“Let’s imagine you’re racing a tortoise” he says, “The tortoise has a ten yard head start.
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Van Houten further elaborates with a seemingly non-sequitur parable. It doesn’t really matter what ‘nonsense’ Hazel is saying – but what she’s feeling. For Hazel isn’t really interested in what happens to the characters in Van Houten’s book, her query a projection of her own uncertainty about how those around her (her mom, her dad, Gus) will deal with and live on past her own impending death.
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It also then shouldn’t be surprising that Dafoe as Author-cum-God in drunken half-formed theological musings basically spells out the whole point of the picture in ten minutes of screen-time.Īfter Hazel wistfully inquires what happens to all the characters at the end of his novel (the aptly-titled An Imperial Affliction), Van Houten (Dafoe) puts on some blaring form of Swedish pop-rock music, opining obtusely “The important thing is not what nonsense the voices are saying, but what they’re feeling.” He’s attempting to draw a parallel between Hazel’s question and the music itself – the surface value of both (the lyrics and Hazel’s inquiry) unimportant. Sure casting the author as a proverbial ‘God’ figure (an absentee and belligerent one at that) is perhaps a tad on the nose but it does the job in getting the message across. Will the newspapers/internet/TV cover it? How many people will be at the funeral? For how long will loved-ones grieve? There’s really no way to know because Hazel/you/I simply won’t be there. Because it is without a doubt that Hazel, you and I will at some point die but it is very much uncertain how anybody will react to the news. That her obsession later leads to a meeting with the author of said book (the casting of Willem Dafoe as the writer should tell you all you need to know), wherein he – the author – proves to not only be a drunken ass but also oblivious to Hazel’s query, highlights the bleak uncertainty Hazel (and by proxy all of us) so steadfastly seeks to know but never will. It’s not surprising then that much of the narrative thrust of the picture (besides the couple’s evolving courtship) relies on Hazel’s obsession with discovering what happens after the end of her favorite novel – also not-so-coincidentally about a young girl dying from cancer. Choice has nothing to do with it – Gus and Hazel didn’t choose to have terminal cancer, didn’t choose to live a life one step from the grave leading to an unavoidable hospital bedside demise. Take the title, a partial quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Cassius confiding: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.” FOS demonstrably refutes the notion – for Hazel ( Shailene Woodley) & Gus ( Ansel Elgort) the fault 100% lies in those goddamn stars.