James Smith offers a civilized, thoughtful take on film, culture, and the entertainment industry. Movies are worth taking seriously. Let's figure out how to make them better. T: @jentlemanjames F: facebook.com/jentlemanfilm
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Italian Man. Novara, Italy, summer 2011. #35mm #filmisnotdead #portra #kodak #nikon #portraits #selfportrait #analog #italy #novara #travels #kodak_photo #gesti
On the rocks. Watch Island, July 2014. #35mm #filmisnotdead #portra #kodak #nikon #kodak_photo #riverfolk #thousandislands #river #watchisland #landscapes #friendsandfamily
It’s been out for a few weeks, but I only just caught up with Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. I was primarily interested in seeing it because I’d read the script at some point and hadn’t loved it, but knew that the film had been highly buzzed out of Sundance. Actually, “highly buzzed” isn’t quite the right way to describe it – this film won the Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic) at Sundance; the five before it to win that prize were, counting backward, Whiplash, Fruitvale Station, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Like Crazy, and Winter’s Bone. Three of those films (Whiplash, Beasts, and Winter’s Bone) were Academy Award Best Picture nominees; Fruitvale Station maybe / probably should have been as well; if you haven’t been living under a rock since 2010, you’ve definitely heard of all of them, and if, for some strange reason, you’ve been reading the Journal since its inception, you know that I adored at least one of them.
In other words, it’s a movie with a pedigree, and I wanted to see what, if anything, had changed since I’d read the script, or if the process of moving from page to screen had translated the film particularly well, or if, as so often happens, my instincts were right and those of the general audience were wrong. On that level, I found a combination of the second two. On the one hand, all the things that I didn’t like about the script I still didn’t like in the film. That mostly centered around a distaste for the film’s overly self-conscious tone, both in its structure and in its dialogue, and around some strong objections to the characterization of the film’s teenage protagonists and, by extension, to the film’s treatment of adolescence. On the other hand, much of (though certainly not all of) the problem with the script’s tone diminishes as the story progresses and becomes necessarily more melancholy; however problematic the film’s treatment of adolescence is, meanwhile, there is by the end a genuine emotional connection to the characters.
So, overall, I liked the movie, despite some glaring (to me) issues. As it turns out, though, the question of whether I ‘liked’ or ‘disliked’ the film, or even of whether the film is ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ is not really the most important thing to ascertain. This is a movie about a high school senior (Greg) who, at the behest of his mother, befriends a classmate who has cancer (Rachel). Greg, for reasons unexplored, but probably having something to do with his weirdo dad and said dad’s taste for cuddlefish and other exotic dishes, has a strong self-loathing streak and a fear of friendship, in addition to a decided lack of interest in coming to any decisions about his future. The film progresses; Greg and Rachel develop a strong (and avowedly platonic) bond; Rachel, in the end, dies, and Greg is left having learned something about himself, and about life, and about loss. There’s more to it, of course, plot-wise, but, though charming, the particulars aren’t all that important: you’ll notice I’ve summarized the entire film without mentioning Earl, the only character whose name actually appears in the title and Greg’s closest associate / confidante / sometime friend. That’s because Earl, though the film’s strongest narrative innovation, is still, for all intents and purposes, window dressing. (That’s not necessarily a criticism of the character, it should be noted. Mercutio is window dressing to Romeo and Juliet too, in these terms, but that doesn’t prevent him from being the best thing about the play the three of them occupy.) Distilled to its essence, this is a movie about a kid who watches his friend dies of cancer, and who, seeing that, is forced to grow up.
Putting it that way should obviate the most important question arising from the film, which is this: what are the moral implications of a story wherein one person’s tragedy is viewed in terms of how it furthers the development of someone else? (Me and Earl is particularly problematic in these terms because it’s a girl dying and a boy self-actualizing, but the fundamental question would be the same in any iteration.) Or, put another, more brutal, way: it’s great that Greg learns something from watching his friend waste away and die, but isn’t her story far more important and interesting than his – and self-evidently so?
I don’t say that to suggest that death isn’t a fit subject for film, or for art in general. As probably the single greatest and most awesome mystery presented to us as living beings, the contemplation of death may be the most essential function of art. To suggest that it’s inherently exploitative to examine how confronting death impacts those left behind would be to essentially forbid the exploration one of the few truly universal and visceral human traumas. So, what is it about Me and Early and the Dying Girl that made it seem more problematic than, say, The Descendants, or any of the other innumerable films that center around people confronting the death or potential death of a friend, family member, or loved one?
The difference, I think, is in how Me and Earl and the Dying Girl so clearly sets itself out as being most centrally concerned with Greg’s personal development, rather than with the broader thematic question of how we deal with death and grief. Rachel’s death is reduced to a tool, not respected in itself; we even get to hear her reaching out from beyond the grave (via a letter) to try to save Greg’s spot at Pitt that he’s lost by neglecting his schoolwork during her illness. In The Descendants, the trauma of his wife’s accident causes George Clooney’s Matt to question and examine his life; both leading up to and after her death, he is picking up the pieces and struggling with fundamental questions of how he has behaved, and how he should behave. Confronting her death and her sins, he must take stock of his own as well – the movie is as much about his impact on her and his understanding of that as it is about any change within him outside of that understanding. For all intents and purposes, we never see his wife, but she has more agency without a single line than Rachel, more or less a sacrificial lamb to the development of Greg’s personhood, does by the end of their respective films. She dies, after writing a nice letter about Greg, and he gets to learn something and gain some perspective on life. It’s not quite a triumphant ending, exactly, but it is a tidy one, as the movie takes us quite linearly through a story that ends up being entirely about Greg’s apotheosis of agency.
To his credit, director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon seems keenly aware of how troublesome using Rachel’s death in this way is, and the film takes pains to establish her as a person in her own right. There’s one remarkable scene, shot apparently in one take with Rachel’s face large on the screen, Greg laid out behind her, where Greg just can’t quite accept that she won’t continue treatment; shortly thereafter, an argument with Earl culminates, for all intents and purposes, with Earl telling him to focus less on himself and more on what’s going on with Rachel. Thematically, meanwhile, the film works to make a statement about a person’s life after death, not in a spiritual way but in the sense that our understanding of a person is necessarily limited and imperfect, and that we can continue to know them, and to know them better, even after they have left our lives. It’s not done poorly, either: there’s a scene in Rachel’s room after her death where Greg, having picked up something he lent her, discovers a whole aspect of her life that he’d had no idea about. It’s a well-earned and emotional moment, and it’s where the script comes closest to giving Rachel a life of her own.
Indeed, in terms of films that turn death into a lesson, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl may be about as good as any of them, and handle that lesson with as much grace and respect as it’s possible to. Perhaps, if this film had ended with that scene of Greg in Rachel’s room, discovering that his relationship with her was only a small part of who she was, the takeaway would have been richer, and that grace the dominant sentiment stirred walking out of the theater. Instead, we’re treated to a ghastly voiceover of Rachel’s letter to Pitt explaining how great Greg is and a scene of Greg – now newly seasoned and self-aware – sending off a letter to Pitt himself, asking to be re-admitted. Rachel’s death has taught him a lesson about life – all well and good. The problem is that death is a trauma, not a lesson. We can discover ourselves, and things about ourselves, through our grief and our pain and through seeing what happens to others, to be sure. But in specifically portraying what is learned as the most privileged and important part of its drama – in making Rachel’s death, and thereby her life, important for how Greg learns from it – Me and Earl and the Dying Girl loses sight of what should be its most important lesson: that all our grief and all our pain and the lessons we learn from someone else’s death are of secondary importance to the fact of their death, and of their life.
With @rugglor on the streets of Novara, February 2015. #35mm #filmisnotdead #portra #kodak #nikon #europe #novara #kodak_photo #analog #italy #forzaazzurri #street #friendsandfamily #wouldyoulookatthatjacket
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