The Wife was wary

Of witnessing Dallas Buyer's Club.  And, I can not blame her for having those feelings.  It is the holidays.  We both work in retail, and her job is v stressful, and we do not get a whole lot of time together, just the two of us.  Plus, Dallas Buyer's Club is not by any stretch your typical holiday movie fare.

In addition to her worries about the sadness and "heaviosity" of such a film, I also suspect that she really did not want to see the beautiful Matthew McConaughey portraying a tragic wasting AIDS victim.  Or Jared Leto, for that matter.  I tried to suggest to her that regardless of the sadness and pain displayed, that ultimately this was a really very beautiful story about some frankly heroic people that educated themselves and fought for their survival, and others like them, and for the survival of all the others that would be afflicted long after they had passed away.  

And, even though I never mentioned it to her, it is one of the main points of the film that it was exactly that so many beautiful young men like McConaughey and Leto, who were not movie stars or rock stars, did die in the brutal first waves of this tragic pandemic.  

Yet, as moved as I was by sections and/or moments in Dallas Buyer's Club, it still ultimately fell prey to the problems with biopic filmmaking.  Sometimes the documentary footage is just bound to be more powerful.  Seeing documentary footage of the NAMES Project quilt being displayed on the Washington Mall in 1987, or "reading" the special November 1989 issue of the Bay Area Reporter wherein they provided photographs of all the San Franciscans that had died of AIDS that year, is heartbreakingly a much more potent and poignant experience than seeing Dallas Buyer's Club, for all its merits.

Bay Area Reporter, November 1989.

I had the same issue with Gus Van Sant's very fine film, Milk.  (And, I was extremely pleased to see Sean Penn win Best Actor, too.) But, the finest moment in Van Sant's biopic is the opening credits, which is pre-Stonewall documentary footage of gays being rousted out of gay bars; harassed and beaten.  The rest of the film was never as gripping or important.

Dallas Buyer's Club did do one very important thing, though.  It made Renee want to learn more about the pandemic in real time, so to speak.  She wanted to learn more about the early days of the pandemic and what was actually being done to fight it.

So, I played We Were Here for her last night.  I have already spoke of this masterful documentary in this space before.  Here, and here.  The Wife han't seen it before, so last night was a revelation for her.

Which is what makes Dallas Buyer's Club worth it in the end.  That this film can bring greater awareness and empathy to the awful AIDS pandemic, and tell the stories of the innumerable heroes that struggle every single day to vanquish this wretched blight, well, than that is enough.














All my love,
Michael

Bernie, dir by Richard Linklater,

Is a smashing, mischievous little motion picture that is much more serious and profound than it appears to be at first glance.

We call it "Pop" down here, y'all.

It is set up like an old A&E episode of City Confidential (Renee and I loved that program), and even employs a very subtle, witty sleight of hand in direction and acting style that means our leads (Jack Black, Shirley Maclaine, Matthew McConaughy) seem more like Canadian talent reenacting these developments for a real-life crime show like City Confidential or Investigative Reports, or what have you.

Dick Pope's cinematography is perfect for this theme of subject matter, too.  Gone are his sun kissed, lambent baths of gold, and the rich saturated colors used for his last two features, Happy-Go-Lucky (dir Mike Leigh) and Me & Orson Welles (also dir by Linklater).  Pope has toned down the heat, and there is a grainy, cheap, dirty kind of air to the quality.  Nothing looks affected or sexed up.

It is absolute genius to use the real citizens of Carthage, Texas, as witnesses, too.  (Plus we get to meet Matthew McConaughy's real Mum.  Swearing and smoking on a bench on the patio.)  It is fantastic to see Linklater and McConaughy return to Texas; to see a plastic bottle of Big Red "pop" on McConaughy's courtroom desk, the accents, the beautiful witty colorful language, the blatant only in Texas prides and prejudices in full display.  "Those folks have more tattoos than teeth, "; "The People's Republic of Austin,"; "Well, Jesus never married and he wore sandals, and Jesus wasn't like that, so, "; and, etc, ...

It is certainly Jack Black's finest performance, but Shirley Maclaine was great, also, and looked great, too.  McConaughy was good and thankfully agreed to soft-pedal his hotness for the role. In fact, that was another great thing about this film.  There are no hotties in this movie, no one looks like a Hollywood movie star, it is just a lot of real life East Texas folks, overweight, bad teeth, big hair, just regular very sweet God fearing honest folks.

(I said to Renee, as we sat down in the theater, "Gosh, I know, it is a Sunday matinee and all, but this film just opened.  Look at this crowd.  We are the youngest people here.  This is the guy who made Slacker and Dazed and Confused!"  Renee said, "Yeah, well, Richard Linklater isn't twenty-five years old any more, either."  I love my Wife.  She is so frickin' insightful and smart.)

Bernie is a great motion picture.  And, along with Me & Orson Wells, that means Linklater is on a hell of a roll now.  This film could be a bust.  Me & Orson Welles was, so see it quickly.  Our crowd really seemed to enjoy it, though, so maybe it will play for a good long time.  They did make the typical reaction to a line talking about San Francisco, of course.

Ya gotta love civic pride, right?








Mwah, ...