Maite Garcia: Dallas Buyers' Club - a chance to live

A homophobic, drug addicted womanizer, this is the way Matthew McConaughey's character is introduced, a Texan rodeo cowboy called Ron Woodroof, whose life has been a path full of big excesses. Based on a real story, Woodroof's adventure works as a pretext to present the terrible HIV virus and its consequences during the eighties.

The behaviour of this selfish guy is cut short when he is diagnosed AIDS and given only a few weeks to live. After some intense moments of doubts and a gloomy relapse, Ron Woodroof doesn't give up; instead of passively accepting his fate, he decides to look for an alternative treatment to delay the effects of his awful disease, since up to that moment the only commercialized drug is AZT, but with little success. Therefore, he acts decisively and faces up to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) after travelling to México in order to buy non-approved medication. 

Rapidly, he becomes a genuine smuggler of antivirals, vitamins and peptides. Woodroof changes many people's lives as well as his own, as this cause connects him to some unknown figures; one of them played by Jared Leto, a transvestite homosexual infected with the HIV virus. Together, they will start a large distribution center called "Dallas Buyers Club", which will be constantly fighting against the United States' legal system. 

The two Oscar-winning actors in action

As all critics have agreed, the film’s plot is punctuated by extraordinary, emotive performances. Most remarkable has been Mathew McConaughey's. Until today he was known to the Academy as a leading man from the genre of romantic comedies, but thanks to his fantastic role in Dallas he has achieved the highest recognition from the American industry, an Oscar for best actor in a leading role. Not only have we been impressed by his extreme physical transformation but also by the roller-coaster of emotions he manages to transmit. The other Oscar-winning actor, Jared Leto, fills his acting with several tinges, so that the audience connects immediately with his feelings since he oozes sensibility and charm. I guess the director Jean-Marc Vallée has contributed to the success of their performances, as even Jennifer Garner, in a modest secondary role, has improved her acting skills significantly compared to previous films. 

I love this movie, especially because of the way all these characters, each one of them coming from different origins and having such distant ideologies or lifestyles, intertwine their lives. However, their differences are not a handicap to fight for life.  Dallas Buyers Club is a marvelous, thought-provoking film in which the director deals with issues which unfortunately are so contemporary. If I had to underline a particular scene, I would recall one when Ron is portrayed surrounded by butterflies; it seems to me a gorgeous metaphor of our existence. Simply fantastic! 

Thanks Maite for another great post! You hadn't written any stuff since that early review of Nosferatu, so welcome back.

As you know, I saw "Dallas ..." too and I really loved it, even if it's rather tough to watch at times. Films dealing with the plague caused by HIV since the mid-1980s in America are always extremely gruesome (Philadelphia and The Hours, to name a few, are two titles you may remember). 

Honestly, I'd never thought much of Matthew McCounaghey as an actor before his awesome role in this film. To me, maybe wrongly, he was just the classic "rom com" ladies' man. But all of a sudden he puts so much of himself into this character, both physically (seemingly he lost some 50 pounds) and emotionally. Also worth mentioning is Jared Leto's heart-rending performance - no wonder they both scooped well-deserved statuettes at this year's Oscars.

So let me just embed the film's trailer for those of you who may have not seen Dallas Buyers Club yet, arguably one of the best, most successful independent films of 2013.