How Does John Green Use Cinematic Techniques In The Fault In Our Stars

1145 Words3 Pages

The Fault in Our Stars, a movie by John Green, is based on a story of a sixteen year old girl who is diagnosed with thyroid cancer that spread to her lungs and a boy who was also diagnosed with cancer but is now cancer free after getting his legs amputated. The director, John Green uses different cinematic techniques to get the audience to be in the protagonists’ shoes from the beginning to the end of the movie by using cinematic techniques such as lighting, props, and sound. The filmic technique choices in this movie conveys encouragement to teens who are scarred in life, to fight and to go for what they want, which was what Hazel and Augustus did when they started a relationship. To experience life to the fullest, even if the pleasure lasts …show more content…

Around the beginning of the movie, Augustus and Hazel were chatting at the church door after attending the support group and Augustus took out a pack of cigarette and put one in his mouth. The fact that he became cancer free, but yet he chooses to use cigarettes, infuriated Hazel and she tells him how disgusting it is. However, this did not seem to upset Agustus because he had a good explanation to why he was doing that. Augustus explains to Hazel that the cigarettes are a metaphor and that “they don’t actually hurt you unless you bite them [and that he] never lights one”. His ability to keep the cigarettes between his teeth, but never light it shows an act of control. This relates to his sickness where he has a sense of control over his cancer, and it also symbolizes his fear which is his cancer, but he never says it, but rather wants to feel like he is in control. In his explanation to Hazel, he says that “you put the thing that does the killing between your teeth, but you never give it the power to kill you”. His use of cigarettes shows his attempt to gain control over his fears. Around the end of the movie, he loses control over his cancer and gets …show more content…

This filmic technique in this scene shows the audience the character’s negative mood, which was made more obvious from her flashbacks with a blank expression on her face. In her flashbacks, Hazel shows a mixture of different emotions which involves negative memories as well as happiness and positivity. The use of lighting on her face as she lies on the ground looking up at the sky, captures her emotions and facial expressions of both in her flashbacks and in the present as she narrates her story. This scene shows that life is not full only negatives, enjoyable and memorable moments as well. This scene is encouraging because at the start of the movie Hazel apologizes her life is not interesting or all that she desires, but later on, she appreciated all the experiences she went through despite her illness and

Open Document