Year 15, Day 71 - 3/12/23 - Movie #4,372
BEFORE: Mike Birbiglia carries over from "Your Sister's Sister" and I couldn't work in the film "Humpday", which is another mumblecore film with Mark Duplass in it - but that would lead to something of a dead end for me, I couldn't get from there to my St. Patrick's Day films, which leads to my Easter film, so I've got to strand another film here, but maybe I can work it in later.
It's Day 12 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming, and today's theme is "War" - I've seen a few classic war films in my time, so this is not a deal breaker. Here's the line-up:
7:15 am "Beyond the Line of Duty" (1942)
8:00 am "Air Force" (1943)
10:15 am "Battleground" (1949)
12:15 pm "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" (1944)
2:45 pm "The Dirty Dozen" (1967)
5:30 pm "Twelve O'Clock High" (1949)
8:00 pm "The Longest Day" (1962)
11:15 pm "From Here to Eternity" (1953)
1:30 am "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930)
4:00 am "49th Parallel" (1941)
Hmm, I guess I've only seen 3 out of 10 today... I could have sworn I saw "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" but maybe I'm thinking about "Destination Tokyo". Same goes for "The Longest Day", but maybe I'm confusing that with "A Bridge Too Far" or something. There are still big gaps in my classic film knowledge, and John Wayne films is one of them, I can't really stand that actor. So, I've only seen "The Dirty Dozen", "From Here to Eternity" and "All Quiet on the Western Front". There's a new remake of that last one, which I guess I'll need to watch at some point because it's nominated for Best Picture this season. Maybe it's very hard to link to since it's got mostly German actors, and I can let myself off the hook. But this brings me up to 69 seen out of 134, still over half seen with 51.4%.
Speaking of the Oscars, the ceremony is TONIGHT and I'm just not ready - seriously, I was thinking yesterday about how to watch it next Sunday before I realized it's on tonight. I've been working a lot of shifts, OK? But I knew that my romance chain was going to run long, and I wouldn't be able to watch any more of the nominated films than I already have, there's just no time between romance films and Irish films - I'm barely going to make the connection as it is.
OK, so what have I seen that's nominated? "Everything Everywhere All at Once", also Ana de Armas in "Blonde", Angela Bassett in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" (review not posted yet), and "Turning Red" in the animated feature race and some films up for make-up and technical awards like "The Batman", "Glass Onion" which is up for Best Screenplay, and I saw ONE of the films up for Best Animated Short, which was "An Ostrich Told Me the World Was Fake And I Think I Believe It". OK, so those are the films I'm rooting for tonight. I didn't get to "Elvis" or "Top Gun: Maverick" or "The Banshees of Inisherin" yet, but I'm tracking them all.
I wish I could throw a big Oscar party and serve fun food like "Everything Everywhere" bagels or "All Quiet on the Western Omelets" but I don't have the time or the energy - or that many close friends to invite, if I'm being honest.
THE PLOT: Two teenage cancer patients begin a life-affirming journey to visit a reclusive author in Amsterdam.
AFTER: Well, I guess this one's a reminder that you have to take the bad with the good in life. You can't fall in love without (eventually) wondering how long it's going to last. And by extension, you can't be alive without (eventually) wondering how that's going to last, too. It's a bummer, sure, but there are two ways of dealing with it, as exemplified by the attitudes of the main characters at different times - the first method is to ignore it and just try to live in the moment, take things as they come and then at least if you meet an untimely end, then people will say that you had a great attitude and nothing bothered you. The other way is to think big, to consider that in a hundred years nobody alive is still going to be alive, and in a thousand years the planet's probably will be so broken that nothing can survive on it, and in a million years the sun's going to expand and swallow the Earth anyway, so really, there's nothing you can do. Either you choose not to worry about it, or you lean so far into the depressing stuff that you come to the conclusion that nothing matters.
I mean no matter what happens, single or paired up, healthy or sick, rich or poor, you've got to get up each day and do your routine and figure out a way forward. That seems to be the message of the film, but I never read the book that it's based on, so I can't really confirm. Hazel is a cancer survivor who's been sick since she was a small child, her thyroid cancer has spread to her lungs, and then she falls for a guy who goes to the same support group, Augustus is a former jock who lost a leg to bone cancer but then it went into remission. He's there to support his friend Isaac, who lost an eye to cancer and will eventually be blind. So it's not exactly the happiest place to start a story, but hey, at least it's realistic I suppose.
Hazel and Gus start hanging out and they exchange books, so Gus reads Hazel's favorite book, which is a novel about a girl with cancer that comes to a very abrupt end. The author is a recluse who moved to Amsterdam, but Gus e-mails him on Hazel's behalf because she has so many questions about what happens after the book's story ends. But the author says he can't answer questions over e-mail, he can only talk about the book in person, so if they're ever in Amsterdam...
But Hazel used her "last wish" years ago, when she was 13 she did the whole "Make-A-Wish" thing and went to a theme park, so she figures she doesn't deserve a trip to Amsterdam. But Gus never used his, so he plans a trip for them to go and meet this famous author. I suppose cancer patients would be aware of different organizations that would help fund trips for sick teens - but it's a bit of a strange thing to use this as a device to advance the plot, it feels almost out of place, like a cheap way out. He seems like an able-bodied teen, why not raise the funds himself through Kickstarter or GoFundMe or something? Or get a job? Just asking.
Eventually Hazel's doctors agree to let her go on the trip, as long as she doesn't do anything too strenuous (like visiting the Anne Frank House, which has a ton of stairs and no elevator? This does happen, but why? There would be no shame in admitting she doesn't have the strength to complete this part of the tour...). Hazel and Gus then make history by being the first Americans to make out in the Anne Frank Museum - I'm not sure that's something they should be proud of.
But the visit with the author turns out to be a bust - so never meet your heroes, I guess. It's revealed that the trip was planned by the author's assistant, he would prefer to never meet his fans, because they all want to ask annoying questions about the book, and I'm sure it's always the same ones he always hears and is sick of answering. Look what happened to J.K. Rowling - she got tired of answering questions about her characters' sexual preferences, and it touched off a whole controversy. But Hazel persists, and asks the author the same silly questions that everyone asks, and surprise, the author chooses not to answer, largely because the characters are NOT REAL and they don't exist outside the story. Look, would you ask George Lucas what happens to his characters in-between the "Star Wars" movies? He made the movies he wanted to make and he's not responsible for keeping us all up to date on what happens after that - that's why he sold his company to Disney for a billion dollars, so that other people could write those stories and he could stop meeting with fans and answering their stupid fan-fiction questions.
The author here didn't have to be such an a-hole, but I'm kind of on his side, because he doesn't work for his fans, he doesn't OWE them anything beyond what he already wrote in the book years ago. He can end the story wherever he chooses, and then people are free to either buy his book and support his art, or not. It's called the free market. I'll admit I was off-base in predicting what would happen with the author - my money was on Gus lying about the whole thing, and then having to admit to Hazel that he never really got an e-mail invitation to come to Amsterdam - this of course would then end with them bumping into the author in a café or something and him being really cool about it. So I was wrong - but the movie's plot is probably better than the one I predicted.
The rest of the movie concerns Gus' cancer coming back, and him asking Hazel to write a eulogy for him and then him holding a mock "pre-funeral". So yeah, there's not really a happy ending here, so I guess if you need one, you've come to the wrong place. Is it wrong to find this film refreshing because it doesn't end in a happy place? See also: "Sweet November". Well, I've just about covered it all this romance season, from love triangles and love hexagons to weddings and funerals, I've got just one more film to go, the end is definitely in sight. First I'm going to go and speed through the Oscars on my DVR, then I'm going to watch the last film in this 41-film chain.
Also starring Shailene Woodley (last seen in "The Mauritanian"), Ansel Elgort (last seen in "Carrie" (2013)), Nat Wolff (last heard in "Leap!"), Laura Dern (last seen in "Jurassic World Dominion"), Sam Trammell (last seen in "Autumn in New York"), Willem Dafoe (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Lotte Verbeek, Ana Dela Cruz, Randy Kovitz (last seen in "Concussion"), David Whalen (last seen in "Southpaw"), Milica Govich, Emily Peachey, Emily Bach, Bethany Leo, Alexis Hodges, Jean Brassard (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Carly Otte, Jordan Drexel, PJ Rosotto, Lily Kenna, and the voice of Carole Weyers with archive footage of Sigourney Weaver (last seen in "You Again").
RATING: 6 out of 10 thought experiments
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