“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” is a very smart and touching film. It also makes good use of a storytelling device with surprisingly old roots. It can be called the “it’s not a story” story.
The “it’s not a story” story involves one character telling the audience or another character what they are watching is not really a “story” and therefore more true to life. Characters in the “it’s not a story” story typically consume more culture than the average movie character or are more aware of the rules of a movie.
For example, Greg, the narrator/protagonist of “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” loves watching older films and making parodies of them with his “co-worker” Earl. This hobby gives him an awareness of the discrepancy between the way things proceed in movies and the way they occur in real life.
A textbook example of the “it’s not a story” story comes as Greg hangs out with Rachel. Rachel is a classmate with leukemia, and Greg’s mom has forced him to spend time with her. When their eyes meet after having a moment of connection, Greg’s narration tells the audience they would have made out and become a couple in a “touching romantic story.”
“But this isn’t a touching romantic story,” the narration says as the moment passes. The tale Greg tells is more of a story of his “doomed friendship” with Rachel than a love story out of Hollywood.
The “it’s not a story” story device allows Greg to comment on how things normally occur in cultural works and defines his friendship with Rachel on his own terms, not those of movies. It also makes his relationship with her, at least to him, more realistic than those in movies.
This storytelling device is not always successful. The exhortations by the characters of “Kick-Ass 2” that “this is not a comic book, this is real life” only make that film feel more fake.
But at its best, this storytelling device makes the reality of the movies which use it more concrete. This can be seen in the 1954 Joseph L. Mankiewicz film “The Barefoot Contessa,” about a group of people in the Hollywood film industry. The moment when this device is used comes as a character named Myrna has the opportunity to get revenge on an ex-boyfriend, but does not.
Her explanation that she is not as strong as a movie character adds an extra dimension to her. It gives the viewer the feeling this movie could go in any direction.
“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” never feels fake. It feels more stylized than certain films in some of its high school scenes, but this is more of a tribute to the vividness of how people remember this period of life than anything else.
“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” makes brilliant use of the “it’s not a story” story trope and is both funny and heartrending. It also lets Nick Offerman give a typically wonderful performance. What more could a viewer ask?
