5) 50/50
Nothing quite captures shit getting real like cancer. As healthy as it can be to use humor to mask the fear and sorrow cancer produces, there comes a point when there’s too much sadness and too much scariness to ignore. For as light as 50/50 is most of the time, it recognizes the need to face the reality of every aspect of Adam‘s life—his disease, his friends, his strained relationship with his mother—in one powerful scene.
Much of the movie subtly lays the groundwork for this theme that Adam’s cancer is a burden that he shares with the people around him even though he may not know it, and even though the weight may not be split halfway; at the hospital, just before Adam’s surgery, this is all made crystal clear, and it’s heart-wrenching.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt to this point of the film has played the balance between taking his illness in stride and distracting himself from his potentially grim fate pretty deftly, and this scene, which almost takes the form of a subtle breakdown alleviated by the presence of his mother, turns as quickly as it ought.
Sitting in the hospital bed, everything starts to move too fast for Adam, too fast for him to get out the questions he suddenly has as the anesthetic clocks ticks forward, and his feelings of pure fear are encapsulated in his weakened call: “Mom?” So we, too, are left with no more distractions, or signs that this is anything except for what it is. And that’s terrifying, and painful. It puts the rest of the movie’s humor in perspective, and it makes the conclusion more effective and emotionally satisfying.