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Review: Me And Earl And The Dying Girl

Review: Me And Earl And The Dying Girl

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We have had an onslaught of teen angst and teen cancer films in recent years, stemming from the release of John Green’s The Fault in our Stars, but none since have had the same impact that it had, making the fact that it’s a terrible film all the worse. Finally, however, a shimmer of light in the darkness of teen cancer angst films comes in the form of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.

Based on the debut 2012 novel by Jesse Andrews, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl has received universal praise and admiration, especially from the Sundance Film Festival, where it debuted to a standing ovation and won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience award. The film follows Greg as he manoeuvres his way through his final year of high school. He has spent the last eight years of his adolescence learning the ways of each of the social groups in his school, meaning he goes particularly unnoticed by the masses, never standing out but especially never belonging. The only near-friendship he has, although he would never admit it, instead referring to him as his co-worker is Earl. He and Earl have known each other since childhood and were influenced by old films that Greg’s father showed them, so they decided to make their own films. That is, until his mom makes him visit Rachel, a girl from his school who has recently been diagnosed with Leukaemia. The film tracks the duration of their doomed friendship, as noted by Greg himself, where he learns more about being a friend as Rachel goes through treatment for her condition and becomes a part of something more than just the lonely existence he has made for himself.

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This is not the feel-good romantic story that you may think it is and the film does an excellent job of making sure you know that, which is why it works so well. The story, in essence, is simple because it is literally two people getting to know one another, but there is so much more that can be taken from it. Obviously there are similarities to The Fault In Our Stars but, where that film was very much a Hollywood interpretation, this is a much more realistic view of the effect cancer can have on the patient, their family and those around them. Where The Fault In Our Stars was very visual in the effects the treatment can have, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl took a more subtle view to it – it looks more at the mental effect that it can have. It shows Rachel’s good days and her bad while going through treatment; not in a physical way, but mental. Greg takes note of these through knowing that, some days, she will be her normal self and chatty, whereas on her bad days she is quiet and unresponsive. You do go into this film expecting to leave with make-up streaming down your face and weeping quietly to yourself, but the true treasure about this film is me-earl-cinemynxyou are not expecting to laugh and leave with a sense of friendship and happiness.

The major difference between this film’s narrative and others is its close ties to reality. You can see this being a real person’s life and this is especially obvious through the characters. Each character is easily seen in the real world; Greg is the insecure self-loathing teen, Rachel the quirky girl and Earl is the guy from the wrong side of town that makes good. These characters are so well written that they could have been ripped right out of reality. There is so much going on in this story that it does not centre on the one ‘issue’, which is Rachel’s diagnosis, it manages to incorporate other real issues that people could be having. Take Greg’s character for example; he has spent his adolescence ensuring he never stands out or draws unneeded attention to the point where he cannot even sit in the cafeteria of his high school because, to him, it’s choosing a group to belong to, which he doesn’t want to do. This is one part of his own issues of self-loathing which can be translated into reality very easily. Another aspect is him not being able to choose a college because, in his eyes, it would be as if he would have to start again to ensure his anonymity. Something that pulls this film even further into reality is the honesty; Rachel does not want Greg’s pity yet Greg admits to her that his mom made him come hang out with her, a clear parallel, but yet the two become unlikely friends in this doomed friendship.

Earl4Something that really stuck out in the film was, although Rachel helps Greg to see that he should be living life and applying for colleges, she is not trying to be inspiring. As the film progresses and she becomes sicker through treatment, there is no moment where she becomes this beacon of inspiration for the characters; if anything the opposite happens. We see a sick girl become sicker, weakened by the fact that she is sick and only getting sicker. If anything Greg and Earl are the inspirational pieces of this film, going out of their way to try and make a film for her with the inspiration for it never coming to its fullest. In a way, the film worked more as a biopic for the human and not the disease; that may sound bizarre, but it comes down to looking at the person and not their disease, which each character sort of suffered from. Rachel being the most obvious one as she has cancer, while Greg is lonely and cannot get past his own self-loathing to see the world around him and especially the people around him who care.

A fantastic aspect of this film is the cinematography; there’s no use of big fancy CGI here, just natural and simple story telling tying in the different aspects of film making that Greg and Earl use in their films to add more to Greg’s voice-over narrative. Mentioning the cinematography in films like this can be risky since it is usually overtly simple with nothing special to it, but somehow this film managed to use that to its advantage; it used generic camera pans and jump cuts to show the passing of time but, because it was outlining Rachel’s treatment, it worked. One of the most effective shots in the film came close to the end and it was a panning shot of Rachel’s room. It may have seemed like nothing special, since there had been many shots of her room before, but this was different as it was a real look at where you can see parts of Rachel that you had not before.

A perfect blend of tragedy, drama and comedy with an excellent cast.

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