I had expected “The Fault in Our Stars” (directed by Josh
Boone, novel by John Green) to try to manipulate me into openness
to “relationships” with people with physical challenges, and the very beginning
seemed to reaffirm my concern. Hazel (Shailene Woodley), at 17, lives on
oxygen, her lungs ruined as a secondary consequence of thyroid cancer (which
Robert Ebert died from). Her parents
(Sam Trammell and Laura Dern) encourage her to continue in cancer patient
support groups, and build rapport with other people in her circumstances. But she meets an outgoing young man, Gus
(Ansel Elgort), who seems fully recovered from earlier bone cancer, to which he
has lost a leg. The relationship works,
and it might be too much of a spoiler to say that appearances, as to who is
physically the stronger, could be deceiving.
They meet a Dutch fiction author (Willem Dafoe) from
Amsterdam, and Hazel wants to know what will happen in his next book. He gives her a curious answer, suggesting
that authors (those who depend on their novels for a living) can’t give away
their secrets online to anyone they don’t trust, but seems to invite her to
Holland. This may sound a bit like a
manipulative “make a wish” situation.
They get to make the trip, and it seems as though the author’s assistant
had set it up. The house is a mess
(filled with unanswered mail), and the author is rude, although the comment he
made about the Cantor Set in real analysis (in mathematics) was interesting to
me. I really didn’t get the point about
Swedish hip hop. But the couple has a
wonderful three days anyway. They visit
the Anne Frank house, which I visited myself in May 2001, on the last day of a
trip. I don’t recall climbing a ladder
to the highest floor of the house.
I do have a problem with the idea of promising intimacy to
someone who is “not perfect”, since the dynamics of my own relationships depends
on “upward affiliation”. I can melt in
the hands of the “right person”, but what if something happens later and the
person falls off the pedestal. It’s hard
for me to imagine physicality with someone “till death do us part”. Can I do someone who needs a boost some
good? That depends. What does the person really need? Where am I in my own life?
I saw the film at the AMC Courthouse in Arlington, with the
reclining seats, and on a Monday night the 90-seat auditorium sold out for the
8 PM show, so it’s a good thing I bought on the Internet.
The official site(from Fox 2000 aka Fox Faith) is here. I don’t know how the filmmakers created
the convincing effect of Mr. Ansel’s prosthesis, because imdb makes no mention
of it. Nat Wolff plays a teen who loses
both eyes to retinoblastoma.
I do recall seeing “Love Story” in Princeton NJ the first
year I was working (Arthur Hiller’s film with Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw). I have rented “The Diary of Anne Frank” and
it was shown once when I was substitute teaching.
Wikipedia attribution link for Frank House. There is also an LGBT museum nearby. Second picture, from my 2012 visit to Indianapolis, at 30th St and Meridian.
The new film was shot partly in Pittsburgh, even though the
story is supposed to happen in Indiana.
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