Four stars. Rated PG-13, and perhaps too harshly, for thematic elements, chaste sexuality and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang
Every generation embraces at
least one swooningly poignant saga of star-crossed lovers, which, as a result
of massive ticket sales, becomes a media sensation that generates all sorts of
commentary, analysis and — the inevitable backlash — scornful snickering.
 |
| During one of her rare bouts of utter despair, Hazel (Shailene Woodley) admits that she has come to regard her childhood back yard playset as quite pathetic, a sentiment with which Gus (Ansel Elgort) heartily agrees. |
The adulation isn’t hard to
understand; we’re hard-wired for this sort of stuff. Have been since 16th
century audiences crowded the stalls to see performances of Romeo and Juliet. And probably long
before that.
As for the snickering, well,
sometimes it’s warranted. (See the 1970 adaptation of Erich Segal’s Love Story. Or the book itself, for that
matter.)
A very fine line separates
artistic success from the sort of puerile, overly histrionic treacle found in
TV soap operas. We therefore ask that our melancholy melodramas be intelligent,
populated by perceptive characters whose actions resonate with our real-world
experiences and expectations, and which — in the case of films — are made by
talented actors who respect the material, scripters with an understanding of
subtlety, and directors who refrain from artificially enhancing the emotional
intensity. With stuff like too many tight close-ups.
I’m therefore happy to report
that director Josh Boone’s adaptation of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars conducts itself quite honorably. The book’s
many, many fans will be delighted to hear key chunks of dialogue and exposition
lifted directly from the page, and in a few cases scripters Scott Neustadter
and Michael H. Weber have improved the story’s overall flow: some judicious
nips and tucks here, a couple of droll laugh lines inserted there. (Films are
much better than books, when it comes to verbal zingers.)
Mostly, though, this film gets
its momentum and emotional heft from star Shailene Woodley’s expressive and
heartbreaking performance as 16-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster, a girl who
handles her cancer death-sentence with the sort disarming candor, mocking wit
and stubborn strength that we’d hope to call upon, under similar circumstances.
In a word, Woodley is a
revelation.
A performance starts with the
overall appearance, and Woodley looks right, with the sallow, waxy pallor — the
aura of illness — that results from a terminal disease. More significantly,
though, she projects brittleness and fragility, as if she might shatter from
abrupt contact, or simply collapse as her skeletal frame betrays her.
Green’s book persuasively depicts
Hazel’s constant battle for breath, her body badly compromised by the papillary
thyroid cancer that spawned — in her own words, as lifted from Green’s text —
an impressive and long-settled satellite colony in her lungs. Woodley conveys this
gasping struggle for oxygen just as convincingly, her gritty, determined gaze
never quite concealing the despair that bubbles behind her eyes.
