"The Dallas Buyer's Club" (2013)

                                                                    

“The Dallas Buyer’s Club” is a marvel.  Made on a tiny budget with a shooting schedule of just 25 days, it is a movie that might alienate some with its stark images of destroyed lives.  Instead it is an unlikely crowd-pleaser, a rabble-rouser, and a valuable record of a not-long-ago public health crisis.

 This is a tough, unsparing movie of surprising depth and humor, a small indie film that unreels like an epic about homophobia, drugs, death, and redemption.

Most of all, the movie boasts two of the best, Oscar-winning performances in contemporary American cinema.

“The Dallas Buyers Club” tells the story of a gravely ill, straight homophobe who discovers, at the start of the AIDS crisis, that he is HIV positive. Among other things, the film is an odyssey of one man’s difficult self-evaluation.  It also dramatizes the financial and human costs of obtaining life-saving medications, and the red tape involved in approving and making those drugs available, especially for a new, mysterious and deadly illness.

The film also rails against the corruption within the American pharmaceutical establishment.  It’s a film whose subjects are as relevant as ever.  

Matthew McConoughey portrays the real-life Ron Woodruff, a violent, sexually self-indulgent drug addict who nearly dies of AIDS.  He is already emaciated when we first meet him, riding a rodeo, and working as an electrician with a blue-collar crew.  His desolate, empty existence is filled with indiscriminate, unprotected sex with prostitutes, fueled by alcohol and hard drugs, and oppressed by ignorance. 

Woodruff belongs to a part of American culture that rejects homosexuality or anyone who associates with gay people.  In Woodruff’s world, “fag” is the ultimate insult.

He is given thirty days to live, and dismissed  by a healthcare system that is flummoxed and overwhelmed by the disease.  Woodruff refuses to accept the diagnosis, at first because he doesn’t believe that a straight guy can get AIDS.  As his health deteriorates, he does some reading and discovers the truth.  

He learns about AZT, the only drug on a fast-track for approval in the U.S., and finds that it costs ten thousand dollars a year, the most expensive of all medications  He learns that the proper dosage for AZT is still trial-and-error, and that it has toxic side effects.  He also discovers that treatments that have found some success  in countries like Germany, Israel and France, have not been approved in the U.S. 

Desperate, deteriorating, and hitting an emotional rock-bottom, he travels to Mexico, and meets a doctor who prescribes a cocktail of herbal treatments and vitamins.  His condition improves.  

Selfishly, he discovers a way to make a profit out of his own treatment, and in the process becomes a hero to dozens of other AIDS patients:  He disguises himself as a priest, smuggles these treatments back across the border, and makes them available to others free of charge by selling monthly memberships to the Dallas Buyers Club.

McConoughey inhabits Woodruff and his life to an exquisite degree.  He lost forty pounds to play the role, but that was just the beginning.  McConoughey bravely plays Woodruff as an unlikeable hero, carefully avoiding any false sentimentality.  As a result, we are deeply sympathetic to his character, while recognizing that he is often reprehensible.  His cry of despair when he realizes his fatal dilemma is truly moving.  It is a tremendous feat of acting. McConoughey is the foundation on which the film rises or falls; it holds up all the way.

Good as McConoughey is, there is another actor whose portrayal is one of the most effortless and affecting I’ve seen.  That is Jared Leto, in the role of drug-addicted trans woman Rayon. 

While Woodruff is in the hospital after a rough episode, he is approached by the quick-witted, wonderfully bitchy Rayon, who wins Woodruff over in a most unlikely and tentative manner.  Woodruff hates Rayon at first for being gay, but soon realizes that she can be a good business partner for him.  Eventually Woodruff comes to respect Rayon, and even embraces her as a friend, defending her against the ignorant attitudes of his old friends.

Leto is a true revelation.  To create the  appearance of a woman wasting away, Leto shed thirty pounds. His face, with its soft features and easy movement from confrontation to comfort; his voice, and the way he carries his body; the authenticity of his expression; and the intensity of his emotion; all make Rayon an unusual audience surrogate and the true hero of “The Dallas Buyer’s Club”. 

Leto treats the character with respect, and infuses Rayon with dignity and a deep capacity for love and generosity, even in the most difficult scenes, showing the ravages of Rayon’s drug addiction and the sorrows of family rejection.  Rayon provides most of the welcome comic relief with his witty one-liners, delivered with intelligence and glee.

Late in the film, when Rayon must ask her own father, a homophobe, for help, she dresses once again as a man so as not to alienate him.  It is a wrenching sequence that calls to mind the paradox of gender identity in “The Crying Game”.  Leto brings so much welcome energy to every scene, that when his role ends, it is as though a light goes off in the film.

Jennifer Garner is the third member of the cast whose accurate performance adds genuine warmth to a secondary role.  Garner is Dr. Eve Saks, Woodruff’s first doctor in the hospital, torn between the medical establishment’s protocols, and her growing realization that Woodruff’s Buyers Clubs and others like his are actually helping patients.  

Dr. Saks and Woodruff bond as friends after she stands up to the Hospital Board.  Woodruff so appreciates her that he gives her one of his only treasures: a picture painted by his own mother.  Garner is focused and true; we like her character and we’re glad she turns into an advocate for Woodruff.

The filmmakers, especially director Jean-Marc Vallee, do a miraculous job, considering the lack of resources, and a schedule that did not allow for rehearsals.  They artfully use one hand-held camera, two lenses, and no lights, a lively score and creative editing, to craft this eye-opening story that doesn’t call attention to its low budget.  The movie compels us to a point where we forget that we’re watching a movie. 

The script, by Craig Borten and Melisa Warrack, deftly handles a controversial subject, and combines a study of three fascinating characters with a medical suspense story. The writing is anything but maudlin. There’s plenty at first to make us uncomfortable, but we wind up feeling true sympathy and even something like exhilaration for the characters and their heroic efforts to create a better system.  

Special mention must be made to members of the makeup department, who helped transform the actors with startling realism, did so with less than $250 to spend, and won an Oscar for their work.

Watching “The Dallas Buyer’s Club” today raises all sorts of questions about the extreme speed in which various labs are trying to get a vaccine available for the coronavirus.  While the rapid availability of an effective vaccine will bring us back to a semblance of normal life (just like the flu vaccine did after the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic), one hopes that we avoid the mistakes made with AZT when that was first available.  

A movie like “The Dallas Buyer’s Club” can give the average person, who is concerned about the state of our health and who is eager to learn about current medical developments, a look at a recent precedent, and even a small red flag as the news of new vaccines, approval methods, and even infighting within the drug industry, emerges each day.

In all, this rough-around-the edges film, with its disturbing portrayal of a flawed culture, its indictment of corruption in our healthcare system, and its portraits of strong-willed, broken people who inspire each other, is worth seeing on many levels.