ABOUT THE MOVIE:
Richard Tanne’s “Chemical Hearts,” an adaptation of Krystal Sutherland’s YA novel Our Chemical Hearts. The genre is so thick in the film you can barely see through them, and yet, at the same time, “Chemical Hearts” believe in expressing. This makes the film a very unpredictable experience, and it is here that the movie really shines.”Chemical Hearts” suffers from a somnolescent tone, and its mood is often dull and slow, at odds with the high school romance. These things are all undeniable, and yet the thin emotions helps make “Chemical Hearts” a deeply felt teenage melodrama.

THE PLOT:
Henry Page has always wanted to be a writer. In narration, he shares his frustration that nothing has ever really happened to him, and therefore he has nothing to write about. Enter the new girl in school, Grace Town . Grace walks with a cane, reads Pablo Neruda for fun, and has a dark past. Henry wants to be a writer, but other than that he has almost no defining characteristics, except for his love of gluing together broken pieces of pottery. (Later in the film, Grace shouts at Henry, “I’m not one of your vases!” Just in case you didn’t get it.) Grace and Henry are chosen as co-editors of the school newspaper, and forced to work together closely.As Grace begins to let Henry into her life, she shows him an abandoned factory with a pool containing koi fish. He falls in love with her. He follows her one day and finds her at the grave of a man who, judging from the tombstone, died as a teenager. The dead man was Grace’s boyfriend was killed in a car accident and that Grace had been in the car when it happened, causing her disability.
On the anniversary of the car accident, Henry goes to her house and learns that she has been living in the room of her deceased boyfriend, with his mother and father. She finds Henry there and they argue as she is clearly still in love with a dead man. Henry cannot handle this information and they break up. As Henry’s and Grace’s senior year comes to an end, they avoid talking to one another at the school. Grace leaves the newspaper after taking some time off school.Their encounter is an emotional one and they hug, but then go their separate ways.
GRACE POINT OF VIEW:
Since “Chemical Hearts” is told from Henry’s point of view, we see Grace through his eyes, and she is a very intresting figure, so stays cold and distant towards him at first it’s not clear why he keeps pursuing her, and why she keeps allowing it. If she’s so uninterested in him, then why exactly do they keep hanging out? A mini-montage is employed, showing the friendship blossoming, with Henry cracking jokes and Grace laughing hysterically. Nothing we have seen in Henry up until this point tells us he’s this funny, and what on earth could he be saying that would make glum Grace laugh so hard? Using a montage like this is a cheat, skipping steps that really need to be dealt with, or at least acknowledged.
There are tragedies in Grace’s past, of course, and her disabling injury is the least of it. She doesn’t share her story all at once, and Henry is often left confused and hurt, feeling she has been withholding information. . She is not there to help Henry learn, grow, change. This is part of “Chemical Hearts”‘ subversion. Any idea we may have that Henry is there to help her love again or trust again or heal is completely kicked to the curb once the true lay of the land is revealed. There’s a very messy movie here, kicking around within all the melancholy. “Chemical Hearts” is really about the chaos and confusion of teenage life, of going through experiences love, sex, heartbreak for the first time and the huge impact these experiences have on the body and the nervous system.
The movie really expresses how a person mourn for their loved ones. Even though Grace met a nice guy like Henry, she couldn’t help herself from grieving for her dead boyfriend. I thought that she should have at least tried to give herself a chance for being happy. But in the end she disappointed herself and Henry too.















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