Likewise, the film includes a couple of religion-knocking bits during a funeral, with one character talking about “fake praying” and a main character endorsing dissembling to comfort the grieving - but omits that same character’s reflections at the funeral on the idea of believing in Something and what it would mean to picture the dead being Somewhere. The usage crops up in the film, but without the effect of the novel’s repetition. In the novel, Hazel and Gus adopt this phrase, ironically at first, though through sheer repetition the irony wears thin and the words are what they are. “Maybe there is no point,” Hazel counters.įor instance, the film includes the novel’s skewering of the cancer support group leader’s personal foibles and over-earnest piety about the group meeting in what he insists on calling “the literal heart of Jesus” (a reference to the church’s cruciform architecture). He does believe in an afterlife: “Not like a heaven where you ride unicorns, play harps and live in a mansion made of clouds. When he says he fears “oblivion,” he doesn’t mean nonexistence, but leaving the world unchanged, as if he had never been. Gus’ go-for-it bravura reflects his longing to lead an epic life, to make a difference in the world. He’s upbeat, self-deprecating, gallant, humorous, lives in the moment and calls Hazel’s mother “Ma’am.” If he’s almost too good to be true, at least he approximates an ideal actually worth idealizing, as opposed to icky literary heartthrobs like Edward Cullen and Christian Grey. Gus has lost his left leg below the knee to cancer, but other than his prosthetic limb, he seems to be in fine shape. When Hazel asks him why he’s looking at her, he answers with disconcerting directness, “I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence.” All rightee then. One day at support group, Hazel literally bumps into Gus, who makes no secret of his instant attraction to her. It is also attentive to how easily that gap can be bridged by charm, bravado and something in common, such as a history of cancer. It’s a story that is attentive to the culture gap between, on the one hand, a girl whose favorite literary work is a novel that speaks to her profoundly about living with a terminal condition and, on the other, a boy whose favorite literary work is a novelization of his favorite video game. It also cares about what it feels like to wait for days for that first text message from a boy one has just met, whom one likes more than one is prepared to admit, even to oneself. The Fault in Our Stars - in cinematic as well as literary form - cares quite a bit about silly questions, such as the meaning of life and death and love and suffering in a universe sliding toward oblivion and whether there is Something beyond giving some larger context to our existence, choices and experiences.
“Have you ever stopped to wonder,” a character asks in a key scene in John Green’s young-adult romantic tearjerker novel The Fault in Our Stars, “why you care so much about your silly questions?”
0 kommentar(er)
