The Normal Heart, first a stage play in 1985, now an HBO
film, is about the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic in New York City in the
early 1980s and a group of men who set out to right it. Sadly, it is not dated.
Sadly, it holds up. Sadly, we are still in the grip of it, albeit slightly
loosened.
Ned Weeks, portrayed by Mark Ruffalo, is a founder of the
Gay Men’s Health Crisis (as was Larry Kramer, who wrote the play as well as the
teleplay), and simultaneously the sole voice of reason and a social pariah. He
does not have time for his friends’ argument that standing in front of someone
and screaming at them to help will result in the government’s actual help in
the search for a cure to the then-nameless plague that is taking the lives of
his acquaintances, one by one. He is prone to shouting matches and making bold
accusations, and at times he is hard to take, but as the movie makes clear, who
else is doing anything to help? Not the government, certainly. Remember, these
are the Reagan years, before he was lifted onto the pedestal as the Great
Republican Savior. These are also the Koch years, and the lack of attention he
paid to the killer sickness that decimated his city is on full display here.
Matt Bomer, as Felix Turner, a NY Times reporter and the
main character’s boyfriend, is near perfection. Initially he looks remarkably
like his character on White Collar, in his suit, Sinatra-blue eyes, and salty
wit. Ultimately though, we watch as Felix struggles to die with a bit of
dignity left, worn down to a shadow of himself, purple welts covering his
bone-thin back. This is not a surprise; many characters in The Normal Heart do
not survive, as so many gay men in the early 1980s and on did not. Bomer’s
Felix is the stand-in for the audience’s friends lost to AIDS in the 80s. We
watch him fade as we watched our family friends fade. I was a child again,
watching people disappear into themselves, not arrive at the playground with
their children, become old so quickly. Felix is our friend, and Bomer makes
sure that we know him well. The moment he shows Ned (and us) the bruise on his
foot, we start saying our goodbyes. That fucking bruise that “doesn’t go away.”
Dr Emma Brookner is a hero of this play. Stricken by polio
as a child, she fought back against that disease, and now fights against a new
one from her wheelchair. The stage portrayal of Brookner by Ellen Barkin in
2011 was such a masterpiece, all blistering anger, fear, desperation, and love,
that Julia Roberts’ showing here is a bit of a letdown. She does a fine job, to
be sure, but there is a rage that should be present in this character that was
not present. This Brookner crept to a boil a few times, but she should be
simmering all the way through.
For whatever reason, people don’t pay enough attention to
Taylor Kitsch (aka Tim Riggins). Rather, they continue to cast him in utter
bullshit (see Battleship, Savages, John Carter). With that in mind, it is
incredibly refreshing to see him here as Bruce Niles, doing some really
fantastic work. Niles is a closeted lawyer and former soldier with enviable and
much-remarked on good looks. He is in the decidedly unenviable position of
having lost multiple boyfriends to “the gay cancer.” His performance is subtle and
shattering. We watch him fall in love twice, and have his loves removed from
him twice, far too early.
Tommy Boatwright, played by Jim Parson, reprising the
“Southern bitch” role he played on Broadway, is given more opportunity to
become a whole character here than he was in the stage version. This is due in part
to the magic of the movies, where monologues can be seen as well as heard.
Tommy is a loner as far as we know, and has a heart-breaking ritual that he
performs whenever another friend is killed by AIDS. It is not a ritual that can
be performed anymore, unless you are in possession of a Rolodex. Tommy is the yin
to Ned’s yang, a calm and quiet mouthpiece for GMHC, wondering why no one wants
to save his friends’ lives. He answers his own question in a eulogy: “They just
don’t like us,” he says. Us, of course, are the gay men, the very ones being
ripped apart by this vicious disease, singled out by the government as not
being worthy of protection or cure.
In the years since 1985, when The Normal Heart was first
staged, GMHC has expanded enormously and AIDS has become less of a stigma. Less
of one, but not “none of one.” We have learned more about it, but we have not
cured it. It can be staved off, but it has not been stamped out. We still walk
for it and dance for it. What we must never do is forget it.
