My eyes were puffy swollen from crying, my heart felt like it was being crushed and I was nearly drowned in my own pool of tears. Oh, gosh I almost died. The fault of The Fault in our stars!
Did I just blame the movie? Well, I don't really mean to. I watched it on Father's day so I was extra emotional that day. I mean it's Father's day and it's a special day for my Dad, who died of lung cancer in 2001. Probably, one of the reasons why I love the book and the movie is because of my Dad. I lost him to cancer so I can relate to it. And the reason I think, why a lot of people love it is because it plays the common denominator of everybody that been through this phase of life. It' s not just another cancer love story after all, it's actually about losing someone we love and what's life after losing them. If the movie makes us cry, then maybe we have dearly loved someone and lose them. And watching the movie brought us back to the days we were shattered. Gus and Hazel wanted to get more numbers that they can likely get so they can make more beautiful and infinite moments with each other and with the people they love. The same way I wish my Dad had more numbers than he got so we could do the same. We are all like Gus and Hazel in a way. We all have our own battles to fight. No matter how different we may be from one another we have one thing in common. We are afraid of losing what we have.
And what can be more horrifying and worst than losing someone we love? It's not easy to let go of someone we want to keep for life. It was like hell. If only there's something we could do to make them stay longer but sadly there's none. A sad thing in life. We can only try and hang on but no matter what we do in the end it's still His will. It's something beyond our control.
The movie was right. 'We can go on to an extent trying to live life in control, but really eventually fate is going to step in and we'll see that the fault is not always in ourselves.' I think that's the reason why it's called THE FAULT IN OUR STARS. The movie wants to show us that fate is fate and we can't do anything about it. If life hands us something that we can't control no matter how hard we try, it's not our fault. It's destiny.
Quite long for an introduction huh?
Oh well, going back to the main purpose of this post (which is for me to share my thoughts about the movie along with my favorite scenes and lines) let me first tell you what happened prior to that. The boyfriend is not a book worm nor a sucker for love story movies. I had to convince him or else I will watch the movie alone. Glad he agreed to join me. We planned to watch it as soon as it hits theaters nationwide. Why not? It has been the talk of the town since the book version was published and the film adaptation was announced a couple of years ago. I read the book but I'm not done yet. I stopped reading when I heard the news about the movie coming out soon cause I opted to see the rest of their love story on the big screen and plainly just to avoid expectations and disappointments. Can you just imagine how long I've waited? I 'd been waiting for the movie to come out like forever and I can't hold my excitement any longer. I even followed their facebook page and joined the count down. Oh yes, I was that excited. And finally June came. I was like so giddy. Unfortunately we didn't have time (conflicting schedules sucks) so I kinda prolonged my agony for a few days more. It's a good thing though cause I still got some time to emotionally prepare myself for a potential heartache. For I know too well, that the movie was set out to massacre my poor heart or even worse. So then, just to make the story short, we finally got to see the movie last Sunday. We watched it in the afternoon and almost missed~thank goodness we got there just in the nick of time. It's as if the stars conspired so I can finally watch it. Oh yeah!
The Fault in our Stars is a romantic comedy-drama film based on the novel of the same name by John Green. The title is inspired from an act of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, in which Cassius says to Brutus:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
Not that the book nor the movie tried to oppose it but I guess both phrases works the other way around.
“But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong.-John Green
Both Green and Shakespeare are right to an extent. Like what I've said above, if life hands us something that we can't control then it's not our fault. It's in the stars. It's fate. It's destiny. On the other hand, if we are given something that can be changed for the better and we chose not to, then the fault is in ourselves. Get it?
Okay then, let's go back with the story. It is an epic love story of two terminally ill teenagers, Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) and Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort ). They met, eventually got closer, fell in love and fought for their dear lives to somehow make their little infinity bigger. Sadly, that's all they've got. Depressing. But can I just say that their kind of love is forever. It may be short but it's infinite. Did I just drop hints about the ending? (sorry) At least I didn't tell yet who the grenade was.
I love movies with happy endings. My favorites are those that have tragic love story though. Like, Titanic, A Walk to Remember, If Only, PS. I Love You and One Day to name a few. I don't know but I am so drawn to love stories with sad ending, those kind that will crush my heart. Maybe because the best romances don’t end happily, and the greatest love stories are tragedies above all. I find sad love stories more effective as they give me pain and the pleasure of that pain makes me want to watch them all over again.
I'm a sucker for tragic love stories so I thought after watching tons of tragic romantic tales, I already steeled myself from the tidal wave of emotions The Fault in our Stars will give me but no, I was wrong. I was literally bawling my eyes out and laughing (like crazy) all through out the movie. I was too overwrought. It's just that, the movie was so funny, heartbreaking and tear-jerking~I couldn't help it. My tears keep falling down, as steady as the rain. I was sobbing and all those tear-soaked tissues, my tear-stained cheeks and my swollen eyes can attest to that. Hazel and Gus' love story was too heartrending, I can feel them. Call me hyper-empathetic but Gus was right,That's the thing about Pain, it demands to be felt. Oh, how I love that line.
Well then, let me give you further details (rather spoilers) and show you some of the scenes and the lines (almost all) I love most in the movie. As much as I want to keep the details under wraps until everybody got to watch it, I just can't. Lols! I just feel the need to share it (it's my blog anyway). It's going to be a major spoiler so if you haven't seen the movie yet stop reading. But if you don't mind, keep scrolling and get ready to cry with me. Ooops, don't forget to get your tissue boxes ready!
Hazel lying in the grass staring up at the stars, narrating the story. While scenes of her and Gus' little infinities are flashing.
"I believe we have a choice in this world about how to tell sad stories. On the one hand, you can sugarcoat it. When nothing is too messed up that can’t be fixed by a Peter Gabriel song. I like that version as much as the next girl does, it’s just not the truth. This is the truth” -Hazel
The support group. Gus stares at Hazel and smiles, gosh, his smile is to die for~I so love it. He's so handsome. Patrick asks Augustus how he's feeling and he said:
"I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend."-Gus
“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.” -Hazel
After the meeting, Hazel waits for her mom, and Gus comes out to chat with her. They see Isaac and Monica making out and groping each other, then repeating "Always" to one another. Gus explains to Hazel that this is their way of saying they'll always love each other. He asks Hazel her name and tells her she's beautiful. He then puts a cigarette in his mouth, which upsets Hazel because it has ruined her impression of him. Gus explains that he never smokes the cigarettes he puts between his teeth so as to not give the killing item any power.
“It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing.” -Gus
They stay talking until 1:00 AM. Hazel decides it's time to hang up. "Okay," Gus responds. "Okay," Hazel says back. Gus decides that "Okay" can be their "Always".
'Maybe 'okay' will be our 'always'-Gus
Gus tells her that he spoke to the Genies and convinced them to grant him the wish of taking Hazel to Amsterdam. Isn't Gus the sweetest? Oh my.
She calls Gus and expresses her sadness. He comes over and they sit on the swings. He tells her that her keeping her distance from him does not lessen his affection toward her. She compares herself to a grenade and that she will blow up and destroy everything in her wake. But Gus said he wouldn't mind to be hurt by her. Still, not wanting to hurt Gus, Hazel decides they ought to remain friends.
"I'm a grenade. And one day I'm going to blow up, and obliterate everything in my wake. And I don't want to hurt you."-Hazel
“Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.” -Gus
They go to a Dutch restaurant, Oranjee. Gus proudly declares his love to Hazel, which puts a big smile on her face.
"I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.” -Gus
They get up to the floor with a vocal recording of Anne Frank's diary. As the voice talks about capturing beauty, Hazel and Gus share their first kiss. That kind of kiss! Heartfelt.
They go back to Gus's room and make love for the first time. Hazel leaves him with a drawing of the large virgin circle, and the circle of 18-year-old boys with one leg outside that big circle. Breaking free in Amsterdam!
“I fell in love with him the way you fall asleep, slowly and then all at once,” -Hazel
They sit on a bench and Gus tells her that when she was in the ICU, he felt a pain in his hip and got a PET scan. Hazel already knows what he's going to tell her. Gus says the scan "lit up like a Christmas tree", and the cancer returned and spread through his body. Hazel puts her head on his shoulder and cries. Gus tries to lighten the mood by suggesting they make out.
“The world is not a wish-granting factory.” -Gus
Gus calls Hazel in the middle of the night to ask her to come to the gas station to help him. She drives over there to find him sitting in his car, covered in his own mucus and vomit, with an infection in his abdomen from the G-tube. Hazel starts to call for an ambulance, despite Gus's pleas. The ambulance arrives and takes Gus away. This scene makes me cry even harder. Poor Gus!
Hazel takes him to Funky Bones for a picnic. He expresses his desires to have left an impact on the world before he dies and his need to live an extraordinary life. Hazel takes offense to it and tells him that he doesn't need to do all that because she and his parents love him and that it should be enough. He says he's sorry and they drink champagne. This scene, while crying I told the boyfriend how tragic their love story is and he agreed. I feel sorry for them. *sigh*
“You say you’re not special because the world doesn’t know about you, but that’s an insult to me. I know about you.”-Hazel
The Mom and daughter hug is the sweetest. A tender moment between Hazel and her mom. Nothing beats a mother love.
“NO!” “I’m not eating dinner, and I can’t stay healthy, because I’m not healthy. I am dying, Mom. I am going to die and leave you here alone and you won’t have a me to hover around and you won’t be a mother anymore, and I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything about it, okay?!”-Hazel
“Even when you die, I will still be your mom, Hazel. I won’t stop being your mom.”-Mrs. Lancaster
Gus dies eight days later. The Lancasters receive a phone call in the middle of the night to hear the news. Hazel's parents walk into her room, and without a word, she knows what it is and she begins to cry. She recalls a time when undergoing treatment and the nurse asked her to rate her pain on a scale from 1 to 10. Hazel said 9, and the nurse said she was a fighter for calling a 10 a 9. She says that she was saving her 10 for this sort of occasion. Well, Hazel is right.“It was unbearable, the whole thing, every second worst than the last,”. I'm bawling like I'm Hazel, like I feel the pain she's feeling. And yes, I feel her. I am very low on tissues. Come on!
"I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten."-Hazel
That Daddy and daughter heartfelt talk made me miss my Dad even more. *Sob violently*
“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?”- Mr. Lancaster
Gus's voice reading her letter/eulogy, saying that he saw Hazel in the ICU while she slept, and how he thought about them together. He expresses his admiration for her beauty and personality, and adds that people can choose who hurts them. Gus liked his choice, and he hoped Hazel liked hers. He closes it with "Okay, Hazel Grace?"
The film ends with Hazel still looking up at the stars, replying, "Okay."
“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 they don’t remember you, and 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 invented 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, 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."Okay, Hazel Grace?"-Gus
Did I just recapitulate the movie? When I said I'll share my favorite scenes, didn't I say I'll share most everything? Oh gosh, I should really stop remembering the scenes that made me burst into tears now before I suffocate myself into my own puddle of tears once more. Cause quite frankly, I can barely even recap all the scenes without tearing up. Watching most of the scenes in the movie were like a punch to the heart by Manny Pacquiao and to go through them again definitely means torture. Oh well, enough with the scenes and the lines. Let's talk about the lessons learned.
Overall, the movie was over-the-top flamboyant. It's the most poignant of all. It inspires me and taught me multiple moral lessons. It's an eye-opener that helps me appreciate the people I love even more. It makes me realize that nothing in this world is certain, nothing is forever but love. And most of all it gives me a deeper sense of gratitude and appreciation for life and all the little things.
Yes, life can be so mean at times, it can gives us a cookie and takes it away but still we have to be thankful of what it gave us and of what we have. As what Peter Van Houten taught Gus and Hazel, some infinities are bigger than other infinities. Theirs wasn't big at all but they are happy and thankful with their little infinity. Life is transitory it doesn't last forever, but with the time that is given to us, we can find some sort of purpose. Know it and accept it. After all, life is all about acceptance.
Life is pain but it doesn't have to be always a bad thing because some lessons in life are best learned through pain. We are all vulnerable and we all know that pain is inevitable but we must know that suffering is optional. Whether or not we suffer is our choice.
Life doesn't always give us good things, but we can still feel good when we live it in a way we want. So let us choose the life we really want and live it to the fullest. For we only live once, but once is enough if we live it right.
There’s so much more I want to share but I think my post is now too long and can already make a massive tome. Lols. I'm sorry for the word vomit. It's just that the movie excites me that much. It left me with too many emotions (you can probably tell I haven't recovered yet from last week's bawling, weeping, sobbing and all) all at once that I couldn't even put into words. Random thoughts keeps popping up in my head but my fingers can't keep up with them anymore. Perhaps, I need Peter Van Houten's help to make my post quite writerly. You think?
Did my (super long) post broke your heart, stole all your tears and got you dehydrated? Well, you'll get more if you watch it. I hope my post get you psyched to see it. Go watch it, don't you dare miss the greatest love story ever told. Don't be left out. And oh, again keep a box of tissue handy. I mean boxes. Okay? Okay.
Did I just blame the movie? Well, I don't really mean to. I watched it on Father's day so I was extra emotional that day. I mean it's Father's day and it's a special day for my Dad, who died of lung cancer in 2001. Probably, one of the reasons why I love the book and the movie is because of my Dad. I lost him to cancer so I can relate to it. And the reason I think, why a lot of people love it is because it plays the common denominator of everybody that been through this phase of life. It' s not just another cancer love story after all, it's actually about losing someone we love and what's life after losing them. If the movie makes us cry, then maybe we have dearly loved someone and lose them. And watching the movie brought us back to the days we were shattered. Gus and Hazel wanted to get more numbers that they can likely get so they can make more beautiful and infinite moments with each other and with the people they love. The same way I wish my Dad had more numbers than he got so we could do the same. We are all like Gus and Hazel in a way. We all have our own battles to fight. No matter how different we may be from one another we have one thing in common. We are afraid of losing what we have.
And what can be more horrifying and worst than losing someone we love? It's not easy to let go of someone we want to keep for life. It was like hell. If only there's something we could do to make them stay longer but sadly there's none. A sad thing in life. We can only try and hang on but no matter what we do in the end it's still His will. It's something beyond our control.
The movie was right. 'We can go on to an extent trying to live life in control, but really eventually fate is going to step in and we'll see that the fault is not always in ourselves.' I think that's the reason why it's called THE FAULT IN OUR STARS. The movie wants to show us that fate is fate and we can't do anything about it. If life hands us something that we can't control no matter how hard we try, it's not our fault. It's destiny.
Quite long for an introduction huh?
Oh well, going back to the main purpose of this post (which is for me to share my thoughts about the movie along with my favorite scenes and lines) let me first tell you what happened prior to that. The boyfriend is not a book worm nor a sucker for love story movies. I had to convince him or else I will watch the movie alone. Glad he agreed to join me. We planned to watch it as soon as it hits theaters nationwide. Why not? It has been the talk of the town since the book version was published and the film adaptation was announced a couple of years ago. I read the book but I'm not done yet. I stopped reading when I heard the news about the movie coming out soon cause I opted to see the rest of their love story on the big screen and plainly just to avoid expectations and disappointments. Can you just imagine how long I've waited? I 'd been waiting for the movie to come out like forever and I can't hold my excitement any longer. I even followed their facebook page and joined the count down. Oh yes, I was that excited. And finally June came. I was like so giddy. Unfortunately we didn't have time (conflicting schedules sucks) so I kinda prolonged my agony for a few days more. It's a good thing though cause I still got some time to emotionally prepare myself for a potential heartache. For I know too well, that the movie was set out to massacre my poor heart or even worse. So then, just to make the story short, we finally got to see the movie last Sunday. We watched it in the afternoon and almost missed~thank goodness we got there just in the nick of time. It's as if the stars conspired so I can finally watch it. Oh yeah!
The Fault in our Stars is a romantic comedy-drama film based on the novel of the same name by John Green. The title is inspired from an act of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, in which Cassius says to Brutus:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
Not that the book nor the movie tried to oppose it but I guess both phrases works the other way around.
“But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong.-John Green
Both Green and Shakespeare are right to an extent. Like what I've said above, if life hands us something that we can't control then it's not our fault. It's in the stars. It's fate. It's destiny. On the other hand, if we are given something that can be changed for the better and we chose not to, then the fault is in ourselves. Get it?
Okay then, let's go back with the story. It is an epic love story of two terminally ill teenagers, Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) and Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort ). They met, eventually got closer, fell in love and fought for their dear lives to somehow make their little infinity bigger. Sadly, that's all they've got. Depressing. But can I just say that their kind of love is forever. It may be short but it's infinite. Did I just drop hints about the ending? (sorry) At least I didn't tell yet who the grenade was.
I love movies with happy endings. My favorites are those that have tragic love story though. Like, Titanic, A Walk to Remember, If Only, PS. I Love You and One Day to name a few. I don't know but I am so drawn to love stories with sad ending, those kind that will crush my heart. Maybe because the best romances don’t end happily, and the greatest love stories are tragedies above all. I find sad love stories more effective as they give me pain and the pleasure of that pain makes me want to watch them all over again.
I'm a sucker for tragic love stories so I thought after watching tons of tragic romantic tales, I already steeled myself from the tidal wave of emotions The Fault in our Stars will give me but no, I was wrong. I was literally bawling my eyes out and laughing (like crazy) all through out the movie. I was too overwrought. It's just that, the movie was so funny, heartbreaking and tear-jerking~I couldn't help it. My tears keep falling down, as steady as the rain. I was sobbing and all those tear-soaked tissues, my tear-stained cheeks and my swollen eyes can attest to that. Hazel and Gus' love story was too heartrending, I can feel them. Call me hyper-empathetic but Gus was right,That's the thing about Pain, it demands to be felt. Oh, how I love that line.
Well then, let me give you further details (rather spoilers) and show you some of the scenes and the lines (almost all) I love most in the movie. As much as I want to keep the details under wraps until everybody got to watch it, I just can't. Lols! I just feel the need to share it (it's my blog anyway). It's going to be a major spoiler so if you haven't seen the movie yet stop reading. But if you don't mind, keep scrolling and get ready to cry with me. Ooops, don't forget to get your tissue boxes ready!
Hazel lying in the grass staring up at the stars, narrating the story. While scenes of her and Gus' little infinities are flashing.
"I believe we have a choice in this world about how to tell sad stories. On the one hand, you can sugarcoat it. When nothing is too messed up that can’t be fixed by a Peter Gabriel song. I like that version as much as the next girl does, it’s just not the truth. This is the truth” -Hazel
The support group. Gus stares at Hazel and smiles, gosh, his smile is to die for~I so love it. He's so handsome. Patrick asks Augustus how he's feeling and he said:
"I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend."-Gus
“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.” -Hazel
After the meeting, Hazel waits for her mom, and Gus comes out to chat with her. They see Isaac and Monica making out and groping each other, then repeating "Always" to one another. Gus explains to Hazel that this is their way of saying they'll always love each other. He asks Hazel her name and tells her she's beautiful. He then puts a cigarette in his mouth, which upsets Hazel because it has ruined her impression of him. Gus explains that he never smokes the cigarettes he puts between his teeth so as to not give the killing item any power.
“It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing.” -Gus
They stay talking until 1:00 AM. Hazel decides it's time to hang up. "Okay," Gus responds. "Okay," Hazel says back. Gus decides that "Okay" can be their "Always".
'Maybe 'okay' will be our 'always'-Gus
Gus tells her that he spoke to the Genies and convinced them to grant him the wish of taking Hazel to Amsterdam. Isn't Gus the sweetest? Oh my.
She calls Gus and expresses her sadness. He comes over and they sit on the swings. He tells her that her keeping her distance from him does not lessen his affection toward her. She compares herself to a grenade and that she will blow up and destroy everything in her wake. But Gus said he wouldn't mind to be hurt by her. Still, not wanting to hurt Gus, Hazel decides they ought to remain friends.
"I'm a grenade. And one day I'm going to blow up, and obliterate everything in my wake. And I don't want to hurt you."-Hazel
They go to a Dutch restaurant, Oranjee. Gus proudly declares his love to Hazel, which puts a big smile on her face.
"I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.” -Gus
They get up to the floor with a vocal recording of Anne Frank's diary. As the voice talks about capturing beauty, Hazel and Gus share their first kiss. That kind of kiss! Heartfelt.
They go back to Gus's room and make love for the first time. Hazel leaves him with a drawing of the large virgin circle, and the circle of 18-year-old boys with one leg outside that big circle. Breaking free in Amsterdam!
“I fell in love with him the way you fall asleep, slowly and then all at once,” -Hazel
They sit on a bench and Gus tells her that when she was in the ICU, he felt a pain in his hip and got a PET scan. Hazel already knows what he's going to tell her. Gus says the scan "lit up like a Christmas tree", and the cancer returned and spread through his body. Hazel puts her head on his shoulder and cries. Gus tries to lighten the mood by suggesting they make out.
“The world is not a wish-granting factory.” -Gus
Hazel and Gus hang out with Isaac, who is now completely blind and tells them that Monica hasn't spoken to him since the break-up. To cheer him up, Hazel and Gus buy eggs, and they go to Monica's home and pelt her car with eggs.
Gus calls Hazel in the middle of the night to ask her to come to the gas station to help him. She drives over there to find him sitting in his car, covered in his own mucus and vomit, with an infection in his abdomen from the G-tube. Hazel starts to call for an ambulance, despite Gus's pleas. The ambulance arrives and takes Gus away. This scene makes me cry even harder. Poor Gus!
Hazel takes him to Funky Bones for a picnic. He expresses his desires to have left an impact on the world before he dies and his need to live an extraordinary life. Hazel takes offense to it and tells him that he doesn't need to do all that because she and his parents love him and that it should be enough. He says he's sorry and they drink champagne. This scene, while crying I told the boyfriend how tragic their love story is and he agreed. I feel sorry for them. *sigh*
“You say you’re not special because the world doesn’t know about you, but that’s an insult to me. I know about you.”-Hazel
The Mom and daughter hug is the sweetest. A tender moment between Hazel and her mom. Nothing beats a mother love.
“NO!” “I’m not eating dinner, and I can’t stay healthy, because I’m not healthy. I am dying, Mom. I am going to die and leave you here alone and you won’t have a me to hover around and you won’t be a mother anymore, and I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything about it, okay?!”-Hazel
“Even when you die, I will still be your mom, Hazel. I won’t stop being your mom.”-Mrs. Lancaster
Hazel joins Gus and Isaac at the church for what is a "pre-funeral" for Gus, since he wants to attend his own funeral. Isaac starts off a eulogy with a touch of humor, but says that if he ever is given "robot eyes", he would deny them because he doesn't want to see a world without Gus. Hazel goes up and starts to talk about her love story with Gus before saying that there are infinite numbers between 1 and 0, and that there are countless infinities, and that she is thankful for their infinity. They both say "I love you" to each other one last time. Literally sobbing at this part. So that's how it feels like to attend you funeral huh. More tissue please!
"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.”-Isaac
"Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew, Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story because like real love stories~it will die with us at it should. I'd hope that he'd be eulogizing me, because there's no one I'd rather have. 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 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 for Augustus Waters than he got. But Gus, my love, I can not 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 am grateful." -Hazel
Gus dies eight days later. The Lancasters receive a phone call in the middle of the night to hear the news. Hazel's parents walk into her room, and without a word, she knows what it is and she begins to cry. She recalls a time when undergoing treatment and the nurse asked her to rate her pain on a scale from 1 to 10. Hazel said 9, and the nurse said she was a fighter for calling a 10 a 9. She says that she was saving her 10 for this sort of occasion. Well, Hazel is right.“It was unbearable, the whole thing, every second worst than the last,”. I'm bawling like I'm Hazel, like I feel the pain she's feeling. And yes, I feel her. I am very low on tissues. Come on!
"I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten."-Hazel
That Daddy and daughter heartfelt talk made me miss my Dad even more. *Sob violently*
“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?”- Mr. Lancaster
Gus's voice reading her letter/eulogy, saying that he saw Hazel in the ICU while she slept, and how he thought about them together. He expresses his admiration for her beauty and personality, and adds that people can choose who hurts them. Gus liked his choice, and he hoped Hazel liked hers. He closes it with "Okay, Hazel Grace?"
The film ends with Hazel still looking up at the stars, replying, "Okay."
“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 they don’t remember you, and 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 invented 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, 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."Okay, Hazel Grace?"-Gus
Did I just recapitulate the movie? When I said I'll share my favorite scenes, didn't I say I'll share most everything? Oh gosh, I should really stop remembering the scenes that made me burst into tears now before I suffocate myself into my own puddle of tears once more. Cause quite frankly, I can barely even recap all the scenes without tearing up. Watching most of the scenes in the movie were like a punch to the heart by Manny Pacquiao and to go through them again definitely means torture. Oh well, enough with the scenes and the lines. Let's talk about the lessons learned.
Overall, the movie was over-the-top flamboyant. It's the most poignant of all. It inspires me and taught me multiple moral lessons. It's an eye-opener that helps me appreciate the people I love even more. It makes me realize that nothing in this world is certain, nothing is forever but love. And most of all it gives me a deeper sense of gratitude and appreciation for life and all the little things.
Yes, life can be so mean at times, it can gives us a cookie and takes it away but still we have to be thankful of what it gave us and of what we have. As what Peter Van Houten taught Gus and Hazel, some infinities are bigger than other infinities. Theirs wasn't big at all but they are happy and thankful with their little infinity. Life is transitory it doesn't last forever, but with the time that is given to us, we can find some sort of purpose. Know it and accept it. After all, life is all about acceptance.
Life is pain but it doesn't have to be always a bad thing because some lessons in life are best learned through pain. We are all vulnerable and we all know that pain is inevitable but we must know that suffering is optional. Whether or not we suffer is our choice.
Life doesn't always give us good things, but we can still feel good when we live it in a way we want. So let us choose the life we really want and live it to the fullest. For we only live once, but once is enough if we live it right.
There’s so much more I want to share but I think my post is now too long and can already make a massive tome. Lols. I'm sorry for the word vomit. It's just that the movie excites me that much. It left me with too many emotions (you can probably tell I haven't recovered yet from last week's bawling, weeping, sobbing and all) all at once that I couldn't even put into words. Random thoughts keeps popping up in my head but my fingers can't keep up with them anymore. Perhaps, I need Peter Van Houten's help to make my post quite writerly. You think?
Did my (super long) post broke your heart, stole all your tears and got you dehydrated? Well, you'll get more if you watch it. I hope my post get you psyched to see it. Go watch it, don't you dare miss the greatest love story ever told. Don't be left out. And oh, again keep a box of tissue handy. I mean boxes. Okay? Okay.
