Funny, emotional and dramatic

Rating: 6/10 (19 August 2014)

"Dallas Buyers Club" has been the icing on the cake of Matthew McConaughey's very well-received performances from the last 3 years and complete career change after appearing in many not so well-received films and romcoms earlier in his career. It brought him a whole collection of awards including the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Musician/Actor Jared Leto meanwhile took home the prize for the supporting category for completely disappearing into the character of a transsexual. Admittedly, makeup and costume help him a lot as well and the character could hardly be more baity.
The movie is directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, of whom you may have seen "The Young Victoria". Here he has a lead actor who totally carries the film from start to finish, a truly captivating performance by McConaughey and he hits all the comic (the priest for example) as well as dramatic notes perfectly. There are still not that many movies dealing with HIV as you might expect there would be, given it is still one of the most frightening developments of our time. Maybe that is also why this film made such a difference last awards season.
Chapeau also to Craig Borten and Melissa Wallack who are pretty new to the writer's branch and came up with a high-quality script here. If you take a deeper look, you will also find lots of historic significance. One of these would be for example the medication scandal or another is the way in which Aids is only perceived as an illness that homosexuals can get. It takes a deeper look by the main character into the matter to read about the actual facts. This movie is a story about tolerance, changing perspective and true friendship (the supermarket scene).
The first scene of the film is actually a very telling one. We see McConaughey's character during intercourse with two women. There he risks his life just like the bullfighter in the background, possibly more. It's just not so obvious. Right afterward, the film seemed like the downfall of the main character and I expected the diary to run for the whole movie, which would have been truly depressing. However, it did not thanks to the medication and this made "Dallas Buyers Club" despite the topic an uplifting story full of hope.