Dallas Buyers Club
Ron Woodroof may be from Texas, but that hardly makes him a “real man.” An electrician and rodeo rider, he’s also a womanizer, a boozer, a drug user, and a homophobe of the highest order. One day, in 1985, he’s on the job, and electrocuted. He’s taken to the hospital, where his doctors give him some sobering news…he has HIV, and only 30 days to live. He doesn’t understand how this happened– I mean, it’s not like he’s a homo like Rock Hudson, who had just come out with full-blown AIDS, and at the time AIDS was considered a “gay disease.” At first, he just acts like he always has, snorting up, drinking, and screwing, but a trip or two more to the hospital changes things. He doesn’t want to die, but he doesn’t know how to live. Time for some research.
Like a lot of people, I didn’t really know a lot about AIDS at all until Magic Johnson announced that he had contracted it in 1991. Of course, I was 13 at that time, so I didn’t have much need to follow such things. In the next few years, though, AIDS would be part of the national conversation in a way that meant learning a lot about different things. Woodroof is in that same boat when he finds out he has AIDS, and it means he has to change the way he thinks about things. The biggest change, of course, is to his views on gays, and while it takes a while for him to show it, having a friend like the transvestite he meets in the hospital (Rayon, played beautifully by an almost unrecognizable Jared Leto) helps push him in the way he needs to go.
There’s more to “Dallas Buyers Club” than that thread, though, as Woodroof (played in an extraordinary performance by Matthew McCounaghey, a long way from the insipid romantic comedies he’s become known for) becomes a force to be reckoned with as he builds a network of contacts, and takes not only his health care, but the care of others, in his hands. Illegal? Yes, and he has plenty of run-ins with the government as a result, but from a moral standpoint, Ron is redeeming the person he was, and saving himself in the process. It’s an admirable thing to watch, and you can see that admiration in everyone’s eyes around him, even an old friend he’s fallen out with (Steve Zahn) and a doctor (Jennifer Garner) who is trying to help AIDS patients through the system. In a lot of ways, I was reminded a bit about “Schindler’s List” while watching Jean-Marc Vallée’s lovely, heartbreaking film, and even though that SOUNDS like a strange comparison (and I wouldn’t really put “Buyers Club” on quite that level), both films are about flawed men who, when the system says death is the only option, choose to do something noble, and against the perception of who they are, to try and save lives. Unlike Schindler, though, who merely courted death in the execution of his plan, Woodroof knows he’s going to die, and wants to do something meaningful with his remaining time; in that way, Woodroof is more like the bureaucrat in Kurosawa’s “Ikiru,” who learns he is dying, and decides that, having wasted his life, he wants to do one thing significant with the life he has left. As with Spielberg and Kurosawa’s films, I was left inspired by what the protagonist of “Dallas Buyers Club” accomplished (and indeed, Woodroof lived until 1992 in real life, seven years longer than his doctors predicted), and hoping that maybe, someday, I’d be able to do something as beneficial to others as what Woodroof did in his final years.
