«««1/2 Dallas Buyer's Club. Written by Craig Borten & Melisa Wallack. Directed
by Jean-Marc
Vallée. At selected theaters.
 |
| Leto and McConaughey survive in Dallas Buyer's Club |
To paraphrase the guy
mentioned in that Maroon 5 song, we don't always get what we want, but sometimes
we get what we need. In the middle of the debate over Obamacare, America has
gotten a health care drama--- Jean-Marc
Vallée's Dallas Buyer's Club. Safe to say there
have rarely been movies this strong about a guy just trying to fill his
prescriptions.
The
script by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack is based on the true story of Ron Woodroof—an
electrician, part-time rodeo cowboy, recreational drug user and all-around
party animal. In the summer of 1985 he gets the news that he is HIV-positive,
with only a month to live. But instead of taking this as a death-sentence,
Woofroff takes his diagnosis in the spirit of a barroom dare, swearing that no
"faggot" disease is going to end him.
Trouble
is, the only drug shown to have any effectiveness against the virus is AZT, and
that is only available in clinical trials. Forced to seek treatment in Mexico, Woodroof
discovers there's a world full of anti-viral drugs that are not FDA-approved.
Getting illegal drugs over the border has never been a problem for determined
entrepreneurs, of course, and the dying Ron is very determined indeed.
Dallas Buyer's Club is a pet project of Matthew
McConaughey, who has been fighting for
years to get it made with various others in the lead. It's fortunate that he
took the role himself, because it may be his strongest yet. Though a gifted
survivor, McConaughey's Woodroof was little more than a two-bit hustler before
misfortune elevated him to a sort of folk-hero. His fellow AIDs sufferers were
never more than "fruits" and "tinkerbells" to him; his
pursuit of casual sex with women after getting his diagnosis verged on the
criminal. Though he establishes a "buyer's club" to import
medications for himself and hundreds of other desperate patients, his motives
were never strictly philanthropic. It was always about the money. McConaughey
sugar-coats none of that, but in his hands we don't care. Whether for the greater
good or sadly misspent, Woodroof's life was lived to the fullest while he had
it. In a year that has already seen great performances by the likes of Robert
Redford (All is Lost) and Chiwetel
Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), this may
be the performance of the year.
Almost
as memorable is Jared Leto as "Rayon", a transvestite Ron meets in
the hospital and—despite his flamboyance—befriends. Oozing glamor even as he
wastes away, Leto may single-handedly bring back the glam-rock esthetic with
this performance, albeit with a shabby edge.
If
there's anything to object to about Dallas
Buyer's Club, it's the way it buys into the sort of casual contempt for
government that is too common recently. Those of us of a certain age remember
the height of the HIV epidemic in the eighties, when activists like Larry
Kramer would appear on TV, hair on fire and screaming about the
"murderers" in the FDA. That uncorking a stream of quack drugs on a
population of desperate people would likely kill them faster, and make others
unconscionably richer, seemed lost on these guys. Instead of a public health
crisis, they saw it as a Manichean struggle between angels and devils, with the
federal agency staffed by little Eichmanns just yearning to keep miracle cures
from the people. Sound familiar?
On another
level, it's more than ironic that a lifelong homophobe like Ron Woodroof gets
to be the hero of the AIDs crisis. There's a long, sad tradition of similar
"cause" movies, where some terrible wrong only gets fixed when the
white (or in this, case, the straight) guy gets involved. Would we have cared
as much for Ron Woodroof if he was actually gay? Would his crusade have seemed
as appealingly muscular without the gay-bashing? Though there's much to like in
Dallas Buyer's Club, you won't find
the answers to those questions there.
©
2013 Nicholas Nicastro
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