Dallas Buyers Club
2013
Drama
4.0 stars out of 5
Science and reason live in an
uncomfortable balance with mainstream American thought. Americans from the Left
and the Right both profess to believe in the scientific method, but in truth
only do so as long as it does not disturb some cherished belief or Party line.
The Right refuse the overwhelming voice from the environmental and climate
scientists as regards climate change;meanwhile the Left do the same as regards
GMO and drug regulation. There have been various polemics out of Hollywood
before on any number of topics, some of have been excellent movies no matter how
tendentious their story line (e.g. Star Wars IV-VI as examples of an
anti-science POV, or Platoon as an example of anti-war POV). While with many
such movies I may enjoy the acting or directing, I will often cringe as I watch
the completely predictable play out before my eyes.
Dallas Buyers Club is one
such movie. It has a dialog than snaps and slashes at homophobia, and acting by
Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto that very justly won them Oscars. And yet
the very same writers for whom I have great respect for what they did with the
dialog have written a story arc and directed a broadside at the FDA and the
pharmaceutical industry that cannot be justified, and from an artistic point of
view is quite cliché-ridden.
The movie concerns a Good ‘Ole
Boy, Ron Woodruf (McConaughey): a bull-riding, oil field womanizer homophobe
living in the deepest (metaphorically) part of Texas. He learns early on in the
movie that he has HIV, which later develops into AIDs. He then watches his
Cracker friends abandon him and throw him to the curb. Ron initially meets an
establishment doctor in Dallas who tells him he has thirty days to live.
Eventually he ends up in Mexico where he finds an iconoclastic American ex-pat
doctor that gets him on a path to better nutrition and as the movie protrays
it, a much longer and happier life. His path to a longer life leads him into
establishing a vitamin and medicine system alternative to the FDA’s approach with
AZT. In order to sell his alternatives he sets up the Dallas Buyers Club with
new friend Rayon (Leto).
The major story arc of his
fight with the FDA is comletely predictable: they’re bad, Woodruf is good;
double blind tests are bad, anectotal stories of success are good; multi-year
tests are bad, one month in Mexico is good. Really? To go back to my opening
thoughts, does anyone understand in Hollywood what it takes to develop and test
a drug? Do they know or care about the value of double-blind tests? Does anyone
in Hollywood remember Thalidomide? Who would scream the loudest if Woodruf’s
Protein T had such a problem?
The acting is absolutely
first rate, and in my opinion the only reason to see this movie. It is
unfortuntely just one more example of the dumbing down of America. It is so
much easier to believe in Miracles than the hard work that Science and
Engineering require to produce a new drug that works and oh-by-the-way, does no
harm. Dialog is also first rate: there are many memorable lines in the movie
that I truly enjoyed (Jennifer Garner as Dr. Eve responding to Woodruf’s
question to her when he thought she was a nurse: “Are you f’ing deaf?”; her
reply, “I’m a f’ing doctor”.) But my favorite (and I am being cynical) is the
small footnote at the end of two hours
of hearing that AZT is poison that describes AZT being part of the sucessful “cocktail”
of drugs currently in use to dramatically extend the lives of those with AIDs.
The movie is worth seeing for
adults, and I do recommend it; but I do so wish a belief in rationality was
ascendent in America, rather than the philosophy summarized on all too many
bumpers: “I believe it, that settles it”.
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