So, I finished reading the book yesterday that I bought
after watching the movie to fathom the beautiful rendition of film captured on
paper. The movie and the book, both, are delightful with its pros and limitations.
The movie makes the audience surge with emotions at sporadic
instances while in case of the book, I only felt emotions spike in the last
chapter.
However, more importantly, I choose to write about this
today is because I want everybody to watch this film. Why? Probably to come to
terms with and accept the universal truth of death at any point in time - treat
death as an inevitable process, a side effect of living, while making the
living count. Not necessarily to leave a legacy that world would remember you
by but 'to leave behind a garden patch, a healthy child, or redeemed social
condition. To know that one life breathed easier because you lived...'. I can
only quote Ralph Waldo Emerson who illustrated the trivial legacy of being someone
to somebody or something as an insightful metaphor.
The comprehension of this universal truth, death, is only
the side effect of this film that has climbed it's way atop my list of 'Most
beautiful love stories ever told'. I am amazed how two teenagers have dunked
into their characters and given us a film of deep and holistic love. I remember
responding to a friend's comment on Facebook about TFIOS, which I choose not to
dilute now for better choice of words, "it is
not dystopia that the soul feeds on but the realization that even within the
smallest dystopic infinity of moments, an infinite world of utopian love is
promised, even if so in fantasy, that probably a healthy man or woman will
never experience in the greatest infinity of life bestowed upon him or her."
The greatest attribute of the
film is it lends skin to the characters and all of them play their roles rather
effortlessly. Films, marked by the characteristic nature of holding audience
attention, it does absolute justice to the two hours but limits the joy of
leisure and pace.
That's why one should buy the
book: to bask in the glory of exquisite literature, (excerpts: We watched the
confetti fall from the sky, skip across the ground in the breeze, and tumble
into the canal OR "Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of
Children." OR I fell in love the way you fall asleep; slowly and then all
at once), over time at your own pace. The books helps us see Hazel's grief of not
being able to grow old, on one hand, while her gratitude to have lived twice as
many years than Van Houten's daughter, on the other. It also brings neutrality
to the soured experience with Van Houten. If you cannot find humor in disease
and death, you definitely will do so in the Venn diagram. In the last chapter,
you will encounter how a boy loves a girl.
But with only the book, we
wouldn't have the faces and therefore I believe the book and the movie
should emerge into two people and marry one another. They are perfect
complements.
