Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée
Loosely based on the true-life tale of Ron Woodroof, a drug-taking, women-loving, homophobic man who in 1986 was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and given thirty days to live.
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27 films that influenced Dallas Buyers Club
What critics say influenced Dallas Buyers Club
At the same time, Dallas Buyers Club also deserves credit for being the first Hollywood film with significant LGBTQ themes since Brokeback Mountain in 2005, and the first significant AIDS film since Philadelphia in 1993.
Woodroof’s transformation from hostile bigot to understanding, sympathetic brother to the gay community stretches back to Jonathan Demme’s twenty-year old “Philadelphia,” in which the lawyer played by Denzel Washington followed much the same emotional trajectory.
But Dallas Buyers Club shows how little Hollywood dramas about AIDS have advanced since Jonathan Demme ’s (homo)sexless, sanitized Philadelphia (1993).
It is widely believed that the Academy was sympathetic to McConaughey and Leto because the Academy usually favors actors who play people who are terminally ill (Tom Hanks in "Philadelphia" for example.)
Although the films are very different in style, there is a comparison to be made with Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia , in which Denzel Washington plays a homophobic lawyer who takes on an Aids-related unfair dismissal case, a move that brings about personal change and reconciliation.
It's been 20 years since Tom Hanks put a movie star's face on the AIDS crisis in Philadelphia.
This does, after a fashion, leave Dallas Buyers Club feeling a bit mechanical and conceptual - unlike Steven Soderbergh's many games in tweaking star personae (Magic Mike is a key example, though the film mostly calls to mind Erin Brockovich ), it doesn't really thrive as an entertaining, involving movie beyond that leading role, and its worst parts are all bunched up at the end, which makes it hard to feel great about it on the way out.
And, of course, the little-guy-against-the-system aspect of the narrative is an age-old device—one need only think of “Erin Brockovich,” for example.
The lively, surprising script, by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, goes through occasional stages of schematic drama—shades of " Erin Brockovich "—that make Ron's adversaries more rigid than they may have been.
Elements of "Lorenzo's Oil," "Erin Brockovich" and "Monster" — for which Charlize Theron underwent a similar transformation and won an Oscar — salt the film by Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée.
It’s a weightier version of “Erin Brockovich,” but without the kind of bold artistic choices that the heaviness of the story suggests.
It most closely follows the Erin Brockovich pattern, while simultaneously drawing on familiar prestige staples from Philadelphia to Schindler’s List .
The director Jean-Marc Vallée, previously best known to British audiences for the pallid, Julian Fellowes-scripted costume drama The Young Victoria (2009), brings a grittiness and morbid humour to the storytelling here that, early on, evokes memories of Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces.
…by Walter Chaw Agreeable, well-meaning horseshit in the Lorenzo's Oil vein (but horseshittier), Jean-Marc Vallée's really bad Dallas Buyers Club is saved to some extent by a couple of fine, showy performances from a skeletal Matthew McConaughey and a skeletal Jared Leto in drag, but ultimately defeated by the standard straw-man activist biopic formula.
Elements of "Lorenzo's Oil," "Erin Brockovich" and "Monster" — for which Charlize Theron underwent a similar transformation and won an Oscar — salt the film by Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée.
It isn’t like, say, Erin Brockovich or Lorenzo’s Oil as it never goes all soft and uplifting.
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(McConaughey’s Woodroof mentions how he was inspired by “some queers up in New York” he read about in the news, by which he means the members of ACT-UP, who did much what we see Woodroof also do here; see the documentary How to Survive a Plague .)
Vallée cites the documentary How to Survive a Plague as an inspiration for the scenes in which Woodroof, Rayon, and their allies take on the FDA (and the FBI, DEA, and IRS) to create, in effect, an alternative universe.
According to the press notes, Vallée asked his cast and crew to watch How to Survive a Plague, David France’s stirring chronicle of ACT UP released last year.
For a detailed account of the Reagan administration’s slow reaction and the gay community’s fierce crusade for a cure, rent the superb 2012 documentary How to Survive a Plague .
The frustrating procedural delays of the FDA during the early days of the life or death AIDS crisis have been well documented in two outstanding documentaries, 2011's "We Were Here" representing the West Coast, 2012's "How to Survive a Plague" the East.
The contemplative movie doesn’t advocate self-medication, nor does it trivialize the long and hard-fought frontline battle for effective HIV treatment in America (see last year’s brilliant doc, How to Survive a Plague) by elevating the rogue efforts of a straight guy.
Matthew McConaughey shed fifty pounds to play Ron Woodroof, and it is an alarming metamorphosis to rival that of Christian Bale in 2004's " The Machinist ."
Christian Bale lost 63 pounds for "The Machinist", Russell Crowe the same amount for "Body of Lies".
Robert De Niro gained 60 pounds to play the older Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 Raging Bull, and Christian Bale dropped 62 pounds (from 182 to 120) for his lead in the 2004 The Machinist.
We haven't seen this kind of sacrifice for a role since Christian Bale's emaciation for "The Machinist" in 2004.
Most people remember Tom Hanks' transformation in both "Philadelphia" and "Cast Away" (in the second he gained and then lost a lot for the role) -- both of which earned him Oscar wins -- but few saw Christian Bale's far scarier looking 60-some pound lost for his role in "The Machinist."
The caliber of his performance, not to mention his Christian Bale/ The Machinist -style physical transformation (he lost 50 pounds), fulfills Oscar nomination criteria (although, considering how crowded the field is, it's a crapshoot whether he'll make the cut).
An oddball friendship is born - a friendship that harks back to that of another Texan, Joe Buck, and the squirrely street bum, Ratso Rizzo, he partners with in the late-'60s classic Midnight Cowboy.
At the same time, Dallas Buyers Club also deserves credit for being the first Hollywood film with significant LGBTQ themes since Brokeback Mountain in 2005, and the first significant AIDS film since Philadelphia in 1993.
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The most notorious weight shift of all saw Robert DeNiro gain 60 pounds for his Oscar-winning portrayal of boxer Jake LaMotta in "Raging Bull".
Robert De Niro gained 60 pounds to play the older Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 Raging Bull, and Christian Bale dropped 62 pounds (from 182 to 120) for his lead in the 2004 The Machinist.
This sort of thing could easily have turned into an acting stunt, and I’m not entirely sold on the idea that one must drop (or add – remember De Niro in “Raging Bull”?) pounds to achieve artistic truth.
Even with the “startling transformation” turf being well-worn since the days when Robert DeNiro's weight gain for Raging Bull was a shock, seeing McConaughey here is legitimately startling.
At least in the movie version of his life, Ron Woodroof has more than a little in common with Rick, the Humphrey Bogart bar owner in “Casablanca.”