If my daughter were dying of cancer, I imagine myself being the most lenient parent ever – “you want to hitchhike to a death metal concert in an abandoned warehouse on the docks? Sure, honey. Here’s some money for crack; have a good time!” The Fault in Our Stars definitely has an element of “different rules apply to teens who have cancer.” More than that, however, “TiFIOS” (as my teen daughter calls it) is everything My Sister’s Keeper should have been – an honest celebration of life, limited and fragile, rather than a cheap tear generator in celluloid form.
Hazel (Shailene Woodley) should have died years ago. Her body failed; her doting parents (Laura Dern and Sam Trammell) even bade her farewell. But she didn’t die. And though her lungs don’t work and she can’t climb a footstool without needing a breather, she remains absolutely adorable. There’s no other word for it. And I don’t think I’ve ever said that about anybody with a permanent oxygen tank moustache. – The constant oxygen tank accessory is a necessary touch and one I felt missing from previous incarnations of the “you’re gonna bawl out loud” tale. Do you remember My Sister’s Keeper? How mom Cameron Diaz shaves her head to show solidarity with her cancer-stricken child and then *poof* she’s got Farrah Faucet going on before the funeral. What’s up with that? – TiFIOS didn’t cheapen Jack. Oh, Hazel was saved -temporarily- all right, but only if you define “saved” as “not dying that very moment.”
Hazel’s parents push a support group on the reluctant teen. It would probably be hard to get me out of the house, too. And why form attachments? This is a form of torture, right? Captured within the “literal heart of Jesus” (an in-joke), Hazel meets Gus (Ansel Elgort), a surprisingly upbeat teen who has cheated death as well. Upbeat is the word, too. TiFIOS is strangely upbeat for a movie we know is going to end in tissues. The pair find smiles where there shouldn’t be any. Gus himself is quite the enigma – dying of lung cancer himself (among a laundry list of maladies), he has a habit of sticking an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Hazel is horrified: “and you were doing so well, too.” Gus explains, “it’s a metaphor, see?” You put death in your mouth, but you don’t light it; you don’t give it the power to kill you. This is kind of the heart of the movie – two kids so close to death they almost taunt it. Neither is beaten. There’s an understanding between the two on this point – we know this is the moment they fall in love and now they have to live an entire life on the clock. In its way, there’s a deliberate Romeo & Juliet feel to TiFIOS.
For me, the key to romance is you have to want to fall in love with the people falling in love on screen. It doesn’t matter if they’re dying or monsters or dwarves or cockroaches; if you can envision falling in love, this story will work. I loved following the snail-trail of painful laughter left in the wake of Hazel and Gus.
Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort played a
brother-sister pair in Divergent. Ewww. It’s incredible how much more endearing both teens are in these roles than their previous. And it’s not about the cancer; it’s about finding characters the audience wants to love. It’s done with smiles, pain, frustration, and determination. We want to see them fight to get every last drop out of life before they’re prematurely claimed.
It’s weird how much humor there is in this dead zone – the two compare notes on dying wishes (parents of children with cancer are notoriously poor, of course). Gus makes fun of Hazel for “wasting” her wish on DisneyWorld. “I was young; it was fun!” Sure, I’d waste it, too, if my birth certificate had an expiration date (thank you, Steven Wright). And that’s the power of TiFIOS: there is humor in the pain. There isn’t hope, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t let it. I will almost certainly see this film again one day just to enjoy Shailene Woodley’s face and cry anew.
Your whole life ahead
Oops. May have to rephrase that
Cancer is a bitch
Rated PG-13, 125 Minutes
D: Josh Boone
W: Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber
Genre: Blubber Porn
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Kids dying of cancer
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: My father
