The Normal Heart

[sasha_feather]

I watched "The Normal Heart" last night. I loved it. I related a lot to Ned Weeks and his political anger.

Some of the content is disturbing as it's about the AIDS crisis of the early 1980s; the worst scenes for me involved a story of an airplane trip and subsequent terrible treatment at a Texas hospital. Other content notes: homophobia (structural and individual), some physical fighting, discussion of bad therapy, many depictions of death, dying, illness.

Stars Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons, Julia Roberts, BD Wong, Alfred Molina, others.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

I've never seen the play nor the TV show. I do remember the intense backlash Kramer received — he's antisex! he's a self-hating homosexual! — at the time he wrote the play. This wasn't unwarranted: Kramer did say that when gays got married and were respectable and weren't "flaunting their promiscuous lifestyle" then and only then would AIDS get the attention it deserved. Which was almost true. Weeks is Kramer's stand-in, right? Does the show include the opposing voices?

There's an intriguing commentary on Al Jazeera, which concludes that only by being promiscuous was AIDS given the attention needed, which I don't understand.

[sasha_feather]

There is so much political in-fighting in this movie, it is amazing. It feels very real when compared to my current communities. I highly recommend this movie. Weeks is very critical of the gay community, apparently even before AIDS hits-- and critical of the government, straight people, everyone. He's mad at everyone including himself.

That review makes some points that I think are fair (erasing or de-emphasizing women, black men, trans people), but I think it's a bit unfair to Kramer.

At least in the movie, Weeks does not blame promiscuity-- he, and other characters, blame the homophobic society they live in.