living in
the cracks
by Douglas Messerli
Jesse Andrews (screenplay, based on
his fiction), Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (director) Me and Earl and the Dying Girl / 2015
Alfonso
Gomez-Rejon’s film Me and Earl and the
Dying Girl is charmingly quirky in numerous ways, even while that same
charm also helps, at times, to make it coy, cute, and totally improbable. But
as a teenage fantasy, with youthful angst and alienation at its base, it
nonetheless works.
Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann) is a kind of
inscrutable loser, a kid so uncomfortable in his lanky body with a long,
slightly undefined face (he describes it as a “chipmunk” expression) that he
finds it difficult even to engage with other human beings—describing even his
best friend, Earl (Ronald Cyler II), as a co-worker, and managing to slip
between the cracks of the dozens of warring social groups who gather through
shared identities at his high school, by posing as a mildly sympathetic but
uninvolved passerby. The most remarkable thing about Greg is that he has
managed to develop his close friendship with a Black boy from another
socio-economic world from childhood on, and both he and Earl share an unlikely
interest in classic films. Together the two manage to entertain themselves and
creatively bond by making sophomoric versions of the films they enjoy, such as The Sockwork Orange, Senior Citizen Kane,
and Monorash (Rashomon).
Their somewhat witty, but mostly coarsely
made films reflect Greg’s, and presumably Earl’s, perspectives on the human
race; rather than work within the confines of the world they enjoy, they work
to satirize it and mock. In short, Greg and his cohort survive by living in and
through the “cracks,” the spaces between the surrounding individuals and
through the jokes they make about what they observe and perceive.
Hanging out during lunch at a popular
history teacher’s office (Jon Bernthal), the two boys manage to isolate
themselves from the other students, which has determined how they spend so many
years of their lives. Greg has pretty much succeeded in hiding from all others
until one day his mother and father (Connie Britton and Nick Offerman) enter
the private domain of his bedroom and, through gentle implications and even
prayer, announce that fellow schoolmate, Rachel Kushner (Olivia Cooke) has been
diagnosed with cancer.
Predictably, Greg hardly knows Rachel (the
only real relationship is between his mother and Rachel’s mom), but that does
not prevent his mother from insisting that he visit her. Even had he been close
to Rachel, Greg might clearly have felt awkward to having to attend to the ill
classmate, and even she immediately perceives his attentions to her as
enforced, Rachel dismissing him from her presence. Admitting the situation, he
begs her to let him spend at least part of the day with her just to prevent any
further harangues from his mother; she has little choices.
After a discomforting period of
adjustment, and numerous insensitive guffaws on Greg’s part (for example, to
escape the platitudinous sorrows of her fellow school friends she pretends she
is dying), the two actually discover that they share some of the same teenage
frustrations, and before long they have struck up—apparently for the first time
for Greg—a true, if still clumsy friendship.
The relationship between the two is
deepened, moreover, when Greg introduces her to Earl, a far more honest and
direct-speaking boy, who shares their secret of filmmaking and even lends
Rachel some of their works. Although Greg feels slightly betrayed by the
revelation, he grows even closer to the now seriously ill Rachel when he
discovers that watching them gives her some joy. For her part, she insists Greg
stop feeling sorry for himself and recognize his own self-hatred, and, most
importantly, that he begin planning for the future by applying to college. When
he does, he is immediately accepted at the local Pittsburgh University.
The bond between the two does not go
unnoticed between, and forces Rachel’s friends (which Greg describes as a
subgroup, the Jewish Girls) to attend to him. That, in turn results in others
(the Goths, the violent white rapper, etc) to also take notice, and before long
he can no longer maintain his disappearing act. When one of the most attractive
girls in the school, Madison (Katherine C. Hughes), a close friend of Rachel’s,
discovers the two boys filming, she suggests they make a film for Rachel.
Although Greg makes the attempt, a film that actually might attempt to say
something stymies them both; working with a subject instead of working against
it demonstrates, quite clearly, that neither he nor Earl are as creative as
they have felt themselves to be.
The chemotherapy Rachel suffers and her
loss of hair begin to depress and literally pain Rachel more that she has
imagined, and despite Greg’s visits, she becomes more and more withdrawn,
finally determining to abandon treatments. It is now Greg who tries to reengage
her with life, and for the first time he actually shows himself as having deep
emotions to which he had never before admitted. When she reveals that she even
knows about his attempt to make a movie for her, Earl having mentioned it, Greg
now grows furious, feeling betrayed not only by Rachel’s refusal to keep up her
struggle, but by Earl’s casual revelation of what was to have been a secret.
After a brief physical encounter, the two
boys break up as friends—and coworkers—even though Earl attempts ameliorate by
sending Greg a tape that sympathetically speaks of his own feelings for Rachel.
At school, social group tensions erupt in violence, as Greg is attacked by the
crazed school rapper. Earl comes to Greg’s defense, and saves him from being
beaten, but all those involved are expelled. Indeed, Greg, having spent no time
at all these past few months on schoolwork, discovers that his early entry to
the university has now been rescinded on account his bad grades.
Out of sympathy, Rachel’s friend Madison
invites Gregg to take her to the school prom, intimidating him into acceptance.
The very next scene shows Greg dressed in a tuxedo, a costume he has earlier in
the film insisted he would never wear, on his way to the prom. He orders the
limo driver, however, to take him to an address that turns out to be Rachel’s
hospice, where she lays dying. Placing the corsage upon her arm, he lies down
in bed with her to watch the film for her which he has finally finished.
We never see most of the film, for after
a few moments of watching it, she falls into a coma; but we realize that for
the first time in his life, instead of mocking the creations of others, Greg
has created a kind of abstract expression of his and Rachel’s emotional
relationship. Despite the fact that the ongoing narrative voice has twice told
us that the “girl” of the film does not really die, Rachel does.
At the funeral, held in Rachel’s house, he
slips into her room to discover that she has not only written to the University
to explain to them why Greg has done so poorly in school, but to beg them to
reconsider their decision. Opening the book of university listings he has given
to her, he discovers that she too is a kind of artist, a collagist of sorts,
who, working with scissors has cut out the contents of many of her books to
create scenes representing the various conservations she has had with Greg over
the months. He too, accordingly, has become a subject for art. The wallpaper
representing what he has simply perceived as a series of trees, he now
discovers has discreetly been collaged over with small squirrels (Rachel’s
favorite animal) let loose upon the landscape. She, like Greg, has cut and
pasted images of life together to create her art.
Reuniting with Earl, Greg has discovered
that he can make friends, and that while his fears of friendship may indeed
have resulted in pain, his relationships with others have also rewarded him the
marvel of another individual’s inner life. Greg is finally a regular guy
instead of a walking ghost.
Los Angeles, June 18, 2015
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (June 2015).
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