The Fault in Our Stars | Little White Lies

The Fault in Our Stars

19 Jun 2014 / Released: 19 Jun 2014

Words by Chris Blohm

Directed by Josh Boone

Starring Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, and Shailene Woodley

Two young people, a man and a woman, sitting on a bench and interacting intimately in an urban setting.
Two young people, a man and a woman, sitting on a bench and interacting intimately in an urban setting.
3

Anticipation.

Under eighteen? Your favourite novel finally hits the big screen.

4

Enjoyment.

Laugh. Cry. Repeat.

3

In Retrospect.

Resistance is futile. Expect this to go stellar.

John Green’s tween can­cer best­seller gets trans­formed into a ruth­less­ly effi­cient weepie with ascen­dent star Shai­lene Woodley.

Try as you might, there’s not a sin­gle damn thing you can do about The Fault in Our Stars. It’s here. It exists. Suck up the sac­cha­rine, let it into your heart, and deal with it.

Adapt­ed from the best-sell­ing nov­el by YouTube impre­sario John Green (one of the 100 most influ­en­tial peo­ple in the world, accord­ing to Time mag­a­zine), the film is no small-scale weepie; it’s an unre­pen­tant emo­tion­al Armaged­don. All in the best pos­si­ble taste, of course, with plen­ty of humour and an unlike­ly aside of transat­lantic trav­el to punc­tu­ate the tragedy. It’s basi­cal­ly Love Sto­ry for the Kat­niss Everdeen set; the kind of cul­tur­al anom­aly that shim­mies its way into orbit while the adult world snoozes at ground lev­el. Don’t just take a tis­sue, bring the box. And per­haps invest in shares.

The excel­lent Shai­lene Wood­ley plays 16-year-old Hazel, an intro­vert­ed and book­ish but incred­i­bly bright can­cer patient who spends her days per­ma­nent­ly attached to a portable oxy­gen tank. Forced by her ultra-appre­hen­sive par­ents to attend a near­by sup­port group, Hazel meets the implau­si­bly charis­mat­ic Augus­tus Waters (Woodley’s Diver­gent co-star Ansel Elgort)

Augus­tus is the kind of guy who only exists in nov­els and movies. He’s a hip, hand­some, old­er ex-jock who car­ries cig­a­rettes with him every­where, but nev­er actu­al­ly smokes them. Also, he’s called Augus­tus, for cry­ing out loud. And he wears a leather jack­et. So what if he’s only got one leg? He’s basi­cal­ly the coolest per­son ever. Any­way, Augus­tus and Hazel fall hope­less­ly in love, spark­ing off an intense and ulti­mate­ly doomed love affair.

The film opened to absurd num­bers in the US, keep­ing even the new Tom Cruise behe­moth off the top of the box office chart. Frankly, it deserves every last cent. This savvy, dewy-eyed para­ble proves that the trick to get­ting young peo­ple back into the mul­ti­plex isn’t to give them some­thing they’ll like; you need to give them some­thing they’ll love. And there’s a lot to love about The Fault in Our Stars.

This is only direc­tor Josh Boone’s sec­ond fea­ture, but he han­dles the earnest, poten­tial­ly soapy mate­r­i­al (think a genet­ic mash-up of John Hugh­es and Nicholas Sparks) with stur­dy hands. Visu­al­ly, his film resides some­where in-between soft focus, Dis­ney Chan­nel melo­dra­ma, and the rougher dimen­sions of a Cather­ine Hard­wicke movie, but it works.

Boone clear­ly lucked out with his cast, too. The pic­ture is ele­vat­ed above the lev­el of crude, ado­les­cent hokum by the cen­tral part­ner­ship of Wood­ley and Elgo­rt, both of whom are com­plete­ly believ­able (if a lit­tle too pret­ty) as the trag­ic two­some. Elgo­rt, in par­tic­u­lar, cap­tures the beats and rhythms of the seem­ing­ly invul­ner­a­ble Augus­tus with verve and swag­ger. A heart­throb is born.

The cast is ably sup­port­ed by a sparky, quick-wit­ted screen­play by Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber, the guys behind (500)Days of Sum­mer. Their script is full to the brim with punchy one-lin­ers and mem­o­rable gags (check out token best friend Nat Wolff, for instance, and his increas­ing­ly vio­lent attempts at anger man­age­ment). Weird­ly, the char­ac­ters all con­verse in a stylised, qua­si-lit­er­ary, Dawson’s Creek lin­go; mod­ern teenagers envis­aged by dudes in their late thirties.

Yes, it can be a lit­tle mawk­ish, and there are moments scat­tered through­out the film that accel­er­ate the sen­ti­ment to such an extent that it threat­ens to go cos­mic. Some­times the plot veers into out­right wish ful­fil­ment (quite lit­er­al­ly, dur­ing the Ams­ter­dam sequences). The prob­lem is that everything’s just so damn adorable, espe­cial­ly as the nar­ra­tive, like the lives it reflects, reach­es a poignant, and heart­break­ing crescen­do. That’s the moment when The Fault in Our Stars real­ly con­nects, when you realise that this isn’t just for kids. This is for everyone.

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