The Fault in Our Stars: Book and Movies

I know this movie and book from Chika and Adhit. They told me how these movie and book have saddest-meaningful love story. Huuum sad story, then... I barely cried to any sad story that I've been watched or read. Let's try this out, I thought. So, I searched for its trailer on Youtube.

First thing came to my mind was, Wow, I just love the casts! They're beautiful enough to be watched. Since then I decided to find out more. Adhit gave me the e-book and I made a plan to watch the movie. I just read less than 10 chapters of the book from 25 chapters then I went to movies. It's a story about Hazel and Gus, two teenagers, who share an acerbic wit, a disdain for the conventional, and a love that sweeps them on a journey. Their relationship is all the more miraculous given that Hazel's other constant companion is an oxygen tank, Gus jokes about his prosthetic leg, and they met and fell in love at a cancer support group.

Here are the casts:

I was directly just in love with the story. The movie and the book, as I already finished it, doesn’t have wide differences. Some part just been cut from the book in the movies to make it properly nice as a movie. For short, they both (book and movie) are amazing as they are.

Hazel intro on the movie

Hazel Grace Lancaster (16); oh I love name Hazel because makes me imagining how delightful hazelnut coffee is; met this young boy, Augustus Waters (17) in the support group. Hazel has thyroid cancer originally but with an impressive and long-settled satellite colony in her lungs. Gus has a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago. Her mom thought that Hazel will have depression (as the side effect of dying as Hazel thinks) if she’s only at home and see no other people beside her parents. So, her mom always encourages her to go to support group of cancer and to make some friends. Then, here comes Augustus, usually called as Gus, who had a crush on Hazel since the very first eye contact.

In the support group

"Because you're beautiful"

It's a metaphor

I like the way Gus likes Hazel right from the very first time. I like the way Gus gets the phone from Hazel and says, “Hazel Grace!” instead of “Hallo”. I love the way they say unending ‘okay’ and becoming their thing. Falling in love could be everyone’s including sick people, couldn’t it? Only how you made it less imperfect and be grateful for it.

On the phone

Hazel and Gus's texts

Hazel reads one book for so many times, titled An Imperial Affliction. It’s a book about cancer also and she shares it to Gus. She admires the author, Peter Van Houten, very much. One day, Gus can grant Hazel’s wish to see Mr. Van Houten in Amsterdam to ask the continuity of the book and they’re going with Hazel mom. In Amsterdam, Gus finally tells that he loves Hazel with his very honestly truly beautiful words, they meet the douchebag Van Houten and get no answer, their first kiss and first also the last love making, also Gus finally tells Hazel that he gets her cancer back… Goods and bads happened in Amsterdam.

On the flight

Amsterdam

Had a romantic dinner at Oranjee as Mr. and Mrs. Waters, sponsored by Lidewij (Van Houten assistant)

So, finally Gus tells Hazel he loves her by these beautiful words:

Hazel's letter to Gus

Hard truth, hard life

After they get back to America, all Gus does only treatment for his cancer and resting. In short, Gus and Hazel make a eulogy for their each other’s funeral.

Isaac’s eulogy for Gus:

“But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.”

Hazel’s eulogy for Gus:

“I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”

Augustus Waters died eight days after his pre-funeral, at Memorial, in the ICU, when the cancer, which was made of him, finally stopped his heart, which was also made of him. For the last time, Gus made something for Hazel through Van Houten:
Van Houten,

I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time—and from what I saw, you have plenty—I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently.

Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death.

We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.

I want to leave a mark.

But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.)

We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless—epically useless in my current state—but I am an animal like any other.

Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.

People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.

The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox.

After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die before I could tell her that I was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.

A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.” A desert blessing, an ocean curse.

What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.

Gus, Isaac, and Hazel throw eggs to Monica’s car (Isaac’s ex) as a revenge of the Isaac-dump-ness

They drink champagne for the last time together

Okay...

“You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you. All efforts to save me from you will fail,” Gus said.

I think the story is so damn simple and ordinary, but it contains humanity thing that sometime we forget about and it shows us how we should see things, and again, how we could be so grateful for the life we’re living. My watching partner said after watch this movie, more or less, “Sometimes we could be so grateful and appreciate things very well when we are under (sick)”. I couldn’t agree more.