pain demands to be felt #laterthought

i saw the ‘fault in our stars’ (TFIOS) a few months ago with my younger sister, who loved the John Green novel, and i’ve been wanting to air my grievances for some time. young-adult romances are a definite guilty pleasure but i found the cancer part of this story just so…i struggle to find a word. it is true that i’m hardly looking for realism in my escapist genres of choice but putting the cancer aside for a second, i still thought it was a shitty movie. sometimes i’m OK with “realistic” stories that don’t end well because real life doesn’t always work out smoothly, but this wasn’t good enough to make a tragic ending alright in my book. i admit it’s not a totally fair comparison because i haven’t read TFIOS book and the movie adaptation of this book i’m about to mention actually sucked tremendously, but ‘the time traveller’s wife’ by Audrey Niffenegger is one of those novels with a huge downer ending that i also really loved. this proves it’s not me, it’s john green right?

the other thing was that the emotional rationale/narrative behind why augustus waters is so in love with hazel grace didnt really make sense to me – granted it’s totally possible that the book does a great job of illustrating this. but the way i saw it, they basically just bump into each other and fairly mediocre but charming augustus decides he’s going to doggedly pursue fairly mediocre but sweet hazel. there might be a similar parallel between the romeo and juliet love story – i didn’t really get why they were so desperate for each other. it’s like saying “i loveeee peaches” but not doing or saying anything to convey why you came to love them or what you loved about them. at the same time, i must say that not for a second did i question claire and leo’s ardor in that 1996 baz luhrman adaptation. even though the script didnt necessarily veer too far from the dialogue in the written play, the movie was so visually and kinetically stunning that even though the love story was front and center, it was not the only thing. all the little unnamable things that endear you to characters and make you feel invested in their fates just weren’t there.

totally random side note but i also find the lead actress in the movie shailene woodley aesthetically fascinating and exhausting to watch at the same time. she’s sinewy but has a shapely bone structure and her face is eerily symmetrical with perfectly turned up almond shaped eyes.  so many of the shots (in this movie but in others she stars in as well) are extreme close-ups of her clear and beautiful, unpainted face that it even though it gets weird, it’s hard to tear your gaze away. maybe it’s not totally her but rather the way in which they choose to shoot her face over and over again. the lead actor ansel whatever is completely annoying with his annoying cigarette metaphor and twee cleverness.

ANYWAY, i do love this quote from the movie: pain demands to be felt. so true