Young Writers Society

When your poster mantra is "Okay" with a question mark, you're not aiming for, well, the stars.

This week I'm going to be talking about The Fault In Our Stars, a tragic romantic comedy set in central Indiana. This instant pop classic hit theaters in 2014's popping hot summer and left a chasm of weeping teenagers in its wake. Adapted from John Green's novel of the same name, The Fault In Our Stars tails the lives of two cancer genre teen lovers as they find love in the midst of the ever-looming oblivion--a theme that recurs throughout the film.

But we're here to talk about the writing in the film, which was largely true to Green's novel. In fact, if you're looking for the highlights of this film, look no further than the quotable lines written by Green. That said, if I'm going to be bold about this review, I'll say safely that the movie is at its strongest when relying on reference material, which is something Green is guilty of in abundance. Whether it's The Emperor Of All Maladies (An Imperial Affliction in the film and book) or The Diary of Anne Frank, the directors intercut lines and even select soundbits from the Anne Frank House's PA loop to bring a substantial amount of literary quality alive in a very short amount of time.

And that's what it's all about, right? Firing on all cylinders and evoking emotion with the skill of layering themes? I think they succeed, and while this happens only for the first two acts of the film (in which I believe there are three: 1.) The Beauty, 2.) Amsterdam, and 3.) The Beast) the remainder of the film takes strength from new elements introduced in Act II. Are you familiar with Cantor's Irrational Numbers? If not, then you'll have a love for it after watching this film.

See, after the first two acts, which reference (respectively) An Imperial Affliction/The Emperor of All Maladies and The Diary of Anne Frank, you're introduced to the streamlined takeaway line in the same vein as "In that moment, I swear we were infinite"--"Thank you for our little infinity."

Without spoilers, I can tell you that you will feel Things during the film--the may not be strong, and they will probably be sighs of annoyance at times (given a few hammy lines poorly delivered), but there will be feelings.

As a final note, I'd like to personally praise the acting of background mother, Laura Dern. Out of the entire cast and collection of performances, her delivery made me feel the most. At times, all other members of the cast feel replaceable; but Laura Dern hits it HOME, delivering my personal favorite line of the film, and the note on which I'll end:

"You of all people know it's possible to live with pain. You just do it."

Until next time,
Ty

To anyone who liked the concept of TFiOS but not the execution might wanna check out Me, Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews (along with its subsequent movie adaptation). I've heard good things about it, but of course anyone who's actually read (or saw) both is highly encouraged to talk about it

I just recently read the book and while I found the MCs annoyingly pretentious at times, I won't deny that I got emotional at the end, even though it was partially spoiled for me by the Internet. I'd be curious to see how the movie compares but I haven't seen it yet.

The first thing I need to say is, lumi thank you for this so I would go back and re-examine my immense hatred for John Green. Still hate his works except for Looking for Alaska but I'll get to that whenever you bring it up. Part of the reason I dislike Green is because he's from Indianapolis and I lived for three years in a pseudo-kind of sort of-tax loophole-debt evasion-town split off of Indianapolis. And believe when TFiOS came out, they were all like “Hail Green” in the way the nazis saw hitler and the way marvel fans see hydra. This being said I was really judgmental of his book to start with.

Second point comes at, Indiana is one hell of a boring place so no wonder these kids wanted to escape it. As before mentioned, lived there for three years and as a person from the south it nearly killed me. So this makes the book a bit hard to relate to in the first place. (Besides the cancer but I'm getting to that man.) I had been there for a bit and I knew the places they talked about but I think I was just a bit too young.

Third, TFiOS is so toned down cursing wise from all the other ones. The scale of curse words goes
Alaska, Towns, Katherines, TFiOS.
You know it's true and the cursing is sort of an attractive point for certain teens. And to me, that book would be the one most justified and if I remember correctly, it wasn't until the very end when they dropped a few f bombs. Now to 13 year old me, this level of cursing was terrifying but now to 15 year old Lizz, it's like one of mildest YA books I ever read. Someone pointed this out in discord and I have continued to apply it all the way throughout the series. It's like each book is a little more watered down mirror of the previous plot.

Fourth, the change in speaker. Now he had jumped around a bit between first and third before, but I think the drastic change from male to female, was well drastic. It is definitely a big point that makes people judge books because there's sort of this notion of women can write men but men can't write women. And this was partially true for the book and then it would break that notion.

Five, I haven't read this book for a bit so once I dig it out of the pile I'll add onto this review. I'll give it a proper review in a couple of months and include it as a proper reply to your review.

Six, I didn't watch the movie because I hated the book. I don't see a reason to watch a movie about a book you hate. My hatred for this book may also stem from the fact I didn't read it until long after it came out. Therefore I already knew the ending thanks to friends and social media. Considering I already knew the ending, I didn't find the build up particularly good. I can see if you don't know the ending how it might go better but for me it was just sort of...boring and ruined.

I remember breezing through this book in Sophomore or Junior year of highschool when it was really popular, and it just kind of left me with a "meh" feeling as a result. I had a lot of trouble connecting to the characters, and like niteowl said, the two teens were often annoyingly pretentious.

I also found the whole search-for-the-author-of-their-not-acutually-real-and-obscure-favorite-book thing to be a really disappointing bit of the plot in the story. I almost feel like it would've been better for the author to remain a mystery - not to spare the MC's the disappointment they faced when they met him, but because it felt really... I dunno. Forced?

It's been a long time since I've read it, so details or fuzzy. In short, the book was, at least for me, forgettable, and was just another book I sped through just for the sake of reading.

All that said, I haven't watched the movie. So I really don't know why I'm commenting here. HAH.