Cancer sucks. It’s such an invasive, destructive disease that ruins lives. There’s never much you can say to those who suffer from it, either. Our human need to emphathize will lead most of us to say “Oh, you have cancer? My __ died from that” knowing full well that we’ll never truly understand the suffering for ourselves. We’re just left grasping at intangible straws that crumble the moment we reach for them. I just lost a grandmother to it two months ago, and had seen both my father and mother struggle with their own bouts a few years apart. While I’ve never had to face the beast myself, with how prevalent it is in my family, I’m sure my own fight is going to take place some time from now.
But where does The Fault in Our Stars lie in all of this? It’s for folks like myself in the thick of it all, yet outside of it enough to necessitate an inside point of view. The Fault in Our Stars is not the romance it’s advertised as. It’s a poignant drama dissecting the debilitating nature of disease and how to surpass it.
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The Fault in Our Stars
Director: Josh Boone
Release Date: June 6th, 2014
Rated: PG-13
Based off the popular Young Adult novel of the same name, The Fault in Our Stars follows Hazel Grace (Shailene Woodley), a young girl suffering from thyroid cancer who now has to use an oxygen tank to breathe since it spread to her lungs. At a cancer support group, Hazel runs into Gus (Ansel Elgort), a boy who once had osteosarcoma before removing it with a leg amputation. As Hazel has lost her sense of self and pretty much given up, Gus is the new spark of life that urges her forward. As the two grow closer, unfortunate events take place that test the boundaries of their friendship.
Disease dramas are a dime a dozen. When done well, you’ll have a strong focus on the protagonist rather than the disease (Terms of Endearment, 50/50, The Big C), and when done badly, you forget you should care as the focus is strained between the folks surrounding the main character (A Walk to Remember, 65% of the Lifetime Movie Network). Basically, in order to fully appreciate how much diseases suck, we need to understand and emphathize with the main character and avoid putting them on some unreachable pedestal. Without that basic framework, we’re left wanting as the film wants us to shed undeserved tears. Because in the end, it’s not about the disease, it’s about the the individual. And that’s where The Fault in Our Stars soars. More so than any teen romance, disease drama, or teen film in recent memory, Fault is lazer focused on Hazel. The point of view is built so strongly, we’re feeling what she’s feeling. And that also means Gus isn’t your everyday “Guy changes woman’s life” found in most romances now.
But it’s not exactly all perfect either. While the film absolutely nails creating two individuals completely separated from their disease (as in, it’s not the only way to identify them), it falls into several pitfalls of the romance genre. There is plenty of overtly corny dialogue as it’s almost too linguistically distinguished to come out of a kid’s mouth. While Hazel sounds like she’s a teenager, much of Gus’s dialogue sounds like a thirty year old man looking back on life. While you can argue that disease would mature an individual beyond their years, it often took me out of the moment to hear Gus say something along the lines of “It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you” as I found my eyes roll more than once. But in the same breath, most of that dialogue comes from the source material and, while I’m not the hugest fan of how cheesy it sounded, fans of the text are most likely going to love hearing it.
The film also has a huge pace problem. I haven’t read the source material myself, so I can’t fully assess what was removed or kept for the film, but there is a huge amount of time spent on non-sequiturs, or moments that aren’t particularly necessary for the narrative to move forward. Although one of the detours features a brilliant cameo/minor role from Willem Dafoe, most of them don’t attribute to character or world building. Fault could’ve really used the brevity too as when it does focus on character, it really works. As stated earlier, The Fault in Our Stars develops a hearty central relationship worth investing in. Their relationship is sadly realistic as it’s bred more out of necessity and panic that their lives could end at any minute. Yet, it’s incredibly touching to find them fighting back against the current. Also helps that Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort are perfect together. Every scene has the right amount of awkward. yet charming chemistry a relationship like this needs. I haven’t seen Elgort in much before this, but I hope he gets to be in things far more often. He’s the right leading man for these types of situations.
But the biggest praise for The Fault in Our Stars (which attributes for much of the final score) lies with its finale. A nice twist on my first expectations, and an ending that could’ve easily fit any other romantic film. Oddly, that’s where Fault makes the most headway. When it reaches past the boundaries of the disease drama, and can easily mold to other films. These two kids are no longer just kids with diseases, they’re kids stuck in a tragic love. Whether or not you completely buy into that love doesn’t matter, either. Because while the major focus is romance, the hidden current in the narrative is fighting for survival, for hope.
The Fault in Our Stars is true to life in such a splendid way. Despite being constantly reminded of doom looming on the horizon, it’s content to revel in the small pockets of serenity within a set number of days. And that’s what my mother and father told me fighting disease is like. Rather than just survival, true victory lies within the gall to laugh in the face of death and live like you weren’t struck with it in the first place.