Runtime: 1 hour, 57 minutes
Rating: R
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Quick Impressions:
I don’t envy the entertainment bloggers/journalists that make Oscar predictions for a living. In the past, I’ve thought about making predictions myself. (Privately I always do but only for the entertainment of my family.) Honestly though, who can predict what’s going to happen at the Academy Awards this year? Every category is ridiculously crowded, but Picture and Actor are particularly teeming. Several films that might win Best Picture in another year won’t even get nominations this January. After all, there are only ten slots. And for Best Actor, there are only five. On the plus side, this makes awards season very exciting for viewers, but it seems unfair to the actors. You could easily turn in the performance of a lifetime and fail to get even a nomination, not because of Academy chicanery but because five other guys deserved it just as much as you.
I’ve been excited to see Dallas Buyers Club, and I was right to be excited. It’s a great film, containing fantastic performances from Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto that should both earn Oscar nominations at the very least. Not only is the film highly engrossing for anyone interested in recent American history, but it’s also entertaining and emotionally satisfying from start to finish. My husband and I loved it.
The Good:
Even though I was born in 1979 and a child in the 1980s, I remember when the world learned that Rock Hudson had AIDS. (My grandparents lived with us, and this kind of thing was big news.) I also remember what a shock it was when Magic Johnson got HIV and how emphatically the press kept stressing that he had contracted the disease through heterosexual activities. I remember, too, a bit later when we all learned that Greg Louganis had secretly been HIV positive when he cut his head on the diving board during the 1988 Olympics, and a media furor ensued.
I would imagine that people who did not live through the 1980s would never guess just how hysterical and irrational our society became during the early days of the AIDS crisis. I remember very well how terrified everyone was of AIDS. When I was a young child, the message in school seemed to be, “We think you probably can’t get AIDS from touching someone with the disease, but we’re not completely sure, so be as careful as you can.”
I remember hearing from people at church that AIDS might well be a judgment on sinful people. Even some people very close to me suggested the possibility that while AIDS was not a judgment, per se, the virus was a natural consequence of homosexual activities, so God’s laws were put in place to keep people safe. I trusted these people, so for a while, I believed them.
I also remember Ryan White, and how people always rushed to point out that he’d contracted HIV through a blood transfusion, so it “wasn’t his fault.” (With AIDS, it was always crucial to add that it “wasn’t his fault” if the afflicted person was a heterosexual who did not use drugs.)
I remember the episode of The Golden Girls where Rose worries that she’s contracted HIV and lashes out at Blanche telling her that because of her rampant promiscuity, it should have been her instead. Blanche replies, “AIDS is not a bad person’s disease, Rose,” or something like that. Maybe that sounds obvious now, but one of the people watching the show with me thought that Blanche was wrong and said so.
A lot has changed since the 1980s, and I think the general public’s perception and understanding of HIV has changed for the better. It goes without saying that treatment has also improved. At the time, as a child, I knew that AIDS was a scary and dangerous thing. What I did not know was just how much general prejudice seeped over into governmental practice, dooming an entire generation to death when better policies might have made treatment more widespread and affordable. As a child, I really have no idea of these things.
Dallas Buyers Club is a movie that anybody currently mad at the government or the FDA or insurance companies or the pharmaceutical industry should absolutely love. In the film, agents of the government, the insurance industry, and the medical community seem to view Ron Woodroof as a conman, drug dealer, criminal, and agitator. The funny thing is, he’s not trying some scheme to make a quick million. Everything he does, he does to keep himself and others like him alive. One of the final scenes of the movie highlights this fact beautifully.
The best thing about the movie are the amazing performances of McConaughey and Leto, but there’s more to commend here than just fine acting. The film also gives us a compelling slice of history and offers us a satisfying character study as we watch McConaughey learn more about acceptance and compassion for others as he personally experiences the sting of prejudice and marginalization.
The rest of the cast is also very good. In such a competitive year, I don’t think Jennifer Garner has much hope of an Oscar nomination, but she makes Dr. Eve Saks so warm and sympathetic. In a couple of McConaughey’s finest moments, she’s his scene partner, and she definitely does her share of the work. I also particularly liked Griffin Dunne as Dr. Vaas.
Best Scene:
To me the most effective (perhaps also affective) moment in the film comes during the courtroom scene near the end. The physical change in Ron is so dramatic, so stark. The people opposing him seem determined to beat him as a point of pride. Meanwhile, he is dying because they refuse to let him have his medicine. So often important decisions and judgments are made impersonally, but it’s important to remember that every person is human, and medical decisions have real human casualties. Ron isn’t just disagreeing with the Dr. Sevard (Denis O’Hare) to prove that he’s smarter. It’s not an academic disagreement from Ron’s side. He’s fighting for his life. And the people opposing him refuse to relent because…they want to be right. This kind of thing seems to happen a lot in this country (well, in the whole world really). A dispute that is entirely theoretical for one person is life and death for someone else. That’s very poignantly dramatized here.
I’m also a fan of the scene where Ron gives Rayon the injection simply because we see how much their relationship has changed, how much Ron’s view of Rayon has changed over time.
Best Action Sequence:
The moment in the store when Ron compels a friend to shake Rayon’s hand is nice. I also liked the opening sequence of the movie. It’s so chilling because as you watch, you already know (from the previews) that Ron is HIV positive. And yet for the first five minutes, all he does is have unprotected sex and get in bloody fights. It’s awfully eerie.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Matthew McConaughey):
Here’s something I never thought I would say. (If you traveled through time to the year 2011 or earlier and quoted this review to me, I would assume that you were lying/crazy. Of course, if you traveled through time to the year 2011 and told me anything I’d probably demand a demonstration of your time machine before I believed a word you said.)
Anyway, my point is, I think Matthew McConaughey should win Best Actor. Until last year, I had no idea McConaughey was a good actor. I never had anything against him—in fact, I respected and shared his love of Austin, and my stepson’s little sister’s former physical therapist is now his nanny and apparently really likes him (and I almost know her!)—but most movies he made just didn’t interest me. Then suddenly he started choosing projects that put him on my radar. Bernie, Magic Mike, Killer Joe—I loved him in all of those and thought a supporting nomination for Magic Mike would not have been unreasonable.
Mud was by far my favorite movie of the spring, so I went to Dallas Buyers Club expecting to like McConaughey’s performance, but I was totally blown away. He’s magnificent. His acting isn’t showy or self-conscious. It’s just good. I’ll confess that up to this point, I thought that McConaughey was a capable actor who had recently shown much improved discretion in selecting good material. Being able to recognize superior material is a commendable skill by itself. But Dallas Buyers Club has opened my eyes. Matthew McConaughey has phenomenal talent. Often we succumb to the temptation to praise a star who steps outside his comfort zone to tackle a difficult performance. (Every time Tom Cruise makes a push for Oscar recognition, for example, we get tons of PR insisting, “Look! Tom Cruise is really pushing himself here!”) That happens with veteran stars all the time. They take a role that requires a physical transformation, or a role that is punishing on the body, and then everyone exclaims in delight, “This is the best acting that X has ever done.”
But I’m not saying that Matthew McConaughey is good in this film compared to his performances in the past. I’m not recommending him for “most improved pretty face.” I’m saying that his performance here is one of the best I’ve seen this year. If anybody asked me to hand out the Oscar for Best Actor right now—(If they were like, “Just use your best judgment,” which could totally happen)—I would give the Best Actor Oscar to Matthew McConaughey for his work in Dallas Buyers Club. He’s that good.
It was his first one-on-one scene with Jennifer Garner—I mean the first conversation in her office—that really won me over. He’s so phenomenal there. We see such a range of emotion so quickly. In terms of emotional volatility, his work here compares to what Jennifer Lawrence did in that diner scene in Silver Linings Playbook last year. At this point in the movie, Ron Woodroof has not established himself as a particularly endearing guy, but we really feel for him in this scene. (Or anyway, I did.)
If he doesn’t win Best Actor this year, McConaughey had better lose to Bruce Dern, Tom Hanks, Chiwetel Ejiofor or someone I haven’t seen yet. Nobody else deserves it as much.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Jared Leto):
Ever since I read an article by Stephen Rodrick about the making of the film The Canyons, I’ve been feeling so sympathetic to Jared Leto. Apparently, Paul Schrader was still trying to cast the role of psychiatrist, and Lindsay Lohan suggested, “How about, Jared!” “Jared Harris?” “No, Jared Leto.” (The article was in the New York Times if you’re interested in checking it out.) Now I’m not going to comment on the sanity/professionalism of Lindsay Lohan, but why on earth is suggesting Jared Leto for an acting role an example of how she’s out-of-touch/insane/difficult? Isn’t Jared Leto an actor? Isn’t that what actors do, take roles in movies? I know Leto doesn’t work much in film anymore because he’s busy with his band, but he did agree to take this role, didn’t he?
That really got under my skin for some reason. It’s not like I’m Jared Leto’s number one fan or something, but why throw him under the bus? Why make him the punch line? He’s a good actor. Why attack him—unless, I guess, you just wanted to destroy something beautiful?
Anyway, when I started hearing earlier this year that Leto was getting Oscar Buzz for his performance as Rayon, I was, of course, delighted.
He’s really amazing in this role, too. Just today, Leto was voted Best Supporting Actor by the New York Film Critics Circle, and I really hope he also wins the Oscar. I’m sure he’ll get a nomination at least.
As played by Leto, Rayon is a key character in the film, one who injects a much needed sense of—it’s an odd phrase to use for someone dying of AIDS, but—joie de vivre. So much about Ron Woodroof’s situation is grim. At the beginning of the film, he wants to live but doesn’t seem to have much to live for. Rayon is full of life and warmth.
Leto disappears into the part, and he’s a scene stealer throughout the film, but I think his strongest moment comes when he visits the bank for a loan (a spoiler free way to describe the scene). His hair is pulled back and he’s dressed in men’s clothes, but all this time his performance of Rayon has seemed so real that now he just looks like a woman in a suit (which itself is a nice metaphor for what it means to be a transgender woman). It’s a very powerful scene. Already 2013 is teeming with outstanding supporting performances, but if Leto doesn’t get at least a nomination for his work here, I’ll be floored. As of now, I hope he wins (although I’d also be happy for a win by Michael Fassbender, Barkhad Abdi, maybe Jake Gyllenhaal, or even Harrison Ford.) (While I’m on the subject, I haven’t seen Enough Said, but it would be hard to find fault with a win for the late James Gandolfini, either.) But I think Leto deserves the Oscar.
Best Scene Visually/Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Jean-Marc Vallée, Craig Borton, Melissa Wallack):
For the past month, I’ve gotten into some of the strangest and most acrobatic positions imaginable in order to capture the beauty of the autumn butterflies with my digital camera, so of course, I love the scene in the butterfly room.
Besides looking lovely and providing obvious-yet-still-effective symbolism, this scene adds a dimension of beauty and artistry to the production that I did not anticipate. It’s easy to do this kind of thing wrong and seem like you’re clumsily pandering to the pretentious, but the scene—while so different from the others—really works and takes the film to another level.
By the time we got to that scene, I’d already been thinking Dallas Buyers Club deserved nominations for directing and screenplay. In such a competitive year, I doubt we’ll see directing and screenplay nominations for this film, but you never know.
The Negatives:
The one thing that really bothered me as I watched the film was how often Ron traveled around the world on planes. I know that the film is based on a true story, and I understand that he had to travel to other countries to pick up the drugs he needed, but wouldn’t all that flight on airplanes take a toll on someone with a compromised immune system? Halfway through the film, he seems to be bouncing all over the world with as much energy as Superman. Are the drugs that good? Maybe they are, but I feel like a more careful explanation of how specifically the medicines were helping him (and also what they were not able to achieve) might have helped give the film a more realistic feel. As it is, we have to go by how full in the face Ron appears when he looks in the mirror to know if he’s currently getting the medicines he needs or not. I thought the film could have shown us more precisely how the drugs affected Ron and all the other patients.
The only other issue I have is the way the film seems to demonize the medical community, the pharmaceutical industry, and the government. That kind of thing is so popular lately that I worry what the film is showing us is not exactly true. It feels extremely biased. (I mean, Dr. Sevard does have a point. How are they ever going to develop safe and effective medicines if the participants in the drug trials aren’t following the rules? The whole idea of giving some people AZT and some the placebo is that the sugar pill group can be used as a control. But if those people are getting other drugs on the side, then they can’t really be an effective control. Likewise, how can you tell if the AZT is effective or dangerous if the participants taking it are also taking other medicines? Surely all of the people in the medical establishment aren’t egomaniacal blowhards who just want to kill everybody for fun! Jennifer Garner can’t be the only good doctor out there! And by the way, I’d also like more closure on her character. Is she a real person or was she added for dramatic purposes? What happened to her in the end?)
These limitations are pretty forgivable, though, since the story is told from Ron Woodroof’s point of view, and we’re talking about a two hour movie, not a documentary mini-series.
Overall:
Dallas Buyers Club is a great movie that deserves Oscar consideration in several categories. Matthew McConaughey is revelatory, and Jared Leto is phenomenal. If both men don’t get acting nominations, I will be stunned. Either performance alone is reason enough to see the film which is fast paced, intellectually compelling, emotionally satisfying, and thoroughly engrossing. This is not a movie for children, but if you’re a grown up, you should go. If my daughter were a grown up, she assures me she would go, and she’s always right about everything.