The Dallas Buyers Club
Go! McConaughey is the (very skinny) man.
Life-affirming, touching, inspirational drama.
So let's get the #noms out of the way. Dallas Buyers Club is currently sitting on Oscar noms for Matthew McConaughey (Best Actor) who plays the real-life, promiscuous, booze-swilling, gambling, rodeo AIDS victim (and electrician) Ron Woodruf; Jared Leto (Best Supporting Actor) as the drug addicted, homosexual, transvestite AIDS victim and business partner to Ron Woodruff; as well as noms for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and (snoozefest alert!) Best Film Editing and Best Make Up and Hairstyling. So from that list we know it is probably an emotive and inspiring character study, where someone with great hair overcomes a good whack of adversity. And there will be lots and lots of AIDS.
It is indeed all of the above, and very successfully so. The story follows Woodruff's biographical journey, beginning from his HIV diagnosis in 1985 and his subsequent quest to treat himself and other HIV/AIDS sufferers with foreign drugs that the US Food and Drug Administration had refused to approve. This takes him across the world in a low key, illegal smuggling operation; and back to his native Dallas, Texas where he creates a club in which membership gives people the drugs and supplements that they need to survive. If that isn't inspirational in itself, I'm not sure what is. I mean, the only club I ever started was mostly spent sitting in trees and talking about which superhero was best while drinking sugary Um Bongo through a tiny straw. And although that "Cool Guys Club" was a good club, nay a great club, it arguably, arguably, wasn't quite as profound as the Dallas Buyers Club.
It is indeed all of the above, and very successfully so. The story follows Woodruff's biographical journey, beginning from his HIV diagnosis in 1985 and his subsequent quest to treat himself and other HIV/AIDS sufferers with foreign drugs that the US Food and Drug Administration had refused to approve. This takes him across the world in a low key, illegal smuggling operation; and back to his native Dallas, Texas where he creates a club in which membership gives people the drugs and supplements that they need to survive. If that isn't inspirational in itself, I'm not sure what is. I mean, the only club I ever started was mostly spent sitting in trees and talking about which superhero was best while drinking sugary Um Bongo through a tiny straw. And although that "Cool Guys Club" was a good club, nay a great club, it arguably, arguably, wasn't quite as profound as the Dallas Buyers Club.
Simply put, the inspirational story is in itself a high potential vehicle for some cracking performances, but add to this an Oscar nominated script and it is crying out to have the Um Bongo acted out of it. Enter Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto.
While Leto (incidentally also the lead singer of the band Thirty Seconds to Mars) is also excellent, Dallas Buyers Club is most certainly The Matthew McConaughey Show. This is perhaps surprising considering that the 44-year old McConaughey's serious acting career initially had something of a Failure to Launch (ahem). Rom-Coms, bit-parts in blockbusters and a multitude of films where he made certain to take his shirt off, pepper large parts of his work. Until recently that is, when all that fluff has given way to meaty, interesting, weird and acclaimed performances in excellent films such as Mud, Killer Joe, Magic Mike, and Wolf of Wall Street. Where once he used to be mocked for his flimsy roles and sleazy perfume adverts, he is now a bona fide scene stealer and fast becoming a Hollywood legend.
While Leto (incidentally also the lead singer of the band Thirty Seconds to Mars) is also excellent, Dallas Buyers Club is most certainly The Matthew McConaughey Show. This is perhaps surprising considering that the 44-year old McConaughey's serious acting career initially had something of a Failure to Launch (ahem). Rom-Coms, bit-parts in blockbusters and a multitude of films where he made certain to take his shirt off, pepper large parts of his work. Until recently that is, when all that fluff has given way to meaty, interesting, weird and acclaimed performances in excellent films such as Mud, Killer Joe, Magic Mike, and Wolf of Wall Street. Where once he used to be mocked for his flimsy roles and sleazy perfume adverts, he is now a bona fide scene stealer and fast becoming a Hollywood legend.
In Dallas Buyers Club he is peaking. Moustachioed and gaunt, he plays Woodruff with absorbing passion and breathless power. Alongside his resounding emotional commitment, he reportedly lost 23kg to play the role. With his starved-chicken face and wiry alley cat limbs, he truly embodies the character's fragile physicality; to the point where he is virtually unrecognisable. Having already won the Screen Actors' Guild award for best male actor, he is merely an envelope-opening away from winning the equivalent Oscar. Even considering the fantastic performances from Di Caprio (Wolf of Wall Street), Ejiofor (12 Years A Slave) and others in this year's category, McConaughey surely deserves the big gong. And I bet that if I whispered that to you in 2003 while we were watching How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days, you would have laughed so hard in my face that you would have covered me in moist, half-chewed popcorn and cokey-saliva. In. My. Face.
So go. Importantly, the AIDS issue doesn't overwhelm the film in the tragic manner that it overwhelms many of the characters. Rather than being a film about AIDS; it is a film about fighting - fighting disease, fighting prejudice, and fighting the powers that be. Against all of these odds, Woodruff is portrayed as a true maverick and if you don't leave the cinema thinking, "Man, I need to do something (at least get myself checked)" I would be very much surprised.
So go. Importantly, the AIDS issue doesn't overwhelm the film in the tragic manner that it overwhelms many of the characters. Rather than being a film about AIDS; it is a film about fighting - fighting disease, fighting prejudice, and fighting the powers that be. Against all of these odds, Woodruff is portrayed as a true maverick and if you don't leave the cinema thinking, "Man, I need to do something (at least get myself checked)" I would be very much surprised.
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