Dallas Buyers Club is a movie about social injustice and the power (and limitations) of anarchic social activism. It’s a fascinating (and true) story, well-told and featuring brilliantly acted lead roles. I’m sure Jared Leto will win Best Supporting Actor for his role as Matthew McConaughey’s transvestite business partner, because it’s just the kind of flashy role they love to give awards for. But I feel McConaughey deserves an Oscar even more – he gives a marvelous performance, in which he manages to transcend all his unfortunate tics and his overbearing persona to disappear into a wonderfully gritty and human character that you like, admire and are repulsed by in equal measures. I’ve mentioned before on this blog what an interesting actor he’s become in the last few years; Dallas Buyers Club is another remarkable step in his evolution. I should also mention that the slowly evolving and unlikely friendship between these two characters is done quite well.

I’m not sure I would ever need to see Dallas Buyers Club again, but it’s an important and rewarding film to see nonetheless. The movie’s strength lies in its immediate impact, through a very direct portrayal of the social chaos which erupted in the desperation of the early AIDS epidemic. It was a disturbing yet fascinating four-way conflict between institutional rigidity, corporate greed, sexual prejudice, and the natural human impulse toward fairness and what’s right. The buyers clubs were anarchic structures designed to get people the legal-but-unapproved drugs they needed by selling “club memberships” and then giving the drugs away free to members. Our government devised the incredibly shallow and cruel response of changing the laws until everything the clubs were doing was finally made illegal, ensuring massive profits for Big Pharma. Ron Woodroof never stopped fighting for a way to help people, travelling the world, and turning the law upside down looking for avenues to do what needed to be done. He was a modern hero in a terrible time which, due to the incredible social bigotry in the United States, has never really gotten the mainstream artistic treatment it needs or deserves.

I very highly recommend Dallas Buyers Club. It’s a really good film.