Dallas Buyers Club

A bargain, at any price!

It’s not often that film scripts take 21 years to reach screens. It’s not often, in these multi-million dollar budget times that a Hollywood film is made in just $5-8million, shot in 25 days. It’s not often that you sit through a docu-feature/biopoc 117 minutes long and feel every minute was worth it. It’s not often that you get to see a film as rivetting as Dallas Buyers Club.

Back in 1992, an aspiring film-maker named Craig Borten went to Dallas to see a man named Ron Woodroof. Borten thought his life-story could inspire a film. Woodroof talked as Borten recorded, ending up with about 25 hours of audio-recording. Woodroof died a few months later, aged 42. Shortly afterwards, Borten completed a film-script about him, and called it "The Dallas Buyers Club". And more than 20 years after Borten took his exploratory trip, the film made its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, in 2013.

Ron Woodroof was born in 1950 and was an electrician by profession. Diagnosed with AIDS in 1986, he was given only six months to live. He began treatment with a course of the drug AZT, but it had little effect, and he nearly died. Instead of accepting his apparent fate, Woodroof began studying the disease. He searched worldwide for drugs to battle AIDS. Once he found the drugs he thought might work, Woodroof began acquiring them from around the world. Other AIDS patients soon came asking for Woodroof's medications, and with the help of his doctor and a fellow AIDS patient, Woodroof created what would eventually be called the Dallas Buyers Club, in March 1988.

Robbie Brenner and Rachel Winter—both women producers, took up the project. Little did they know what they were in for. Sudios and financiers kept playing hide-and-seek, either developing cold feet at the very nature of the subject or finding it economically unviable. Woody Harrelson agreed to star and Dennis Hopper was aboard to direct, in the mid-90s. When no financing materialised, Harrelson and Hopper ended- up leaving. Marc Forster and Brad Pitt came on board next, but soon moved on. Ryan Gosling was in the project, and then he wasn’t. Gael Garcia Bernal was to play a key role, but left before it could be shot.

The man who was to finally direct the film, Jean-Marc Vallée, lived in Canada, completely unaware of the back-story. And yet, look at what he achieved. Amazing characterisation, superb flow and masterly editing (he co-edited the film). Although the screenplay by Borten and Melisa Wallack has enough realistic components in terms of Woodroof’s adventures and misadventures to retain the slice of life, biopic feel, the numerous fictitious persons created around the ‘hero’ to develop the story could have easily turned stereotypes, but for the strangle-hold grip of Vallée. To secure dignity for HIV sufferers, and to push for better treatment, a non-judgmental mindset is a must. Vallée has crafted just that kind of ambience, not only about AIDS, but about various other moral and ethical issues as well.\

Matthew McConaughey plays Woodroof, and yes, all that talk of a possible Oscar is well-founded. The actor has had a poor patch, with films like Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Surfer, Dude, but lo and behold!--here’s an uninhibited, deeply-immersed portrayal of a far from likeable guy, that makes all the encomiums richly-deserved. After watching the film, it will take some believing to accept Matthew as People magazine’s Sexiest Man of the year 2005!

Rock musician and a man of many faces, Jared Leto, recently best known as the semi-naked bongo player of the group 30 Seconds to Mars, who had given his acting career a break five years ago to tour with the band, plays the transgender AIDS patient Rayon. Cast after a Skype meeting, in which he appeared in full drag and convinced Vallée, Leto (Girl, Interrupted-Fight Club-American Psycho) is bound to be another Oscar contender. The role is not as meaty as Woodroof’s, but equally difficult and more susceptible of drifting into caricature. So realistic is his acting that you tend to believe Vallée’s statement, “When I ran into him at the Toronto Festival, I had absolutely no idea who he was.”

Competent support comes from Jennifer Garner and Denis O’Hare, as the doctor duo.

Made with no added lighting and no sound-track score, Dallas Buyers Club is raw, earthy, and hard-hitting. It’s also a must-watch.

Rating: ****