Dallas Buyers Club | Little White Lies

Dal­las Buy­ers Club

06 Feb 2014 / Released: 07 Feb 2014

A man in a cowboy hat and sunglasses standing beside a green vintage car with its boot open.
A man in a cowboy hat and sunglasses standing beside a green vintage car with its boot open.
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Anticipation.

Jean-Marc Vallée follows up his sensitive portrayal of homosexuality from 2005, C.R.A.Z.Y.

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Enjoyment.

Questionable queer representation causes unease.

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In Retrospect.

A calculated prestige picture that never bothers to ask broader questions about the AIDS epidemic.

A sug­ar pill treat­ment of how US phar­ma com­pa­nies and the gov­ern­ment tack­led the 80s HIV epidemic.

I ain’t ready to crawl into a cor­ner. I just ain’t fuckin’ ready.” These are the des­per­ate words of a des­per­ate man. Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaugh­ey), hell­bent on out­liv­ing the 30-day pro­jec­tion of his doc­tor fol­low­ing an HIV diag­no­sis, trans­forms from an iron­i­cal­ly homo­pho­bic, rodeo-lov­ing elec­tri­cian into a con­sci­en­tious busi­ness­man and activist. Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dal­las Buy­ers Club is based on the real sto­ry of Woodroof, who, after con­tract­ing the virus from unpro­tect­ed sex, refused to par­tic­i­pate in dou­ble-blind, place­bo clin­i­cal tri­als for AZT (a high­ly tox­ic drug) in case he was fed sug­ar pills.

Woodroof finds help in Mex­i­co from an unli­censed doc­tor (played by an undis­tin­guish­able Grif­fin Dunne) to man­age his con­di­tion through a cock­tail of pro­teins, sup­ple­ments and drugs unap­proved by the FDA. Woodroof sees the busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty in smug­gling the drugs back to the US, though what begins as a cold busi­ness prac­tice turns Woodroof from a homo­pho­bic entre­pre­neur into a sym­pa­thet­ic activist. In the 80s, buy­ers clubs cropped up all over the US and pro­vid­ed self-admin­is­tered alter­na­tive med­ical treat­ment to HIV-affect­ed indi­vid­u­als in the form of month­ly subscriptions.

Vallée’s sev­enth fea­ture is a char­ac­ter study about Woodroof’s per­son­al (and phys­i­cal) trans­for­ma­tion and his fight against the gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions which delayed prop­er, afford­able treat­ment for a dis­ease pri­mar­i­ly effect­ing mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties. The film most­ly ignores the milieu of the move­ment that gal­vanised thou­sands of gay activists, with an occa­sion­al ref­er­ence here or there, like Woodroof’s vul­gar ref­er­ence to ACT UP: the fag­gots up in New York City.” The face of 80s Amer­i­can homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is rep­re­sent­ed by a sin­gu­lar char­ac­ter, a trans­gen­der per­son named Ray­on (Jared Leto), whom Woodroof begrudg­ing­ly befriends in hos­pi­tal. They lat­er become busi­ness part­ners, as Rayon’s stereo­typ­i­cal­ly sassy socia­bil­i­ty proves invalu­able in mov­ing the semi-ille­gal prod­uct in the sub­cul­ture Woodroof knows noth­ing about.

It’s per­haps unfair to sug­gest that Dal­las Buy­ers Club presents Woodroof as a het­ero­sex­u­al white male sav­iour for HIV-infect­ed homo­sex­u­als, though occa­sion­al­ly it does leave that impres­sion, if inad­ver­tent­ly — for exam­ple, the pater­nal approach he cul­ti­vates with Ray­on as he tries to keep him/​her on track from abus­ing drugs, and a piv­otal scene in which he phys­i­cal­ly forces a homo­pho­bic friend to shake Rayon’s hand. It’s hard not to see through film’s emo­tion­al pan­der­ing, yet ulti­mate­ly it’s most suc­cess­ful when demon­strat­ing Woodroof’s self-right­eous momen­tum and tenac­i­ty in fight­ing the system.

Even these scenes, how­ev­er, leave some­thing to be desired, name­ly, oppo­nents who do more than dis­miss Woodroof or alter­na­tive med­i­cine. Like Ray­on, Dr Eve Saks (Jen­nifer Gar­ner) is a per­func­to­ry rep­re­sen­ta­tive of an entire stra­tum of soci­ety; in her case, the com­pas­sion­ate med­ical pro­fes­sion­als stuck between a rock and a hard place in doing the best for their patients.

Dal­las Buy­ers Club proves at least inter­mit­tent­ly that Val­lée is capa­ble of hint­ing at the sub­tle dual­i­ties with­in Woodroof’s com­plex char­ac­ter and his life-chang­ing jour­ney, but more often than not it impul­sive­ly switch­es gear into pres­tige-pic­ture mode, goad­ing the audi­ence into a high­ly cod­i­fied and instruct­ed path of emotions.

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