The Fault In Our Stars

The Fault In Our Stars

A teenage girl called Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) is always seen carrying around an oxygen tank with a cannula in her nose which helps her to breathe.  This is because Grace unfortunately suffers from stage 4 thyroid cancer.  She attends a cancer support group at her local church which is run by a man named Patrick (Mike Birbiglia) who is suffering with testicular cancer and is recently divorced.  One day at the support group, Hazel meets a boy called Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort) who is in remission from osteosarcoma after he had to have his leg amputated.  Augustus best friend Isaac (Nat Wolff) also attends the support group as he has a tumour in his eye and now has to wear a glass eye.  Once the meeting is finished, Hazel is waiting outside for her mum and Gus stands with her and talks to her.  Gus tells Hazel she is beautiful and then puts a cigarette in his mouth which Hazel gets upset about because it changes her impression of him.  Gus explains to Hazel “I never smoke the cigarette, I put it between my teeth so as to not give the killing item any power”.  They then go to watch a movie at Gus’s house.

During the drive to Gus’s house they discuss Hazel’s                              

cancer story.  She was 13 when she was diagnosed

and has went through lots of treatments but nothing

was working.  When they arrive at Gus’s house he

takes her to the basement and gives her a copy of

his favourite book ‘Counterinsurgency’ which in return Hazel recommends he reads her favourite book which is ‘An Imperial Affliction’ which is about a girl with leukaemia.  After a few days Gus finishes‘An Imperial Affliction’ and is surprised by the way the book ends.  Hazel reveals to Gus that she has wrote lots of letters to the author of the book Peter Van Houten asking questions about what happened after the story but she has never had any reply.

A few days later Gus phones Hazel to tell her he has managed to track down Van Houten’s assistant and he has received a response from a message he sent him.  Hazel is shocked and cannot believe that Gus got a reply so she decides to send him an e-mail herself.  A few days later, Hazel is so happy to receive an email back from Van Houten and he invites her to visit him in Amsterdam.  Hazel is upset as she knows there is no way they can afford to go to Amsterdam but when she tells Gus about the email he comes up with the idea to ask the Genies (a Make-A-wish sort of organisation) but Hazel has already used her wish to go to Disneyland.  Gus surprises Hazel by telling her he has spoken to the Genies and managed to convince them to grant him the wish of taking Hazel to Amsterdam which Hazel is so happy about.   

Hazel takes a turn in the middle of the night and ends up in hospital as she needs fluid drained from her lungs.  Once she is feeling better, Hazel has a meeting with her doctor and finds out they say she is physically unfit to travel anywhere in the condition she is in.  Hazel is feeling upset and hating the world right now.  She tries to block Gus out and ignore him but he tells her that her keeping her distance from him does not lessen his affection towards her.  Hazel decides she just wants to be friends with Gus as she does not want to hurt him.

Hazel’s mum and Gus arrange a surprise for Hazel to go to Amsterdam for a few days after all.  When the day comes for them to go to Amsterdam, Gus arrives in a limo to pick them up.  On their first day in Amsterdam they go to a restaurant for dinner where Gus declares how much he loves Hazel.  The waiter gives the couple champagne and then tells them their dinner and drinks was paid for by Mr Van Houten.  The next day they both go to meet Van Houten.  Hazel and Gus have many questions to ask him and they are excited about meeting it but he is not what they expected.  Van Houten is in his pyjamas and drinking scotch, he is not interested in anything Hazel is saying and he isn’t very nice to them.  Hazel and Gus storm out and go to the Anne Frank House instead where they share their first kiss.

On their last day, Hazel and Gus have breakfast with Hazel’s mum before going a walk together.  Gus tells Hazel he has been in pain and has had a PET scan.  He revels his cancer has returned and has spread all through his body.  They then arrive back home where Hazel’s dad is waiting to pick them up.  A few nights later Gus phones Hazel and asks her to come to the gas station as he needed help.  When Hazel arrived she got a shock as Gus was covered in his own vomit caused from an infection in his abdomen.  Hazel phones Gus an ambulance straight away.  Gus has to have more treatment which leaves him needing a wheelchair to get around. 

Gus phones Hazel and asks her to go to a local church and to bring the eulogy that he asked Hazel to write for him.  When she arrives at the church, she is greeted by Gus and Isaac for a ‘pre-funeral’ for Gus since he wants to attend his own funeral.  Eight days later Gus dies.  Hazel receives a phone call in the middle of the night to hear the heart breaking news.  At Gus’s funeral, Hazel is very surprised to see Van Houten there.  After the funeral Van Houten talks to Hazel and she learns that he and Gus had kept in touch prior to his death.  Gus told Van Houten that he could redeem himself by visiting Hazel and answering her questions.  He answers the question that Hazel really wanted to know then hands her a letter which she crumples up and throws away. 

Later Isaac goes to visit Hazel and asks her if she has read the letter from Van Houten and tells her it was actually written by Gus.  Hazel rushes to find the letter to read it.  At the end of the film, we see Hazel reading the letter and Gus’s voice reading the letter which turns out to be a eulogy for Hazel from Gus.