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| A terrific still is the basis for this beautiful poster for Jean-Marc Vallée's Dallas Buyers Club |
Dallas Buyers Club is the mostly true story of Ron Woodroof, a drug-toking hustler, electrician and rodeo cowboy, whose deteriorating health gets diagnosed as AIDS in 1985, where the doctor tells him he has a month left to live. Woodroof survives for another 7 years, taking experimental drugs to diminish the harsh effects of the virus and setting up a club for sick people to buy the unapproved (later illegal) drugs through him.
Matthew McConaughey (Mud (2012)) plays Woodroof in a physically demanding performance, (he lost 22 kg for the part), and may very well win his first Oscar in a few weeks for the job, (ed.: he did.) Jared Leto plays the transsexual Rayon, who becomes Woodroof's business partner and good friend, and Leto's physical transformation is as impressive as McConaughey's, (and Leto is also Oscar-nominated, (ed.: and also won!))
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| Jared Leto as Rayon in the film, when he still looks good |
The third major role in Dallas is Jennifer Garner's (Juno (2007)) turn as a doctor whose sympathy gradually shifts from the hospital system to the alternative that Woodroof represents. Garner is once again wonderful, but she seems to stand in the shade of the physically transformative men in most reviews, which she doesn't deserve.
There is something painful in watching this movie, - and for me it wasn't the 'good' kind of painful. The lead and Leto's parts are deadly sick through the entire film, and we are in hospitals again and again. They are emaciated and look incredibly bad. Furthermore, Woodroof can be a stupid asshole.
He is fiercely disgusting in the way he leads his life, and he only distinguishes himself from his equally no-good hick friends, when he receives his death notice. AIDS is what makes him a redeemable character; the disease educates him into being a better person, which is in a way pretty terrible. What propels the character forward is his strong will to live and to help others to live.
SPOILER The few moving moments of the film were for me the scenes just before Rayon's death, when Woodroof finally stops throwing homophobic abuse at his closest friend.
I know it was part of the character they created for the film, but for me the distance between he and I became too big for me to get thrown over completely, once he (predictably) altered behavior.
The story of struggling with the DEA and AIDS-patients dying in droves every day is as interesting as it is depressing. Dallas Buyers Club does a good job of shedding light on the illness and the way it was treated (and not treated) at this point in time in the US (1985-1992). The desperation is palpable, yet didn't cut my heart in half. You may think this a compliment or not, as you like.
Dallas Buyers Club has obvious merits in its performances and strong handling of its story. It is not one of my favorites of 2013, and in the case of McConaughey, ironically, I think that he has starred in not one but two essentially better films in this Oscar-year that he is sure not to win an Oscar for, Jeff Nichols' Mud and Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, although his performance in this film is small. For AIDS-themed cinema with more impact try out How to Survive a Plague (2012), The Normal Heart (2014) and BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017).
Canadian director of Dallas Jean-Marc Vallée has also directed the gay-themed C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005), which isn't a perfect film, but which I personally enjoyed a great deal more than Dallas Buyers Club. He is already busy with his next film, Wild (2014), which stars Reese Witherspoon as a woman on a very long solo hike.
Budget: 5 mil. $
Box office: 33.2 mil. $
= Big hit
What do you think of Dallas Buyers Club?
Did I miss anything crucial in my review?
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