DALLAS BUYERS CLUB
A film by Jean-Marc Vallée
**
For many Thanksgiving Time means possibly-overcooked turkey
and forced small talk with your aunt’s sketchy new “friend” Maurice; for me,
the few days respite the holiday provides allows me to engage in something I
love but have barely had the time for since starting at Stern: going to the
movies.
Besides a late-night foray to see GRAVITY 3D (which was more
a theme park ride than a film; and a B minus at that), I’ve seen just about
bupkiss since September—so last night, leftovers in my belly, I headed to the
theater to get me some good ‘ol fashioned culture.
But the box office was…lackluster. I’m trying to go as long as I can in this review without
massive offense to HUNGER GAMES fans.
Suffice it to say there wasn’t many options, and though I sort of
vaguely wanted to see DALLAS BUYERS CLUB in the way I vaguely want to see
most “important” films (read: not
really much at all, because I’m too lazy to feel things), I sort of approached
it as a “this will do” option, a movie for lack of anything less terrible.
I will say that I was pleasantly surprised and entertained
during the next 117 minutes of my life.
DALLAS BUYERS CLUB follows the life and livelihood of real-life Ron
Woodroof—AIDS-afflicted , heterosexual good ‘ol boy in 1980s Texas. Matthew McConaughey portrays Woodroof
as he finds out he has HIV, and then negotiates his transition from cocky rodeo
cowboy to humble freedom-fighter who protests for the human rights of the very
same “fairies” and “fruits” that he had previously scorned.
As far as Hollywood bildungsroman, it’s by-the-numbers
stuff. We get it, Matthew
McConaughey. You’re super-homophobic, but you’re also the good guy, and you’re
going to learn things, and we are
going to tear up when you do. What
saves this film from cookie-cutter tropism is the rigorous physical
performances that allow McConaughey to be as physically repulsive as he’s ever
appeared on camera, and puts Jared Leto in drag as a transgendered adult with a
heart of gold (yawn). Not entirely
novel stuff, but at least novelistic—the detail and depth of these
characterizations lets you latch on for the ride.
Maybe I’ve been in Stern mode a bit too long, but the one
strand of the movie I found absolutely fascinating was the portrait it painted
of business opportunities in the early wake of the AIDS crisis. Hear me out.
As society faced this completely bizarre, redoubtable,
horrific disease for the first time, there was a stutter-step in our response
to curing it. Early trials of AZT
testing—the greatest hope the FDA saw for treating it—were slow and
cumbersome. The “gay” connotations
associated with HIV, coupled with the bigotry and myopic of the 1980s, was a
major hindrance to recognition of the severity of the plague and the suffering
of those afflicted. Unable to wait
for the fat-headed bureaucrats of the FDA to get their act together to approve
and produce affordable treatment, many who tested HIV+ had to turn to a
different kind of cowboy to address their health concerns—drug-runners who
scoured the planet for unapproved (but not illegal!) medicines that could
indeed slow the disease’s progress and mute the symptoms that AZT didn’t
address at all.
This is a real thing.
These “buyers clubs” did pop up worldwide (customers would, for
sometimes quite-lofty membership fees, be given all the supplements they needed
to address their health concerns—but, of course, survival was never
guaranteed). The movie only
tangentially considers the intriguing business opportunity component of these
novel business models, which of course some see as predatory, and some see as
salvation. Regardless of your take,
it’s clear enough that Woodroof created value for people who needed help, and
did so profitably—he’s able to travel the world and improve his lot by helping
to improve the lot of others.
While certainly Woodroof’s methods were unconventional and lacked the
scientific rigor that the FDA applies to its approved drugs, the hundreds of
people he helped would never accuse him of being some sort of charlatan. For them, it was money well spent.
In the process (and ultimately what DALLAS BUYERS CLUB is
really about) we are given a window into the very-real disconnect between the
molasses-crawl of healthcare reform and the outstripping pace of medical
crisis. We see a businessman, an
unlikely one at that, rise in this gap and provide a revolutionary service to
customers in need. In a way, it’s
nothing more or less than the great American corporate fairy tale.
I offer these insights not to be flippant but rather the
opposite of that. In its best
moments, DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, like the unforgettable recent doc HOW TO SURVIVE A
PLAGUE, offers the true-life, unromanticized realities of the early HIV crisis,
rather than the AIDS-quilt wrapped feelgooderies
of Hollywood past. Only a film as
straight forward and simple as DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, which fetishizes little in
its sturdy narrative path, could achieve so much.
I will say, however, that Jennifer Garner was awful.
