Rating (1 to 10) : 7
Summary: A TV-movie adaptation of Randy Shilt’s novel that details the early years of investigating and fighting AIDS in the US.
After watching this movie, you’re left wondering just how did our nation finally start the fight against AIDS. AIDS was unknown until victims started appearing and this movie depicts the time when doctors first became aware of it to the early years of the struggle to combat AIDS.
The lead character is Dr. Don Francis (Matthew Modine, Joker in “Full Metal Jacket”). He just started working at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) when his work group started receiving reports from various doctors from around the country that gay men were dying from strange diseases that are usually non-lethal to most humans.
Part of the movie shows the investigative and research efforts of Dr. Francis’ team as they try to identify this new disease. They faced many questions: is this disease communicable? If communicable, just how is it transmitted? How high is the mortality rate of this disease? How does it allow secondary diseases to kill the victims? The film portrays their efforts well. The film also makes a point of not leaving out the effort of the French doctors at the Pasteur Institute, led by Dr. Rozenbaum (Tchéky Karyo), to identify the virus of this new disease.
But the most informative aspect of the movie just how much conflict there was behind the scenes between various political and scientific organizations and constituents during this time. The conflicts hindered the CDC’s effort to raise awareness of this new disease and to stop the spread of it. At first, AIDS mostly affected the marginalized of society (gays, drug users, prostitutes) and the movie makes an indictment against the Reagan administration for their seeming indifference to the growing crisis. The message is that Reagan didn’t care because the victims were gay men. One could argue though that AIDS was not a high priority because it wasn’t the most deadliest disease – back then and even now, more people die of cancer or heart disease than AIDS. It is because of efforts like this movie that the AIDS epidemic has acquired civil rights of its own.
Yet the movie isn’t critical just of the Reagan administration. It also shows how various groups and constituencies opposed the CDC’s measures to combat the spread of AIDS. The gay community strongly opposed closing down gay bathhouses even though unprotected sex in those venues were the leading causes of transmission because they valued their sexual freedom more than public health. The blood industry refused at first to screen for AIDS or even acknowledge that hemophiliacs were contracting AIDS from tainted blood because they didn’t want to start a blood transfusion scare and lower their revenues in the blood business. And the National Institute of Health (NIH), led by Dr. Gallo (Alan Alda), was very uncooperative with the CDC in sharing information or resources to fight AIDS because they were more worried about bureaucratic rivalries than public health. In fact, if there is a villain in this movie, it is Dr. Gallo, who is depicted as an egoist more concerned about getting recognition for his efforts rather than on the common good of fighting the AIDS epidemic. To him, it was more important that he won awards and the approbations of the scientific community than it was to identify and stop the AIDS virus. I’m surprised Dr. Gallo didn’t sue for defamation.
There are numerous actors and actresses, some of them big names like Richard Gere, who are in this movie, mostly because they felt it was a social cause. The fact that actors like Ian McKellen and B.D. Wong participated is not surprising since they are gay and this movie deals with an issue that is very important to the gay community. But there are many others like Donal Logue, Angelica Huston, Lily Tomlin, Saul Rubinek, Glenne Headley, Steve Martin, Phil Collins, and Richard Masur, who became involved with this movie because it was so important to show that public health policies should not ignore the marginalized like homosexuals.
Why you should or should not see this movie:
You should see this movie because it is an informative and entertaining docudrama about the early days of the fight against AIDs.