While I was in college, my good friend was suddenly diagnosed with cancer. One day we were talking about being roommates, a couple days later he was telling me that he had to transfer to a school closer to home for treatment. It just really blew me away, only 18 years old and fighting for his life. Thankfully they caught it at an early stage and he's fine now, but it could have just as easily gone the other way. So when watching 50/50, a movie about a young man who finds out he has cancer, I tried to think back on my own experiences with my friend and it struck a chord with me. No, it wasn't me who had cancer nor was it me that had to take care of him, but I do remember the times we were able to hang out, how useless I felt in trying to help.
No one likes to talk about it, but being around sick people is exhausting, guilt ridden and depressing work. My grandmother suffered a stroke a couple months ago and is now in a nursing home. I try to visit as often as I can, but it just depresses me to no end to see her laying there. In many ways, illness can affect the people around the patient even more so than the patient. What I liked a lot about 50/50 is that the film isn't just about Adam's perspective regarding his cancer, but also how the cancer affects the people in Adam's life.
Adam's girlfriend Rachel, who was already losing interest before the big news, is stuck in an impossible situation. How do you just pick up and leave your dying boyfriend? So, she puts on her brave face and tells him she will stay and take care of him. But she is his girlfriend not his nurse. She can't even bear to go inside the hospital for his chemotherapy. The sickness proves to be too much for her to handle and she ends up looking like the bad guy. It works for the sake of the film, but I think it is too convenient make her the villain, even though she is wrong. Cancer is messy and painful; there are rarely ever clean decisive answers.
The other major relationship of the film revolves around Adam's best friend Kyle, who tries to cheer Adam up by making everything a big joke and trying to put a positive spin on it. He comes up with the idea of using Adam's cancer as a way to hook up with girls. It works for Kyle, but not so much for Adam. Even if it seems like Kyle is just a selfish jerk, you realize he is doing the best he can to cope with losing his best friend. On the day of the big surgery, it is Kyle who drives him there. 50/50 was written by Will Reiser, who was diagnosed with the same rare spinal cancer that Adam has and Seth Rogen, who plays Kyle, is a close friend of his. Much of what Reiser writes about were actual conversations and experiences he shared with Rogen. Their therapy seemed to have revolved around their sense of humor. Through much of the film, Adam is quiet and somber, while Kyle is crude and obnoxious, and extremely funny, in a way that only Rogen seems to be able to pull off.
There is also Adam's mother, who is overly worried overbearing, but you can hardly blame her. Her husband is afflicted with Alzheimer's, now her son has cancer. She has every right to be just as devastated as Adam himself.
Another interesting dynamic is between Adam and his therapist, a young and eager shrink played by Anna Kendrick (by far the best actor to come out of Twilight). She is trained to help Adam cope with his cancer, but everything she knows about therapy comes from books and has little experience in dealing with people in Adam's state.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam pretty close to the chest. He displays little emotion throughout, instead opting to deal with his cancer quietly, almost in denial. He tells his shrink that he feels perfectly normal. What good is it to tell her that he is probably going to die anyways? He tries to keep in good spirits but you can see the fatigue in his face, the wear on his mind. He doesn't really open up about how he feels but it is written on his face.
They say the best medicine is laughter and it is clear that Reiser felt this way in writing 50/50. Yes, cancer is a mean and nasty sickness, but it doesn't mean it has to live your life with the same seriousness as the disease. The film is very funny throughout, but it's not all laughs though. It also takes great care to be serious when it needs to be and is surprisingly heartfelt and emotional.
Grade: A-
No comments:
Post a Comment