Absorbing tale

Rating: 9/10 (29 November 2013)

Although Matthew McConaughey has done a lot of crap films, I usually do enjoy seeing him in good films. I enjoyed his performances in Mud, The Lincoln Lawyer, and of course Dazed and Confused, among others. But as good as he was in those films, he still never completely disappeared into those roles. This is not necessarily his fault all the time; he just exudes a lot of his personality naturally.
Although Mud came close, this is the first film for me where MM disappeared and the character of Ron Woodroof came alive. It's more than just the actor becoming skinny; from the opening scene, you can feel his sickness. Both MM and Jared Leto are never over the top in the "Hey Look at Me, I lost a bunch of weight so I could get an Oscar nomination" way that some other actors have been in other films requiring massive weight loss.
As for the film itself, it is most successful in the beginning, when it recreates vividly how really frightening and stigmatizing the AIDS epidemic was early on. Woodroof fights against both external and internal prejudices, and then takes on the fight against the FDA. The second half still holds up well against the first half, as the viewer is completely absorbed in Woodroof et al's plight and fight for survival.
One criticism of the film I've read is that Woodroof goes from homophobic to accepting his homosexual business partner and customers rather easily. I don't find this to be a valid criticism. For one thing the film covers a long period of time, with gaps of time between one scene and the next. Secondly, the film is not about Woodroof's transformation from bigot to tolerant human being. It is about struggling to survive in the face of disease and a heartless bureaucracy that gets in the way of his survival. It is thru the process of this struggle that he realizes that he and those around him are all part of the same struggle.
The ending of the film should not be a surprise, but the director ended it perfectly, without undue sentimentality. Definitely one of the better films of this year.