50/50 Review: The Gods Must Be Crazy

In the Jonathan Levine picture 50/50, Joseph Gordon Levitt plays a fictionalized version of Writer Will Reiser, who based the script largely on his own experience. Seth Rogen portrays himself, in the role he lived out as Reiser’s real-life best friend years ago. The film is an even-toned look at the consequences of illness in a young male and his surroundings; it’s an exquisitely and reverently told story that remains gripping throughout, offering a sober approach and platitude-free enlightenment to boot.

Adam Lerner is 27 years old. He’s a deeply repressed, terribly uptight nail-biter who follows all the rules. He’s so good at minimizing risk, in fact, that he never learned how to drive (accidents are far too common, he figures). Adam is so naively convinced of the “rightness” of his actions that he’s sure his withholding, narcissistic girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) has his best interests at heart and will eventually come around. Rachael is the type who hopes to make a lucrative career of abstract modern art paintings, who eats seaweed salad for dinner while everybody else at the table is happily chomping on slices of pizza. Her pretension is masked by false concern, and Adam’s friend Kyle (Rogen) sees right through it.

Frat-type neanderthal that he often is, he’s at least consistently present and more overtly humane than Adam’s live-in lover ever was. Kyle is opportunistic with women, a bit too witty to be true, and childish for his age, but he’s there when he’s needed, which is an extra-useful thing when Adam learns he has a rare spinal cancer and a one-in-two chance of survival.

Years of good-boy behavior don’t add up to much in the eyes of fate, as Adam discovers. His initial incredulity at hearing the diagnosis (in cold, clinical terms by a doctor who could use a lesson in bedside manner) is replaced by variations of subsequent stages in the Kübler-Ross model under the watch of adorable and youthful therapist Dr. Katie McCay (Anna Kendrick). Adam is only Katie’s third patient so far, so she’s not jaded enough to maintain the professional stiffness that would keep her from impacting Adam so incisively. Their private conversations are the most electric to watch, partly because they’re packed with a forbidden tenderness and patient anticipation of a time that may never come.

Kendrick is excellent here, showing a measured balance of insight and wunderkind inexperience. Helping Adam along the path of his personal grief, she can’t help but detect his profound need for awakening and genuine support, one which isn’t being addressed by friends and family, who understandably have needs of their own. Adam supposes he’s on his way to the grave, and as his skin grows paler by the minute, we believe him. Kyle milks Adam’s predicament for easy sympathy hookups, Adam’s mom  (Anjelica Huston) is overbearing and driven silly by her Alzheimer’s-stricken husband (Serge Houde), and the brat girlfriend sticks around mostly because she wants to think of herself as philanthropic.

Adam, obsessed with volcanoes for obvious reasons (something about too much pressure in the center, red-hot contents threatening to erupt at any second), slowly accepts whatever fate lies ahead because he’s starting to realize that the absurdity of life can’t be evaded in favor of meritocratic thinking and stubborn optimism. Real-life ends don’t justify means through validating, feel-good moral lessons or earned points, so Adam’s story doesn’t proselytize, sugar-coat, or intentionally uplift. It just happens, like shit does everyday.

I liked Levitt in this movie, especially since he refused to break out his usual irksome charm and gamely exchanged impishly dark and handsome for unobtrusively good-looking to play Adam. He holds back a lot until he lets go toward the end, which helped me further appreciate the pitch-perfect pacing and interior struggles of the supporting cast. Levitt allows his costars to shine, because this film is not about what happens when cancer strikes a strapping young man but about what results when a merciless, terrifying invader interrupts several lives in progress. Rogen stands out as the bedrock of the piece, giving me even more reason to heartily recommend it to anyone in need of an antidote to those lesser tales of love and tragedy.

See it.

Images courtesy of IMDbPro.