WASHINGTON — “Jurassic World” may devour it at the box office this weekend, but don’t you dare miss this year’s Sundance champ, which offers a different take on the notion that “life finds a way.”
“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” finally gets its D.C. release on Friday, months after winning both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. If recent winners are any indication — “Beasts of the Southern Wild” (2012), “Fruitvale Station” (2013) and “Whiplash” (2014) — expect to hear plenty of buzz about this indie masterpiece come award season.
Directed by Emmy-nominee Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (“American Horror Story”) and adapted by Jesse Andrews from his own novel, the film follows awkward Pittsburgh high schooler Greg (Thomas Mann), who spends his free time spoofing classic films with his best bud Earl (R.J. Cyler). Everything changes when he meets Rachel (Olivia Cooke), who has just been diagnosed with leukemia.
Mann and Cooke joined WTOP to discuss their Sundance sensation, which will make you laugh your butt off and cry your eyes out — then cheer at what you’ve just witnessed.
“We never expected anything like the reception that it got at Sundance. I was just excited to go to Sundance,” Mann tells WTOP. “It definitely feels like a turning point in some sort of way.”
Mann says the role leapt off the page the minute he read it.
“I was doing a bunch of movies that were not really satisfying me and I felt like I was stuck in this rut of playing the reserved, innocent teenager that hasn’t really found himself yet. In a way, this was the end-all, be-all of those characters. Yes, he is sort of sensitive and insecure, but he’s also confident and so smart. He’s someone who has all the answers, but he’s too stubborn and selfish to make use of them, and he was just so much more complicated than a lot of other characters that I read.”
As for Cooke, it provides her best performance to date, upping the ante after the critically-panned horror flick “Ouija” (2014) and the critically-acclaimed TV series “Bates Motel” (2013), where she plays the best friend of young Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore). In the latter, her character battles cystic fibrosis, but Cooke says she approached that role in a “completely different” way.
“I didn’t even approach the character as this sick patient, because as soon as you do that, then she becomes a bit dim,” Cooke says. “With my character on ‘Bates Motel,’ sometimes I forget that I’ve got cystic fibrosis because she’s so strong. The same thing with Rachel. She’s the stronger one out of Greg and Rachel’s relationship, and she’s the one that wants to help him realize his full potential.”
Together, the two are emotional dynamite, fluctuating from hilarious to heartbreaking.
You’ll laugh out loud as they demonstrate their trick for dealing with obnoxious classmates — start convulsing so they stop talking to you.
“Mine’s more like a seizure and yours is more like a worm movement,” Mann says, laughing.
“A worm convulsing,” Cooke adds. “You just feel it. It’s like a dancer. You know when the music hits you and you’re like, ‘I’m just gonna let the body do what it’s gonna do?’ That’s what it was like.”
Suddenly, the comedy shifts to drama at the drop of a hat — a cancer cap revealing a chemo-ravaged scalp — as the duo yanks our heartstrings with the weight of mortality. Forget “Love Story” (1970). These “Juno”-style smartasses would gag at the phrase “love means never having to say you’re sorry.” For them, love means never having to cut away from a static, five-minute single take.
“I’m really in awe with that scene. The most proud of I’ve ever been of a performance,” Cooke says.
“It plays out as so authentic,” Mann says. “It has this beautiful arc to it. It starts off so light and then naturally takes a turn and is really heartbreaking by the end.”
In this way, the scene is a microcosm of the entire film’s arc.
Gomez-Rejon opens with the comedy of flashy pans and tilts, locked off with a precision to rival Wes Anderson. At times, the camera turns sideways as we dolly down the street. Other times, we get a three-beat salvo of cuts for emotional impac. Just as Hitchcock pushed in three times on a victim in “The Birds” (1963), Gomez-Rejon pulls out three times on the chaos of a high school cafeteria.
But it’s not all flash. Notice the symbolic choices, like the deep-focus shot showing extreme distance between Greg and Rachel during their first meeting. The illusion of distance — with the proper lens — speaks volumes. Just ask Mrs. Robinson in that famous hallway shot of “The Graduate” (1967).
Such cinematic language isn’t the only realm where Gomez-Rejon references his favorite flicks. He does this more overtly in the homemade movie spoofs that Greg and Earl shoot with adorable amateur quality, achieving a realism to counter the fantasy of J.J. Abrams’ “Super 8” (2011).
Cinephiles will howl each time these clips come on screen with purposely-lame titles. “A Clockwork Orange” meet “A Sockwork Orange.” “Midnight Cowboy” meet “2:48 Cowboy.” “Apocalypse Now” meet “A Box o’ Lips, Wow.” Cooke tells WTOP her favorite is “Burden of Screams,” spoofing the documentary “Burden of Dreams” (1982) about Werner Herzog’s making of “Fitzcarraldo” (1982).
While a few Hollywood classics make the cut — from “Vertigo” (1958) to “Blue Velvet” (1986) — the majority are obscure foreign flicks of the Criterion Collection variety. This runs the risk of “inside baseball,” no doubt stripping the humor for some viewers, but film buffs will be in heaven.
“It’s a lonely life being a cinephile. I feel like I spend a lot of time at home just watching films,” Mann says. “I wanted to watch all the films that they parodied, because I just thought it would be dishonest to be parodying films that I hadn’t seen. I wanted to like them the way Greg liked them, and talking to Alfonso, his love for film is so infectious.”
Perhaps this passion will inspire casual viewers to check out films they otherwise wouldn’t. Or, perhaps the movie is charming enough to capture audiences in spite of it. Either way, you’ll leave the theater feeling wiser, equipped with the life lesson that you’re never done learning about a person — even after they’re gone — just like you’re never done learning about movies even after the credits.
“It’s been so overwhelming,” Cooke says. “Just everyone involved worked their butts off. They really did. Everyone put so much heart and soul into it, so it feels good that it’s happened for everyone involved. I’ve never been on a set where every single person has just given so much of themselves.”
★ ★ ★ ★
The above rating is based on a 4-star scale. See where this film ranks in Jason’s Fraley Film Guide. Follow WTOP Film Critic Jason Fraley on Twitter @JFrayWTOP. Listen to the full interview below, but a word of caution: the conversation gets pretty graphic:
