Last year’s Hollywood Oscar contenders were marred by a spate of controversy. It seemed like every single high-profile film was taken to task for some politically incorrect issue or another. Lincoln got heat for its historical inaccuracies; Zero Dark Thirty allegedly condoned the use of torture; Argo jingoistically re-wrote the Iranian revolution; Silver Linings Playbook soft-pedaled the issue of mental illness; Django Unchained and Beasts of the Southern Wild were dismissed as racist; The Master made loaded statements about scientology; the list goes on. It got ugly. It was a buffet of outrage: it seemed like there was something for everyone to get offended by (I’ll admit that even I had my reservations about Argo and Beasts…). It wasn’t so much that these films were insensitive about their issues as much as it was that they didn’t deal with them at all, which on the whole seemed to be a conscious choice on the part of the filmmakers (talented people all) rather than an oversight.
Maybe in reaction to that, this year’s Issue films have been very careful to put their causes front and center. 12 Years a Slave, Fruitvale Station, The Butler, Short Term 12, and now Dallas Buyers Club have all made sure to make it clear that they are about something, and not “just” movies. I can’t tell whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s responsible, sure, and the meaning and message of each of these films is important and smartly dealt with. But there’s also an irritating element of playing it safe when a director has to choose between story and message and opts for the latter, or at the very least it makes me wonder why that same director didn’t just make a documentary instead.
DBC is a totally admirable film for a lot of reasons. The much, much more interesting reasons have to do with the film as a narrative than as a statement, so I’ll start with that. Certainly the most impressive thing about it is the performances. Matthew McConaughey has been in power-mode for the past couple of years, making amends for about a decade of shitty rom-coms and reminding us that he’s actually a really charismatic actor. Nowhere else has said charisma been more in evidence than in DBC, where he plays Ron Woodroof, a redneck hustler who finds out he has AIDS. This is in the mid-80’s, when AIDS is barely known about except that it’s a “gay disease,” and so naturally Ron is convinced that the doctors are mistaken: Ron is not only not gay, he’s an alpha male who spends his days fighting bulls and nights having threesomes with prostitutes. But when, broke, he tries his best to get treatment from AZT—the only drug found to be even remotely successful in treating AIDS—he has to reconsider how he lives his life in order to first get the drug, then combat its poisonous effects when he discovers it’s toxic.
Before this review gets too plot-heavy, I’ll use this opportunity to point out that what DBC resembles most recently is Erin Brokovich, another story of a hick who had to learn some very complex jargon very quickly to help fight disease. Though in Brokovich she learns the legal system and the disease is cancer, actually the biggest difference between the two films is that Brokovich protected its heroine at every turn (probably because she was played by Julia Roberts, whose range doesn’t stretch far enough to play a truly flawed character). Erin’s only real flaw was that she wore revealing clothing, and even that wasn’t really a flaw, since every person in the film who called her on it was painted as a condescending monster.
DBC has the nerve to make Ron truly, truly despicable, to start him in a place where he actually has to learn in order to grow. He’s homophobic, misogynistic, a thief, a drug-addict, and abrasive to more or less everyone he meets, especially doctors. This is compounded by the fact that McConaughey looks like a deteriorated human being (he lost 47 lbs. for the role, though it actually looks like he lost much more than that). Ron is not a hero who’s trying to right the wrongs of the FDA, which tried to fast-track an untested, poisonous drug for profit. He is a con-artist who sees natural vitamins as a way to make a profitable business rather than as a way to cure the ailing, and that makes all the difference in the world to the film’s narrative trajectory.
Ron would probably get a little tiresome without someone to butt up against, to help him grow and see the light, and that’s where the film’s trump card comes in in the form of Rayon, a transgendered man played by Jared Leto in a performance that is, to say the least, phenomenal. Leto has worked with some very talented directors (Aronofsky, Fincher) but none of them has come anywhere close to spotlighting his hidden talents like director Jean-Marc Vallee does here. The whole film, really, is a vehicle for great performances (even Jennifer Garner does some great stuff with a stock role). Leto and McConaughey make a great comic team—and I do mean comic, because probably the most surprising thing about DBC is that it’s funny. “God sure dressed the wrong doll when he blessed you with a set o’ balls,” McConaughey says to Leto in one of the films many great one-liners. It’s that comedy, paired with Ron’s awakening, which makes DBC much more than manipulative Oscar-bait.
Ron’s awakening is similar, very similar, to that of Denzel Washington’s in Philadelphia: both men reluctantly step into the world of AIDS patients and homosexuality, and both men, by the sheer fact of having to work side-by-side with the people of that world, recognize the humanity of someone else. That, again, is the much more interesting thrust of the film, which is why (SPOILER) it’s disappointing that ultimately the film gets defanged with a last-minute attempt to turn Ron into a hero, to refocus the subject so that it’s all about fighting the FDA. Rayon dies, and then the film has this vacuum to fill, and fills it with a trial scene that’s socially responsible but narratively dead, since the dubious medical benefits of AZT make for a dry cinematic centerpiece. (END SPOILER)
DBC is a good film, and worth seeing. There’s no way this year’s Oscars will be as contentious as last year’s, considering how careful the new films are. Whether you’re interested in film-as-Message or -Entertainment will probably vary, but DBC will win you over either way, studded as it is with such magnetic performances. Maybe that’s good enough.
About Ted McLoof
Ted McLoof is a writer at Rookerville and teaches fiction at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Gertrude, Monkeybicycle, Sonora Review, Hobart, DIAGRAM, The Associative Press, and elsewhere.He's recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. He is very cool and very handsome and he'd like to buy you a drink.