The Fault in Our Stars (2014)

Film: The Fault in Our Stars (2014)

Stars: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Laura Dern, Nat Wolff, Sam Trammell, Willem Dafoe

Director: John Boone

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars (I know, I’m as shocked as you are…let’s discuss)

On occasion, you run into movies that you, if you’re proper and rational, shouldn’t remotely love.  You look at the films and realize they’re cloying and manipulative and filled with emotional buzzwords like cancer and first love and whatever we used to call the term for YOLO before that insidious acronym enjoined our collective social medias.  You see that the main actress is playing a character far too world-weary even for someone dying of a disease or that her love interest is far too perfect, the sort of boyfriend you dream of when you’re trying to comfort yourself after yet another emotionally-stunted set-up, even if you’re fully-aware that he couldn’t possible exist in real life.  You recognize the silliness of hiring an Oscar-nominated actor to play a Snidely Whiplash-style author that you’re certain will have an epiphany before the film ends.

You do all of these things, and yet, in spite of yourself, you end up falling in love with the movie.  Call it An Affair to Remember.  Call it Notting Hill.  Call it The Notebook.  Or, in this case with one of my favorite cinematic experiences of the year, call it The Fault in Our Stars.

(Spoiler Alert) I cannot even tell you how much I hate myself for loving this movie.  I was texting my brother through part of the film about how Ansel Elgort’s character is the sort of person that decent women (and a few men) end up single or settling because they believe he can exist in real life, like an adult version of Santa Claus.  The scene where he protests that he’s still a virgin because he lost his leg to cancer felt like almost annoying pandering to the audience to make his relationship with Hannah Grace (Woodley) more chaste; a guy that gorgeous, charming, and sweet is going to have women all over him, regardless of his limb count.

But it’s impossible not to love his Gus.  While he occasionally becomes the manic pixie dream boy, he is so charming and affective that you don’t particularly care.  The scenes where he’s flirting with Hannah Grace are effortless charm.  This is clearly an actor who is going to have his pick of parts for years to come.  It helps that Woodley is grounded in a wonderfully-felt performance, never quite feeling too precocious, though not quite falling into the sap like you feel would be so easy to do, but Elgort feels like the real deal as well.  I’m already starting a countdown to the Half Nelson and Blue Valentine period of his career.

The film itself is wildly effective as a love story.  Perhaps because cinematically I’ve been a bit love-starved for straight-forward romances I couldn’t get enough of their fun and the care that John Boone puts into us getting to know these characters, particularly our heroine Hannah Grace.  We see the facades that they both built up for themselves and Boone does something marvelous with that: he doesn’t bust them over.  The people at the end of the film are the same as the ones at the beginning, deeply affected by their first taste of romance, but still grounded into being the same people.

The supporting players, like most romantic dramas, are a mixed bag.  I though the entire plot with Willem Dafoe felt indulgent (was this John Green’s proxy in the novel, cause if so he has some esteem issues to work through), and perhaps the only part of the film where the cloying actually sunk in-this was too much of a cartoon to actually make us care enough for him to be the messenger toward the end of the film.  Balancing him well was Laura Dern as a mother so desperate to keep her daughter alive-I LOVED the scene where she admits that she’s starting to take classes, that the shame of acknowledging her daughter will die soon and she’ll have to live on was so subtle, but perfectly felt.  I’m so glad she’s enjoying such a wonderful string of elevated supporting roles-I just wish she’d luck out a bit more and find a lead role.

All-in-all, even with the ending that you can see coming a mile away (the film cares too much about Hannah Grace to be, to quote The Hours, “the character who makes others appreciate life more”), I was still a ball of tears, crying on my couch while Hannah’s first love (perhaps, as is indicated, her only?) leaves her with the full experience of romance-not just the highs but the unspeakable lows.  I had not read the book, but I suddenly understand the woman who was dabbing her eyes on the bus a few months ago while finishing this novel.

We’re going to leave things there, but the damage is already done for me-loved it.  Loved every minute of it.  Even the parts I hated.  Anyone else loving this, which has become 2014’s Guilty Pleasure for yours truly?  Where do you see Ansel Elgort’s career going next?  How long before Shailene Woodley gets her first Oscar nod?  And which John Green book should I inevitably read first?  Share in the comments!