The Fault in our Stars, based on the novel of the same name by John Green, has the kind of logline that tends to indicate misery porn. It’s about cancer stricken teens falling in love and torn apart by circumstance, and that sounds like the kind of thing that can only lead to swelling music, soft lighting, and other forms of miserablist movie manipulation. And while there is some of that in there, The Fault in Our Stars often transcends those trappings to deliver something a little more brutal and far more honest. It is a story of sick people who cannot be defined by their sickness, of a life lived in defiance of the stars.
Teenager Hazel (Shailene Woodley) is depressed. She has good reason to be depressed: she’s dying. Her lungs don’t work properly thanks to the cancer that she contracted when she was 13. Her mom (Laura Dern) urges her to attend a support group, hoping that she’ll make some friends there. And there Hazel meets Gus (Ansel Elgort), a cancer survivor with a brighter outlook. The two become fast friends, and grow close through a mutual love for a novel.
What makes The Fault in our Stars so remarkable is that it treats its young romance like any other young romance. It understands that there are remarkable circumstances at play, but it refuses to define this budding relationship as anything more or less than the first blush of young love. There are visual reminders that these characters are suffering from some affliction: Hazel has to bring around an oxygen tank, and Gus is missing a leg. But the film makes it clear that those are just trappings. These characters cannot be confined by sickness. In the end, the only limit they face is one all humans face: impermanence.
The film does make an open bid for tears, but it tries to earn them. It still uses the language of melodrama at points, but it rarely lingers on obvious tragedy. It finds something more brutal in the moments in between, in the mundane realities of dying young. This story is actually built on instances where characters are denied their movie moments, where the clichés of dramatic cinema are subverted to reveal something more low-key and brutal. It finds the sadness, for example, in the very boring reality that only family is allowed in the ICU. There are times when the movie falters in this treatment (a scene set in the Anne Frank house stands out for feeling overly constructed), but for the most part, it resonates by finding the lower key.
The material finds a good match in a talented cast of young actors. Shailene Woodley has long been deemed the next big thing, and it's difficult to argue against that idea. She is remarkably talented, bearing the sort of groundedness that tends to benefit realistic narratives. She will probably be swept off to bigger projects, but she really is best suited to quieter dramas. Ansel Elgort is terrific as Gus, the young actor deftly revealing the fear and vulnerability that lies just beneath the character’s façade of invincibility.
The Fault in Our Stars feels a bit burdened by its plot. Its characters are rich enough that they don’t really need to be taken on any sort of quest. The real story lies not in whatever trip they take, but in their acknowledgement of how fleeting their life really is. It’s the kind of thing that might work better in a book rather than in a movie, which is a form that really benefits from brevity. Still, the movie’s approach makes even those heavily constructed moments a pleasure to witness. The film largely avoids the shortcuts of misery cinema, earning every last tear it gets.
My Rating:
