Could change the way films address people with challenges and differences

Rating: 9/10 (30 December 2014)

The cure for cancer is still an exhausting search, but the cure for bad movies about cancer has finally taken affect. A few years ago, Jonathan Levine's "50/50" changed the portrayal of and dialogue about cancer in movies. Fast-forward to 2014 and the TV show "Red Band Society" and this film adaptation of John Green's "The Fault in Our Stars" are normalizing cancer in teenagers. It's a weird trend to highlight, but if Hollywood can start treating other "taboo" subjects the same way, there's hope for film as a meaningful teaching tool yet.
"The Fault in Our Stars" begins by essentially scoffing at picture-perfect love stories. Its narrator, Hazel (Shailene Woodley), a Stage IV thyroid cancer survivor not even 20 years old, warns us that this story will not have a happy ending. She's right, but that said, you won't be blindsided by some Nicholas Sparks tearjerker move either.
Hazel doesn't know her timeline, but she knows her cancer is terminal. She carries an oxygen tank with her everywhere she goes, including a support group that she only attends to keep her mother (Laura Dern) and father (Sam Trammell) happy. But it's there, ironically, where she meets Augustus, or Gus, (Ansel Elgort), an osteosarcoma survivor with a prosthetic leg and an impressively positive yet realistic attitude about life. Both of them witty, sharp and sarcastic, Hazel and Gus become fast friends and their romance grows in spite of Hazel's best intentions to avoid falling in love.
There's a terrific sense of humor and approach to cancer in this script that even makes "50/50" seem dated. The characters are not defined by their illnesses but by their attitudes toward life, the way they cope with the ups and downs. Hazel and Gus are surprisingly mature for their age, partly because they're written so well but also because they've been through a lot and ripened at a young age. They still feel like teenagers though, and that's key.
Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, writers of the outstanding "(500) Days of Summer" and "The Spectacular Now" nail it again with the chemistry between Hazel and Gus. Obviously much credit belongs to Woodley and Elgort, but these writers know how to craft real, authentic dialogue. They so effortlessly evoke our own memories of love and life's challenges at a young age in addition to creating compelling drama.
They've also got modern teenage relationships down pat. There's just enough use of phones here to make texting a meaningful component of Hazel and Gus's relationship, but not so much that the movie is overbearingly "contemporary." Director Josh Boone handles these scenes delicately and in a way that's true to those who have experienced romance develop through text. But anyway, these characters are in the business of making real connections; after all, they've been through more hardship than a majority of kids their age.
The movie is the story of their relationship, which doesn't become a romance for them as quickly as it does in the audience's mind. Trained to know in movies when two people should fall in love, we are conditioned to look for a first kiss scene well before it happens in this movie, which reflects the inherent, largely unspoken challenges of Hazel and Gus's relationship. As much as teens will gravitate toward this film, it's the adults — who know the heartbreak, who know what teenage romance is like, who would likely tell these two to be cautious — that will most appreciate the story's attitude toward love and relationships. In a lot of ways, "The Fault in Our Stars" could be a great film for teens and their parents to begin to have conversations about these things.
Even though the opening narration insists that the story won't sugarcoat anything, it doesn't mean it's free of melodramatic twists that ratchet the drama and sadness up to 10. The approach to scene work and dialogue and characters is more authentic, but the plot doesn't exactly follow suit. In the story's defense, however, we'd have a very boring film on our hands without something to really challenge these characters. Even if you might argue their lives have been challenging enough, it's still a movie.
Thematic richness is another strength of "The Fault in Our Stars." It's an emotionally deep and resonant film just in the way it handles cancer, but it also presents difficult concepts and subplots that even further inform the core story. When Gus uses his "Make-a-Wish" to take Hazel to Amsterdam to meet with the author of her favorite book, this seemingly tangential segment in their larger journey brings a surprising number of new layers and ideas to the story, including the author's unexpected reaction and a visit to the Anne Frank House.
"The Fault in Our Stars" is one of the films changing the way we look at major issues. There's nothing politically charged about cancer, but films wanting to approach anything from race to sexual orientation could certainly adopt some of the techniques here to approach those issues in authentic ways. Teaching tool or not, it's still a quality coming-of-age story right next to "The Perks of Being A Wallflower."
~Steven C
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