Watched: Dallas Buyers Club
I wish I’d seen this film before Jared Leto opened his stupid mouth, because it's really good and I prefer seeing things like this without the sour taste of an actor’s idiot remarks going in.
This subverts the one-man-against-the-system narrative, which this definitely is, by making the one man an utter asshole within a few minutes of the film’s opening. The Ron Woodruff of this movie is aggressively homophobic and often casually racist, throwing around slurs every moment he gets an opportunity. This is only doubled when he learns he’s contracted HIV and AIDS at the height of the eighties gay panic, but lulls and abates over time as he gets to know fellow sufferers through the titular drug buyers’ club; in particular, he finds himself drawn to Rayon (Jared Leto), a flamboyant transgender woman who begins her definition as an almost offensive caricature but becomes painfully rounded out as the film progresses.
It’s a shame that so much focus has been placed on Jared Leto, as this is really Matthew McConaughey’s film through and through. He’s transformed in this role, a far cry from the supposed sex symbol he apparently was in the nineties. He still retains some of the swagger that McConaughey brings to roles, but Woodruff is a more tightly wound character, more likely to throw a punch than crack a smile. Watching his redemption (though he would never call it that) brought a tear to my eye, even as the film refused to hold my hand.
To talk about Leto for a moment - concentrating specifically on his performance in the film for a moment, it is a shame that no-one thought to cast a transgender actor - one suspects that the decision was cynically made because of Leto’s star power (and no-one would presumably argue that, even accepting the huge number of talented transgender actors unable to find rewarding roles, that any of them have as recognisable a name). Complicating that fact is that Leto gives an incredible performance here. There’s a scene where he dresses in traditionally male clothing to meet with his on-screen father, and you can’t help but think that you’re watching a transgender woman go through the experience of posing as male, rather than seeing Jared Leto playing dress-up.
There is a difference, of course, between gender performance and gender identity, and the politicisation of this film comes with the latter - issues of representation of actors with non-cisgender identities is hugely important, and painfully overlooked. Within the framework of the film, though, performativity is everything, and Jared Leto’s assumption of a female role is far more than the way he walks or talks. Every moment of his feels meticulously played out and utterly believable, and while that doesn’t even begin to excuse the wider context, it does add a layer of complexity to proceedings.
So: this is an excellent film, despite the hubbub of awfulness that sadly surrounds it. It deals with important issues, and while this fictionalised version of Woodruff’s attitude toward self-medication is certainly a little rudimentary, it doesn’t lessen the critique of the US healthcare system that punches through in this film. There’s heart, and there’s tragedy, and there are two brilliant performances at the center of it all - one by an actor who is clearly enjoying one of the biggest highs of his career, and one by an annoying dick. Make of that what you will.