Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon/Starring: Thomas Mann, RJ Cyler, Olivia Cooke, Connie Britton, Nick Offerman, Molly Shannon and John Bernthal

Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, based on a novel by the same name by screenwriter Jesse Andrews, is an uneven effort, unfortunately. Original in some moments, it is less so in others. When it goes right, it's very right and when it doesn't, it doesn't exactly stumble but it doesn't step gracefully either. Its poignance and power arrives late in the third act, while the first half of the film is a mosaic of hit and miss moments.

The story begins as any teen-angsty, independent film might, as Greg (Thomas Mann, in a career-elevating role), the film's unreliable narrator and main subject, tells us in voice-over about his senior year of high school, which was also the worst year of his life. But Greg isn't always a suspect narrator, for his self-assessments can be objective, as when he talks about where he fits in the high school social hierarchy. Belonging to none of the cliques we recognize from personal experience: jocks, drama geeks, etc., Greg informs us he has survived high school by gaining acceptance by all the various factions. But though he maintains some kind of detente with the myriad social groups, he is also is a loner; though partly by design.

Greg's mother (Connie Britton), informs him one day that his classmate, Rachel, has been diagnosed with Leukemia. She suggests (coerces is more like it) he visit her, hoping comfort by a classmate might do her some good. Greg protests, pleading mutual non-acquaintance, but he goes anyway.

The initial meeting is less than auspicious. Greg insensitively and callously tells a puzzled Rachel (Olivia Cooke) that his mother put him up to it, which only makes an already awkward situation unpleasant. But Greg's offbeat sense of humor and shaggy charm nevertheless rates him a visit to her room. Casual conversation leads them eventually to the subject of her illness. The two share a laugh about how best to respond to people who make platitudinous comments about her Leukemia. As the two begin to warm to one another, Greg tells us in voice-over narration that the audience should not expect the story to veer into a passionate romance, as it's "not that kind of story." And as Greg begins to visit Rachel on what seems like a daily basis, she meets his friend Earl (a very funny RJ Cyler). Since Earl has known him since childhood (seen in flashback), he tells Rachel that he is the closest thing Greg has to a friend. Earl tells Rachel that his quasi-friendship with Greg is mainly a collaboration. Greg explains how he and Earl make short movies that are essentially re-imaginings of classic films, which are also ridiculously retitled. One example is Midnight Cowboy, which in Greg and Earl's version is 2:48 Cowboy. The films are self-consciously silly and though they never let anyone view them, they make a special dispensation for Rachel.

In more voice-over, we learn that Earl lives in the more economically-stressed part of town, while Greg's neighborhood is decidedly middle-class.

Unable to sit in the school cafeteria for lunch, with its rigid, social caste system, Greg and Earl occupy their history teacher's office to watch movies. Their teacher; Mr. McCarthy (Jon Bernthal) is the kind of teacher who exists only in movies; heavily tattooed and hip, he is a source of wisdom and forbearance for the young men.

Though Greg tells us in his narration that Rachel will survive, we become more skeptical as the film progresses. Rachel's chemo-induced hair-loss and her protracted stay at home and the hospital provide ample doubt. As Greg's visits become regular, he begins to neglect his school studies, in spite of his acceptance to Penn State.

What does Rachel's condition mean to Greg, whose self and self-loathing seem to occupy his mind the most? Others begin to call him on his behavior, including Rachel, who sees Greg's visits and his application to Penn State as two instances where his actions are forced upon him by others rather than being self-determined. Earl takes him to task for treating Rachel like a burden while Greg's school crush Madison (Katherine C. Hughes), urges him forcefully to make a film for Rachel; a kind of tribute from family, friends and students.

As Earl and Greg interview people for the film, they find the responses are obliviously insensitive and appallingly trite.

After a brief period of not-seeing Rachel, Greg visits her at the hospital on prom-night, in a tux, where he sets up a projector for her to see the film he and Earl have made for her. Everything in the film builds to this moment, as Rachel's condition suddenly becomes dire as Greg's film plays on the hospital room wall. While the hospital staff react desperately to Rachel's physical emergency, she reacts powerfully to Greg's mesmerizing and beautiful film.

Based on the trailer, one might expect Gomez-Rejon's film to be an upbeat, offbeat comedy but the grave second half of the story attains a searing poignancy.

Though we're supposed to notice Greg's character arc, the film fails to show it. In the end, we hear Rachel in voice-over speak of Greg's self-sacrifice and his numerous virtues though I had a hard time accepting her word. He does show genuine compassion for Rachel at times but for the most part, his egoism shows a frightful consistency.

As mentioned earlier, Gomez-Rejon's camera work was quite imaginative. The hallways, Mr. McCarthy's office and the cafeteria are shot (and designed) to appear as very narrow, constricting spaces while a wide-angle lens gives Rachel's room almost exaggerated, expansive proportions.

I particularly enjoyed Olivia Cooke's and RJ Cyler's performances. Cooke didn't play Rachel as an object of pity or of graceful suffering but as someone who sees her terminal illness as an a kind of annoyance. Cyler says little but he is often quite funny and his scene where his confronted by Greg is quite moving. I would have liked to know more about their characters but like everyone else in the film; they were merely planetoids in the universe called Greg.

Why is Greg the main character in this story? Why don't we know more about Rachel, whose inner life makes an appearance late in the film, when Greg wanders among her possessions in her bedroom? In the end, it is she who shows a more selfless side and is everything Greg should be.

I found the endless movie references exhausting and the use of Les Blank's documentary on the making of Fitzcarraldo; The Burden of Dreams, a glaring affectation though Greg's impersonation of Werner Herzog writing an entrance essay to the college board is amusing.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a difficult movie to write about because it can't be dismissed or assigned unconditional, fulsome praise. It is a film to see but is it a must see? It will no doubt elicit a stronger reaction from younger film-goers. Whether it impacts an older audience remains to be seen.

Fury

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: David Ayer/Starring: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Pena and John Bernthal

David Ayer, the helmsman behind the gritty 2012 cop drama End of Watch, brings a grittier film to theaters with the World War II story Fury. If you thought Saving Private Ryan was a bloody, violent affair, you might find Ayer's film more so. I don't know that I've seen a grimier, filthier, more brutal depiction of war. But the visuals aren't the only element that overpowers, the sound was also fairly extraordinary. Every explosion from ordnance and every discharge from a tank barrel rattled my seat. Fury leaves almost no sense unstimulated. Ayer makes certain the audience knows war is frightening, ugly business, and he succeeds exceptionally well in that regard. There is hardly a moment where one feels the characters are far removed from the savagery of battle. Ayer maintains a heightened sense of fear; allowing the audience to feel the soldier's anxieties and dread.

But the movie also borrows too heavily from many other war films. We're left with a technically and visually arresting film whose story succumbs often to cliche.

Titles before the film inform us that American tanks were outgunned and lacked the heavy armor of their German counterparts. The implicit message in this factoid is that American tank crews were very brave but the information also helps create an atmosphere of anxiety.

Brad Pitt plays Sargent Don "Wardaddy" Collier, a battle-hardened tank commander whose tank crew has seen action in every major American/British offensive; North Africa, D-Day and now the push into Germany.

His crew has just fought a ferocious battle where bodies and carnage litter the landscape. In the collection of wreckage, Collier emerges from his possum-playing tank to stab a German officer in the eye, who happens to be wandering among the smoldering, ruined tanks. We gather from Collier's gruesome act that the depictions of battle will be unsparingly grisly.

Collier's tank crew has just lost a gunner and has arrived at a camp to take on a new recruit; a former clerk/typist named Norman (Logan Lerman), whose appalling lack of experience disgusts the entire unit. Collier and his crew are dirty, tired and ragged and have the look of soldiers who have seen too much war. The crew is also gruff, edgy, war-weary and bear a ferocious hatred of anyone in a German uniform.

Collier's crew is made up of Boyd "Bible" Swan (Shia LaBeouf), who mans the main gun and is given to quoting Bible verse; Trini "Gordo" Garcia (Michael Pena), who mans one of the machine guns and Grady "Coon-Ass" Travis (John Bernthal), the gun-loader with a heavy southern accent. The crew has seen a lot together and like Collier, have little patience for Norman's inexperience.

Collier orders Norman to clean the machine gunner's seat inside the tank, which becomes a nauseating experience after the recruit finds the chair drenched in his predecessor's blood and half his face in a stew of bodily matter. Norman exits the tank to vomit-a justifiable response. We know Norman's innocence will eventually be shattered, along with his humane disdain for violence.

Collier's crew and the unit's tank, which bears the word "Fury" on its barrel, are commanded to take part in a search and destroy mission. Joining a convoy, Collier's tank proceeds slowly on a German road until the column passes a copse of trees. Norman sees a German soldier wielding an anti-tank weapon but doesn't shoot. The German fires at the tank ahead of Collier's, incapacitating it and causing the interior to ignite. American soldiers emerge from the burning interior, bodies ablaze and in the case of one soldier, a self-inflicted gunshot to the head precludes a lurid, fiery death. Collier is naturally livid with Norman for not firing his gun and when asked for an explanation, the recruit mentions the very young age of the enemy soldiers; some of them children. We know the encounter will be one lesson among many for the young gunner.

Shortly thereafter, we come to understand just how poorly armored and outgunned the American Sherman tanks were in battle as a much-feared German Tiger tank ambushes the four-tank unit. Repeated firing from the Sherman tanks merely glance off the substantially-armored Tigers and in the harrowing encounter, one turret is blown off its main body while in another American tank, a commander is decapitated by a German tank round. In the final hair-raising encounter, as Collier's Sherman faces the German monster alone, the American tank manages to make its way around to the Tiger's vulnerable rear area before crippling it. As the German tank crew emerges from the disabled tank, Collier and his men gun down the survivors.

In yet another battle, after the American army destroys another ambush, a German captive is paraded through the American soldiers. Collier sees the situation as an opportunity for Norman to execute the the soldier, thereby testing the new recruit's resolve and mettle.
It seems no war film of the past 30 years can resist the almost obligatory enemy soldier execution scene. We see it in Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan and now Fury. It's a tired go-to plot device and a cliche the film doesn't need.

The battle scenes are dazzling. Tracer fire zips back and forth between armies like a futuristic laser battle, tank shells ping off armor, tank treads roll mercilessly over dead bodies and mud seems to coat every soldier and mechanized surface, which ably serves the film's dirt and grim aesthetic.

After a significant incident involving two German women in a captured town, Collier and his men are ordered to guard strategic crossroads. When they arrive, a tank tread strikes a landmine, rendering the tank inert and leaving the tank without means to maneuver. To make matters worse, Norman spots an approaching German convoy--300 men strong. Rather than flee, Collier chooses to stand his ground. The puzzled crew joins him reluctantly, thus setting the stage for a climactic battle.

I liked so much about Fury but it is a film that often goes wrong. The execution scene aside, some dialogue rings unnatural and false and Ayers' script has Collier indulging in some war-movie philosophizing that strikes a discordant tone. Collier says to Norman: "Ideals are peaceful, history is violent." The statement seems too detached and very out of character for someone severely scarred by war.
I also found the final stand a Saving Private Ryan, against-heavy-odds-we-stand contrivance that seems very out place in a movie that works overtime to give the audience an authentic experience. I can't imagine battle-weary soldiers would fight against such heavy odds when they would be well within their rights to run. I'm not suggesting soldiers wouldn't be brave enough to take a stand, it just seems a character like Collier, who is doggedly-determined to see his crew survive, would be more sensible in such a situation.
And you're telling me 300 German soldiers, some armed with anti-tank weapons, couldn't surround or outflank one tank?

The character of Collier was plausibly established then betrayed by war movie cliches. In spite of said flaws, Brad Pitt's performance is fairly superlative. The rest of the cast are poorly served with stock characters and in the case of actor John Bernthal; he is saddled with a very broad, southern accent for a face that screams Bronx, Brooklyn or Queens. Every-time he opened his mouth, I expected a tough, New Yorky voice but was greeted with Huckleberry Finn instead. His performance, like that of the other cast-members, is hardly bad, but I think set design, sound design, visual effects and production design trumped characterization.

I came away from Fury quite impressed but hardly satisfied. It is a terrific technical film but makes a less-than-terrific artistic statement. It has many exceptional attributes but when it stumbles, it doesn't always recover.