Marketing 50/50 as a film from “the guys who brought you Superbad” is highly misleading. While there’s truth to this declaration, 50/50 is not a comedy – at least, not like Superbad. The funny moments are mordant and uncomfortable – as they should be. They don’t so much evoke laughs of elation and happiness, but more laughs-of-last resort that bespeak a guy at the end of his rope, searching for something to keep his mind off of his own mortality and of friends and acquaintances who have no experience with cancer other than to know that they don’t want it.
The exploration of one’s own mortality is a common theme in cinema and mostly often provides a narrative that charts the main character’s trajectory through self-exploration, fulfillment of dreams unfulfilled, and ultimately, closure. However, 50/50 is not The Bucket List.
Instead, this new film by Jonathan Levine (The Wackness) offers a glimpse at the “patient as widget” and the perilous communication between the “afflicted and the sympathetic.” 50/50 doesn’t necessarily vilify the medical industry, but the interactions between doctors and patients are strained. As Andy (Joseph Gordon Levitt) sits in the doctor’s office, his diagnosis is learned while the doctor quickly rattles off medical jargon into a tape recorder. To each subsequent question, the doctor perfunctorily informs Andy that they “have an excellent staff of social workers” to assist him. In this situation, Andy is relegated to a car on a mechanic’s lift. The doctor is merely the finder of the problem and will fix it with the right insurance, but the humanity between the two people is non-existent. One has a job to do. The other has a problem that needs fixing.
This theme continues as Andy attends his first session with Katherine (Anna Kendrick), a social worker whose title of “Doctor” is not quite accurate as she is only working in this particular hospital to gain clinical experience and research patients for the completion of her dissertation. Much like the doctor before her, Katherine is doing a job and Andy just happens to be a part of that job. 50/50 doesn’t really judge this dynamic, but certainly points it out and parlays Andy’s discomfort as a widget into the overarching problem of communication between the afflicted and the sympathetic. While the initial doctor can’t be seen as sympathetic, Katherine is, and maybe it’s because she’s a bit younger and newer to this dynamic, but she’s also not tactful. Her movements are stiff and academic as if she is physically repeating “compassionate gestures” gleaned from a book titled How to Comfort the Dying. When Andy denies any feelings associated with this diagnosis, Katherine prompts him by touching his arm as if it were “an otter slapping” him or often repeats variations of “these are typical feelings” — interspersed nervously with “um” — for someone in your condition. In effect, the touch that is more perfunctory than emotionally comforting and her academic rhetoric do nothing to allay the patient’s fears. Rather, they fulfill what have been deemed the obligations of the therapist.
These particular interactions speak to a larger issue of communication – or rather how we communicate with someone whose situation we cannot empathize. As the people around Andy find out that he has cancer, he is confronted with sympathetic sentiment like “my uncle had what you have” and well-intentioned advice like “you know the secret to beating this thing?” before being followed by a string of suggested homeopathic remedies and morbid decrees of “you’ll be missed.” 50/50 is not a guide of what to say and what not to say, but it does explore what is said, and often, what is said illustrates the disconnect between those who have faced their mortality and those who haven’t.
More poignantly, this film illustrates the impossibility of connecting this chasm. This is not a cynical statement that castigates those who say unintentionally morbid things under the guise of sympathy. On the contrary, it’s a point of fact.
Two years ago, a friend of mine died from cancer after battling the disease for over a year. There was an undulating rollercoaster of hope and despair felt by his wife, his family, his friends, and himself. But, the hardest part was seeing him for the first time. And, not just for me. I am not a boundaryless friend like Kyle (Seth Rogan), so bringing over a six pack and trying to get him – or myself — laid were not options.
At the point you meet someone for the first time since their diagnosis, each party has become a different person with a different role. The simple dynamic of “football-watching buddy” takes a back seat. One person becomes the guy with cancer. The other becomes the guy with the friend who has cancer. Clearly, the first’s condition is more serious, but both need to reintroduce themselves. The “guy with cancer” has had to face his own mortality and choose between being an optimist of defeatist. The “guy without cancer” has to acknowledge his friend’s condition without intentionally skirting it or bringing up death. Should the topic of conversation become last week’s blowout? Or, would that be a bad omen? Maybe the underdog’s fourth-quarter comeback appropriately analogize a fight against cancer without directly saying “You can beat this thing,” but maybe it affirms that underdogs are underdogs for a reason.
Is it appropriate to just come out and say “I’m sorry, man.” Genuinely, you are, but doesn’t this also prophecy an inability to recover? And, what does the afflicted friend say to this? “It’s okay. I’m going to fight it”? There’s some honesty here in that he or she is going to battle against the disease, this hardly conveys the gravity of the emotional and physical turmoil that they have gone, will go, and are going through. Should it? Perhaps conveying this information will chase a friend away. Perhaps it will conjure emotions recently kept in check like depression or anger.
The first time my friend and I saw each other since his diagnosis, we hugged. Throughout the evening, we eventually touched on football, our careers, our independent plans, our weeks, and his cancer. I don’t remember the order.
In the end, 50/50 reminds us – the afflicted and the sympathetic – that there is no manual for this situation. Until we experience adversity, we can’t be empathetic. We can only be present.
