Day thirty-five: 50/50 (April, 13)

There's a lot of movies about strong and inspired characters strugling against sickness (Hello, Nicholas Sparks).Cancer is one of them, and usually we leave the movie's theater looking to those characters as heroes, as specials. They are, of course they are, but not for the reasons usually depicted in those stories. 

50/50, in the other hand, is about a guy that sees himself in front of a difficult diagnosis: at only twenty-seven years old, Adam has to confront a cancer with an impossible name to pronounce and treatments with more impossible side effects. He's a regular guy, in an ordinary setting, with a big task ahead of him. One that he will mostly face alone.

Based in the true story of Will Reiser, written under the incentive of Seth Rogen, one of 50% actors, the movie has an honest respect for cancer patients and their strugles. There's nothing heartbreakingly inpiring in Adam but himself, his humanity, his life. And is there anything more important than that? I don't think so. 

One thought came to me while acompanying Adam in his everyday life as a cancer patient, the same that I had when I was in his situation (a non life-theatning one though): somethings must be dealt alone. There's not another way. Despite being surrounded by family, amazing and supporting friends and medical team, dealing with such illness is our business only. And when we accept that no one will be abble to deal with it for us, everything becomes differently. And, surrounded by people, we are truely alone, at least for a moment, until things starts to make sense again, and everything around takes another meaning. We begin, then, to see the people and situations near us under other perspective, with a more careful and loving eyes. And that is actually a gift among all the chaos. 

For me, that was one of the big discoveries in llife, one that we can see in Adam's quiet and amazingly beautiful ordinary story. 

50/50. Directed by Jonathan Levine. With: Joseph Gordon-Levvit, Seth Rogen,
Anna Kendrick, Anjelica Houston. Writer: Will Reiser.  US, 2011, 100 min.,
Dolby Digital/SDDS/DTS, Color (Netflix).

PS: Daredevil, 2015 - season 1, episodes 5 and 6.