"Remember it's a business"

Rating: 9/10 (24 March 2014)

Dallas Buyers Club is a film about those rough days in the middle 80s during the heights of the AIDS epidemic. I lived in New York City in those days and for two decades lost innumerable friends and loved ones to this plague which attacked the human body's immune system. The plague started in New York and San Francisco and both cities with a large LGBT population which had its struggles with indifference in government, but generally had the good will of the populace. That was what would become the heart of blue state America.
But this story as its title says takes place in the heart of the reddest of states. Matthew McConaughey is an electrician and part time rodeo bull rider who lives a swinging lifestyle of unprotected sex and liberal drug use. Ways certainly we know AIDS can be acquired, but back then the religious right hawked for it was worth that AIDS was the "gay disease". Just stop being gay and AIDS will cease, no need for government reaction to the epidemic.
McConaughey starts out thinking exactly that way, he can't conceive that a good Ole Boy like himself could get a disease reserved for homosexuals. His friends think the same way and pretty soon he's shunned by his fellow rednecks.
But after he's told that he has maybe 30 days to live, that's something he just won't accept. He also research's promising drugs and non- pharmaceutical remedies to deal with the virus. He's fought every step of the way by the pharmaceutical establishment because as we are told by Dr. Denis O'Hare it is a business first and foremost.
McConaughey is nothing if not resourceful. In the process he acquires a whole new set of friends including his doctor Jennifer Garner and a transsexual AIDS patient Jared Leto. McConaughey finds that fighting the disease takes a lot more fortitude than riding bulls. His evolution of mindset is what got him his Best Actor Oscar.
Jared Leto received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for transforming himself in just about every way possible. The contrast between McConaughey and Leto is also a lot of what drives Dallas Buyers Club. Leto's homosexuality and cross dressing have alienated him from his wealthy family. He keeps feeding his drug habit, having a lot of unprotected sex because even if he's cured he feels he has no reason to live and no one to care about him, not even family. Family rejection is a powerful thing to overcome, a lot can't do it. I've seen enough in my own life with people I know and still know in terms of family rejection. It's the biggest obstacle, the fear of family rejection to coming out. Leto shows how real that fear is and how some just can't deal with it. So many broken bodies because of the disease have broken souls within. Unless you are a hardcore Tea Party follower you will be moved to tears by what Leto does with the part.
Besides those Oscars, makeup naturally won an Oscar both for Leto's and McConaughey's transformation to diseased people. It's also a testimony to the dedication of so many AIDS activists even those who came from strange places like Matthew McConaughey's character.