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aragarnaSo, I've finally watched The Normal Heart. Here are a few random thoughts from the film.
- I think one of the things that I appreciated the most was the absolute normalcy of the way Ned and Felix's story is depicted through their first dates, complete with the sex scene. I had heard that it would be quite intense. Well, if you forget one second it's a gay couple, that's just your regular sex scene. Actually quite PG for HBO. ;-) But anyway, I was pleased to see they didn't shy away from the gay relationship. And truly Matt and Mark had an incredible chemistry in those intimate scenes.
- The entire cast was top notch and all actors were great. Each of them brought their own personality to their characters and worked perfectly as an ensemble cast. Apart from Taylor Kitsch and a couple of supportings, I had all seen them before and appreciated as actors, so I was pleased to see them here, from Jim Parsons to Alfred Molina to those I don't know the names but I know I've seen them before. Oh and Mark Ruffalo... Is it just me or did he look particularly fine in this movie?
- Matt was... scary? Gosh I'm glad we had all those pictures from last week to prove he's just fine. His emaciated smile was probably the most touching thing.
Truly that's dedication. And I'm happy for him that he got the recognition for all the hard work he put in this movie. I really hope for him he'll find the success he deserves in his career and he's an actor I'm really looking forward to following in the coming years.
- But somehow, I felt the movie was missing a little something. Maybe an actual rage? They scream a lot, but I didn't feel the emergency translated well. Or maybe, on the contrary, perspective? All the material was there to make a strong and poignant story but I felt it fell a little short. Unless it's just a matter of medium. It would probably have a much bigger impact on me in the theater. And it also felt a little too much like a stage play, with disconnected scenes.
Or maybe it was a problem of timing. I'm too young to know the emergence of AIDS. Being born in 1985, it's always been there and by the time I was old enough to be told about those things, AIDS was already well understood (It's a classic virus case study in biology class in high school). And up until that nasty debate that devided my country last year about same-sex marriage, I was actually living in a bubble where I thought same-sex relationships were accepted as something normal.
But I've seen films dealing with gay rights or AIDS before. And I know the subject now.
The movie Milk, a few years ago, with Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, truly shocked me by the violence of the opposition and discrimination the gay community was victim of. I just couldn't believe that not that long before my time, people could still be so intolerant (I sill don't understand it today, and unfortunately it does exist, anti-gay are just generally less vocal).
And earlier this year I saw Dallas Buyers Club, which deals more or less with the same political aspect as TNH. It's set a few years later (it starts when TNH ends) and focuses on the drug issue, with the underlying constant fear of a disease that was still largely ill-understood.
The story of The Normal Heart is shocking but I felt like I was being told to be shocked, as opposed to be told a story and feeling shocked. (huh, still with me?)
- I had the night and morning to mull this over, and I think it would have been more powerful if they had just focused on the love story and how do you continue to live and love when people are dying from love all around you. I would have liked this to be dealt with more between Ned and Felix. Instead, I felt like they didn't really think about it and their story was disconnected from what was happening around them - until it caught up with them. And I really wanted to have more of Felix's side of the story. Not because I wanted more Matt (though I wouldn't have minded) but because he's the one living it. We had a couple of hints by the end, but I wish we had more of what it was like for him, at that time.
- I did find interesting to hear the differences of opinion inside the gay community and how outraged some of them were at the idea to come out.
All in all, it was still a more than decent film. And an important one to make. I don't know that many mainstream films, with a stellar cast promoting a gay story with a proudly outed cast.
Thoughts?
- I think one of the things that I appreciated the most was the absolute normalcy of the way Ned and Felix's story is depicted through their first dates, complete with the sex scene. I had heard that it would be quite intense. Well, if you forget one second it's a gay couple, that's just your regular sex scene. Actually quite PG for HBO. ;-) But anyway, I was pleased to see they didn't shy away from the gay relationship. And truly Matt and Mark had an incredible chemistry in those intimate scenes.
- The entire cast was top notch and all actors were great. Each of them brought their own personality to their characters and worked perfectly as an ensemble cast. Apart from Taylor Kitsch and a couple of supportings, I had all seen them before and appreciated as actors, so I was pleased to see them here, from Jim Parsons to Alfred Molina to those I don't know the names but I know I've seen them before. Oh and Mark Ruffalo... Is it just me or did he look particularly fine in this movie?
- Matt was... scary? Gosh I'm glad we had all those pictures from last week to prove he's just fine. His emaciated smile was probably the most touching thing.
Truly that's dedication. And I'm happy for him that he got the recognition for all the hard work he put in this movie. I really hope for him he'll find the success he deserves in his career and he's an actor I'm really looking forward to following in the coming years.
- But somehow, I felt the movie was missing a little something. Maybe an actual rage? They scream a lot, but I didn't feel the emergency translated well. Or maybe, on the contrary, perspective? All the material was there to make a strong and poignant story but I felt it fell a little short. Unless it's just a matter of medium. It would probably have a much bigger impact on me in the theater. And it also felt a little too much like a stage play, with disconnected scenes.
Or maybe it was a problem of timing. I'm too young to know the emergence of AIDS. Being born in 1985, it's always been there and by the time I was old enough to be told about those things, AIDS was already well understood (It's a classic virus case study in biology class in high school). And up until that nasty debate that devided my country last year about same-sex marriage, I was actually living in a bubble where I thought same-sex relationships were accepted as something normal.
But I've seen films dealing with gay rights or AIDS before. And I know the subject now.
The movie Milk, a few years ago, with Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, truly shocked me by the violence of the opposition and discrimination the gay community was victim of. I just couldn't believe that not that long before my time, people could still be so intolerant (I sill don't understand it today, and unfortunately it does exist, anti-gay are just generally less vocal).
And earlier this year I saw Dallas Buyers Club, which deals more or less with the same political aspect as TNH. It's set a few years later (it starts when TNH ends) and focuses on the drug issue, with the underlying constant fear of a disease that was still largely ill-understood.
The story of The Normal Heart is shocking but I felt like I was being told to be shocked, as opposed to be told a story and feeling shocked. (huh, still with me?)
- I had the night and morning to mull this over, and I think it would have been more powerful if they had just focused on the love story and how do you continue to live and love when people are dying from love all around you. I would have liked this to be dealt with more between Ned and Felix. Instead, I felt like they didn't really think about it and their story was disconnected from what was happening around them - until it caught up with them. And I really wanted to have more of Felix's side of the story. Not because I wanted more Matt (though I wouldn't have minded) but because he's the one living it. We had a couple of hints by the end, but I wish we had more of what it was like for him, at that time.
- I did find interesting to hear the differences of opinion inside the gay community and how outraged some of them were at the idea to come out.
All in all, it was still a more than decent film. And an important one to make. I don't know that many mainstream films, with a stellar cast promoting a gay story with a proudly outed cast.
Thoughts?
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Date: 2014-05-28 12:42 pm (UTC)Compared to the play, they actually did give us quite a lot more. The play itself had much more of an emphasis on the anger and outrage with much less on the romantic and everyday life side of things. For the movie, they added a bunch more of the Felix scenes--the sex scene, the cuddling, some of the scenes showing the impact of the disease on him, etc.--and in some cases toned down the ranting.
I think the issue is that the play was written for a largely gay NYC audience in 1985, and they didn't need an illustration of what it was like to live the way Felix and Ned were because so many of them were living it themselves. I think it was meant to politicize or mobilize the shock and outrage that they already felt from what they were seeing around them or experiencing themselves. I believe they made the changes they did, especially fleshing out Felix as a character, in order to give the story more emotional impact for 2014 audiences, but that framework of the play that was preaching (or ranting) to the choir in 1985 is still there.
Anyway, all of that is to say that I think your criticisms are totally valid, but that this is where I think those things came from. :)
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Date: 2014-05-28 01:00 pm (UTC)