Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

The “Me” in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl defines hero Greg as the object of his life, not the assertive willful subject — which would be “I.” A self-absorbed teenager, he survives high school by making himself invisible, casually connecting with each of the various groups at his school but remaining insecure, self-deprecatory, unassertive. 

The film itself is his final act of self-assertion. He tells the story of himself, the dying Rachel and his longtime friend Earl as his attempt to explain his drop in grades, hoping to revive his admission into university. Rachel is Jewish, Earl African-American and Greg whitebread bland — so even there he remains invisible while touching upon more vivid subcultures.  Greg is so wary of friendship and commitment he introduces Earl as “co-worker” not friend.

Greg and Earl have been making modest parodies of classic films (e.g., 2:48 pm Cowboy, Vere’d He Go?, The Turd Man), another way to brush up against established character without revealing yourself. Greg is ironic about everything, as teens tend, because he lacks confidence, has no clear sense of himself, is puzzled by the mysteries of life and fears growing up. His stop-action animation clips are another form of imitating life without living it, another form of arrested development.

At first reluctant to engage with the lukemia-stricken Rachel, Greg slips into a very warm and rewarding relationship with her — to the point of wasting his term at school. He withdraws angrily when she ceases her chemo, because he can’t accept dying. Ostensibly to ease our minds, he twice tells us she won’t die, but that’s a replay of his denial. His history teacher provides the key lesson: Even when someone dies you can keep learning about them. That is, the people we know stay alive in our memories and in our feelings. The teacher knows that in two ways: (i) from his experience after his father’s death; (ii) he’s a history teacher so he knows to learn new lessons from the past.

In contrast, Greg’s father is a sociology professor: someone focused on the social structures of the present. He’s tenured, which means he spends all his time at home, in his robe, grizzled, nibbling weird snacks he has made, obsessed with foreign films. That film link defines both Greg’s connection to his eccentric father and his extreme detachment.

After Rachel’s death Greg makes surprising discoveries about her. She returned his emotional connection, while slightly less reticent. More dramatically, the books he so cursorily noted on his first visit turn out to be sculptures she made, 3-D carvings into the pages with small figures sometimes glued in. They’re the equivalent of his little films in their creativity, miniaturizing real life and compulsive but ironic self-expression. Because Greg found himself caring for Rachel she stays alive in his broadening consciousness. Her death leaves her a richly intense open book, not a sealed fate. So this brilliant, touching romantic comedy is really about the meaning of death — which is the meaning of life and the function of human engagement.

The minor characters support the theme of Rachel’s unfolding enigma. Both her and Greg’s mothers are strong, odd characters that their friends may only come to understand after they have passed. So too the two teachers, the eccentric sociologist who seems to live in suspended animation (aka “tenure”) and the macho high school history teacher with his tattoos, equally curious cuisine and tradition of letting students watch foreign films in his office at lunchtime. A rich diet of foreign foods and foreign films make the two rather different teachers enigmatically connected. Like Rachel — and as Earl and Greg will have — when they finally pass their survivors will have interesting backstories to unfold.