Release Date: November 22, 2013
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
MPAA Rating: R
Film Pulse Score: 8/10
Although not unfamiliar with the general fight to get AIDS drugs quickly approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1980s, I was in the dark about the so-called “buyers clubs” that sprung up at a grassroots level in several states and large cities. A buyers club had dues-paying members who received non-approved medications – but not necessarily illegal drugs or drugs obtained illegally – as an alternative to AZT – the first FDA-approved medicine approved to treat HIV-positive and AIDS patients. This film tells the story of the Dallas Buyers Club created and run by Ron Woodruff who was later joined in his enterprise by a transvestite he met while in the hospital named Rayon. It is a well-crafted film based on a true story and it was both entertaining and enlightening.
Woodruff is played by Matthew McConaughey is a daring, visceral performance; this continues the line of great work he has given audiences lately beginning with 2012’s Magic Mike, Bernie, Killer Joe, and this year’s Mud. He inhabits Woodruff, and not just physically. Much has been and will be made of how McConaughey looks in the film because of the incredible weight loss he endured to play an AIDS patient. However, his transformation is not merely physical – he has reached emotional depths in this film that have eluded him most of his career. The other great performance is given by Jared Leto as Rayon (originally Raymond). Given Woodruff’s homophobia, they do not hit it off at first, but through their mutual condition and desire to help themselves and others who are suffering under an AZT regimen, they transcend their differences and become fast friends and business partners. Leto’s good looks help him create a feminine illusion, but his physical transformation is just as key as he too must look like he has AIDS.
How Woodruff is diagnosed is not essential to the overall story, except that at first he does not believe the doctors – Sevard (Denis O’Hare) and Saks (Jennifer Garner) – when they give him the news. It is 1985 and like nearly everyone else, Woodruff believes it is a “gay man’s disease.” It is only after he begins to do some research of his own that he discovers that even unprotected heterosexual sex can lead to becoming positive. When diagnosed, he is told he has 30 days to live, so advanced is his disease. He bribes a hospital janitor to steal AZT for him and he pops the pills like candy, taking them with alcohol and continuing to do cocaine. Through a series of events, he discovers the AZT is toxic – something that Dr. Saks is finding in the clinical trial at the hospital – and in Mexico is given various safer meds, though none are FDA-approved in the United States. He brings the meds over the border and creates the buyers club. He will eventually travel to several other countries in an effort to bring helpful medicines back to Dallas for those in need.
The story of one man’s fight against the system has been done before, but I cannot remember a film that is so singular in its storytelling. The film only rarely dips into the melodramatic or slides into sentimentality; and when it does, it is only for a moment and usually serves the film well. The man who was told he had only 30 days to live would live for seven years on a cocktail of safe and obviously effective drugs, just not the one being pushed by the pharmaceutical maker of AZT and the FDA.
Thus, the film is small-scale epic of what is possible when people are pushed to their limits and choose to fight rather than give up and die. It is truly a powerful piece of filmmaking from all involved, particularly with its tight script by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack that kept a dire story moving along with humor and pathos occurring often simultaneously. It also has two of the best performances I have seen this year. They are award-worthy, though it is too early to tell if the powers-that-be will recognize either McConaughey or Leto; surely I would argue that McConaughey in particular is overdue for some recognition given the roll he has been on lately. If you have the time to fit this into your schedule, I can recommend you doing so. I did not know what to expect other than McConaughey’s physical transformation and was immensely surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie. It did not make me cry – which I think was not its intention anyway – but it did make me think and it has stuck with me all day; if you see it, I hope it sticks with you as well.
