Of course I cried. That wasn’t ever really going to be a question. The question, as with most film reviews worth their salt, is whether the movie is any good. And that has little or nothing to do with how much a movie makes ME cry. Maybe you are made of sterner stuff and only the best of films can reduce you to tears. But I’m that guy who cries at Kodak commercials, so I simply can’t judge a film based on how many soggy tissues are in the cup holder at the end of a screening. (For the record, there were none, because real men just let the tears stream wherever God intended them to go).
And yeah, I do think The Fault In Our Stars is a pretty good movie, even if it is a movie conceived and engineered for the sole purpose of making its audience squeal and sob in turns. Actually, that isn’t fair at all. If a film’s sole purpose is manipulation, that really isn’t a good thing. That is a perfect example of a film drawing forth saline, but not actually offering anything interesting to say, or anything challenging or new. And The Fault In Our Stars does offer plenty of lovely food for thought, well-drawn characters who seem to inhabit our real world, and it earns every tear that it wrings out of you.
Hazel and Gus are two teenagers who share an acerbic wit, a disdain for the conventional, and a love that sweeps them on a journey. Their relationship is all the more miraculous given that Hazel’s other constant companion is an oxygen tank, Gus jokes about his prosthetic leg, and they met and fell in love at a cancer support group.
I’m not really a romance movie person, and neither is my wife, but I was excited to take her to this screening because she had read this book and loved it. I believe she had even told me some of the finer plot details (I wasn’t concerned about spoilers)… but apparently I forgot them all because I ended up being surprised by the way the film unfolds. And anytime you find yourself surprised in a romance movie… the filmmakers are doing something right. Not only is my wife a fan of the book, but she’s also an English teacher who can be a pretty discerning critic when it comes to novels, especially young adult novels. And one thing that really stood out to her in John Green’s novel was that the characters seemed to talk like real teenagers; like real teenagers who have cancer might sound. And isn’t that an incredibly tough thing to pull off? So many films and novels are focused on teenagers, but it is almost miraculous when a film comes along and actually feels authentic to the teen experience. The Fault In Our Stars really isn’t about teen culture so much as it is about young people falling in love and dealing with the unique reality that they happen to be cancer sufferers. Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter are the credited writers who adapted Green’s novel, and I just now pieced together that these are the guys who wrote the widely acclaimed (500) Days Of Summer, which I still have not seen, and The Spectacular Now, which also stars Shailene Woodley and also features incredibly authentic teen dialog. If I had to pick, I’d go with The Spectacular Now, but The Fault In Our Stars offers an opportunity for these quality writers to adapt a red hot property and perhaps launch them into a higher plane of public profile. And I wish them all the best as they are two for two in my estimation.
But about that romance stuff I was talking about. I don’t have anything against romance, I just tend not to watch films that are billed primarily as such because they are often terrible and I’m never their target audience. And while I don’t believe that I went into The Fault In Our Stars with an attitude that the film had to prove itself to me, I did go in knowing it wasn’t exactly my typical fare. And I genuinely feel like I was giving the film the best chance I could when I say that initially, I wasn’t sure I was buying it. There’s a fair amount of humor and playfulness in the opening act surrounding Hazel’s (Woodley’s character) “wacky” cancer support group, where she meets the cocky and very teenaged Augustus (Ansel Elgort), who has lost a leg to cancer and is there to support a friend who is about to lose his sight in an upcoming surgery. And while I found the opening act amusing enough, I wasn’t laughing or squealing or anything. Perhaps I just wasn’t enjoying the film as much as my theater packed full of teenage girls. They were REALLY enjoying it. While the term “squee” is first and foremost an internet joke, it turns out it is also entirely a real noise that teen girls watching this film may have a propensity to make. And you know what? It was kind of awesome. So while the film took a little while to win me over, I couldn’t help but be charmed by how effective it was on its target audience.
So the cancer support group meet cute didn’t bowl me over, but you know what did? Two words: Laura Dern. Laura Dern plays Hazel’s mother Frannie and is the beating heart of the film. Actually Hazel’s father also has some great scenes as played by Sam Trammell, but Dern had a powerful impact on me and her character as written and as performed is so lovely and offers so much non-explicit insight into what it must be like to be a parent of a terminally ill child. The movie got into a kind of rhythm where Dern would appear on screen, and I would immediately cry. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It isn’t just that she selflessly and unconditionally loves her daughter, it is that she also seems to have a genuine affinity for her. She likes Hazel a whole lot. I often hear parents say things like “I would crawl across a field of broken glass for my child”, or other similarly dramatic but potent things like that. Dern embodies this in every frame.
You may notice that I haven’t really gotten around to two of the major elements of the film yet in any detail. Those elements being the depiction of cancer, and the chemistry between the two leads, Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort. And ultimately, I come down in favor of all of that. My only real concern for the first half of the film was how much more moved I was by Dern’s character than by the leads. But that issue gave way as the back half swept me up into the relationship between Hazel Grace and Augustus just like it was supposed to. And I just wanted to save the cancer talk for last.
Ultimately Shailene Woodley continues to prove that she is a young actress to pay attention to, and not just some kind of flavor of the week teen idol. Her character Hazel is smart, emotionally mature, and seems like someone you’d probably like to hang out with. And while I found the “journey” element of the film to feel contrived initially (in which she goes on a “Make A Wish” trip with Gus to meet the author of her favorite book (Willem Dafoe!) in order to ask him what happens to the various character of the novel after the lead ultimately passes away from cancer and the book simply cuts off…), it eventually added layers of nuance that I appreciated. And it allowed Willem Dafoe to show up in the film and knock his eccentric, reclusive author role right out of the park. I was also eventually won over by Elgort, who comes off as brash and whose traits are so very “teenagery”. He’s somewhat childlike when compared to Hazel, but what initially felt like a stunted character to me ended up being fleshed out and expanded through his very exposure to Hazel.
Perhaps most importantly overall, I do not feel like the element of cancer in a teen love story is simply put there to draw out those tears. Rather, the plot focus on cancer provides a unique avenue through which to explore what it is like to be a teenager, and what it is like to simply live when so much around you is all about death. Cancer isn’t mined for cheap sentimentality, but rather offers us an opportunity to peer into a family’s life who is wrestling with all the issues surrounding a terminal diagnosis with raw honesty that is genuinely refreshing. I’m sure this is one reason why Green’s novel has become a smash hit, even if all the teen romance probably doesn’t hurt sales either. And again, the screenplay does wonders to sell the authenticity of this whole project. Everyone feels pretty real, and the actors all do great work to sell what initially felt like some potentially contrived set ups.
So sure, check out The Fault In Our Stars. In the oldest of phrases used to recommend a film: “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry”. And you may even gain a little insight or wrestle with some deeper feelings as well. I don’t know what more you can ask of a teen cancer romance film, so I’m going to consider this a more than solid entry into that very limited genre.
And I’m Out.