But when the space separating them gets smaller and smaller, their coming together is warm and funny and completely believable. Gyllenhaal’s Pascal is charming and sexy and beautiful and smart, easily engaging the audience’s empathy for what Harold is going through.

On the journey to find the author who wants to knock him off, Harold first sees the company psychiatrist, played by a very welcome but nearly unrecognizable Tom Hulce. The wallpaper in this guy’s office is perfect, a testimony to just how many small details this film gets right. He next meets another shrink, (the always bright, twinkly Linda Hunt). She, thinking he’s completely crazy, tells him that if she can’t help him then maybe someone with a literary background can. Harold is then introduced to Dr. Jules Hilbert, a professor at what looks to be a small community college. Hilbert is played by Dustin Hoffman, an actor who hasn’t yet run out of tricks. This is another gem of a performance, right down to the fiddling of the coffee cups and the bare feet.

And so we have a movie populated by actors working at the top of their already excellent games. Thompson’s performance is so ferocious at times that she seems to be entering in from a different film, but then she becomes sweet and funny. Her performance is one of the film’s emotional anchors. Queen Latifah, playing the assistant who is assigned to ensure Kay Eiffel finishes her book, takes a role not worth very much and yet stands her ground every inch of the way.

And then there’s Farrell. Going into this film, he’d been a red flag, as he’s always struck me as a high-concept comedian, by which I mean his movies are typically based on his particular sensibilities and public persona. But in his restrained hands, Harold never becomes a caricature, though he could very easily have devolved into that. Farrell reminds me here of Peter Sellers, and particularly Sellers in “Being There,” which was another great, minimalist performance by a comic actor. He makes the transformation from a cold, unfeeling person to a warm and fragile one seem thrilling, as it indeed should be for anyone who truly learns to love life.

The film was directed by Marc Forster, of “Finding Neverland” and “Monster’s Ball” fame. Unfortunately, it has no real visual flair. There is an attempt to give the settings an almost futuristic quality—overly formulaic, even geometric—which seems contrary to the rich emotional fabric of the characters. We never learn much about this surreal place full of so many real people, but Forster is certainly taking his place among modern movie directors who can cajole great performances out of his cast.

I had every intention to quote a few lines—just a few so not to spoil anything—but I decided not to out of deference to the script, which was written by newcomer Zach Helm. All the threads of this story, some of which at first seemed unimportant and superfluous, get woven together in an unforced yet wonderfully surprising way. What a relief.

“Stranger Than Fiction” is a quiet, lovely affair, but one whose arrival should be shouted from the rooftops.