Her chemistry with Ansel Elgort, who also played Woodley's brother in this year's Divergent, is believably comfortable and intimate. Woodley rightly turns Hazel into a hero of uncommon strength and vulnerability and power and even weakness. Woodley, whom I've never been completely sold on as an actress even though she started to win me over in The Spectacular Now, is simply extraordinary as Hazel Grace. Her conviction shows in every frame of her performance, even when the storyline threatens to strain credibility but somehow never really does. It has been well publicized that Woodley fought for this role as if, yep I'll say it, her life depended on it. I had feared that The Fault in Our Stars would go the way of far too many young adult rom-coms, think pretty much anything with the name Nicholas Sparks attached, but I'm pleased to say that this is no standard issue teen romance and it is certainly not anywhere near a Sparks inspired film. While there is an abundance of credit to go around, the simple truth is that The Fault in Our Stars lives and breathes on the strength of Shailene Woodley's warm, genuine, and convicted performance as Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 17-year-old who has thus far managed to survive stage IV thyroid cancer but has been left for the wear after it spread to the lungs and left her stuck on oxygen 24/7. John Green himself has gone on record praising the film extensively, a response he admits he truly didn't expect after having talked to other authors about the experience of having one's novel adapted for film. The story may sound like any other number of similarly themed films, young adult or not, but rest assured that director Josh Boone (Stuck in Love) gets it right where so many others have gone wrong. I can tell you, without hesitation, that these were characters that I cared about and enjoyed and felt and would enjoy getting to know if they were real people living in my real life. All I can truly share, beyond an honest critical perspective, is my own personal response to the film and how I find myself still thinking about it and feeling it and remembering it over 24 hours after my first, but not last, viewing of the film. I find myself not wanting to build up The Fault in Our Stars too much, because it's not the kind of film that you really build up in that "You've just got to see it" kind of way. Based upon a bestselling young adult novel by Indianapolis author John Green, The Fault in Our Stars is Summer 2014's indie gem, I'm calling it now, because it's a film that both remains wondrously faithful to Green's novel and yet manages to illuminate the novel in even more exciting ways. In The Fault in Our Stars, I saw much of myself in both Hazel (Shailene Woodley) and Augustus (Ansel Elgort), or Gus, two young adults who've grown up to be far beyond their years because sometimes life unapologetically throws enough shit your direction that you pretty much have no choice but to either grow up or give up. They saw me and didn't shout to the mountaintops some unbelievably bullshit platitudes, but at least for a few moments in my life they loved me and they said I was okay.
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For the most part, I have lived a life surrounded by friends and lovers and friendly lovers and not so friendly lovers who didn't look at me and see my curved spine or amputated limbs or the ways in which I so often struggle. There were many not so pleasant memories to go along with those cherished experiences I hold deep within my psyche'. There were others, some friends and some lovers. She would fly back and forth from Cape Cod to my Indiana home because, and I found this unbelievable, I was actually worth it.
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I remember how she spent one entire night doing nothing but kissing my scars, every last one of them, and constantly reminding me that while my scars were part of me they did not define me. She took my virginity when I was a freshman in college and wondering if anyone would ever really care to do so, but the truth is she also took away the fear that I had of a body that had spent the majority of my life betraying me.