The Normal Heart is based on Larry Kramer's 1985 play by the same name. Kramer also wrote the screenplay (he was a screenwriter before he was an activist, and he got an Oscar nomination for adapting D H Lawrence's Women in Love for Ken Russell in 1969); Ryan Murphy directed; and Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Julia Roberts, Alfred Molina and others star.
It's essentially an autobiographical account of Kramer's experiences as a vocal and belligerent activist at the beginning of the AIDS crisis in New York in the early 1980s. I never saw the play, and the movie adaptation is so cinematic that, if I hadn't known, I never would gave guessed it was originally written for the stage. It doesn't seem at all like a filmed play, as so many do.
It is a very beautifully written and acted movie. I expected a tiresome polemic about AIDS, and I was surprised and delighted to find much more.
It IS an issue movie, with AIDS as the issue, and it's also a document of what life was like for some gay men in early-80s New York. But, much more importantly to me, it's a very entertaining and moving story about a brilliant and fiery and difficult man on a mission he couldn't have shirked even if he'd wanted to.
It's about family, in all senses. It's about love when love isn't easy. It's deeply romantic and it's heart-rending but never maudlin. It's about injustice and survival and life and death and joy.
It's about very real people - and I don't just mean individual people who really did (and do) exist. It's about being a human being in a difficult world, so it's profoundly relevant to everybody, not just gay men. I loved it.
I'm in awe of Mark Ruffalo now. I'd come to think of him as a quirky but predictable actor who pretty much just played himself in every movie he made, but he blew all that crap away with his performance in this movie. He's amazing.
So are Matt Bomer and Julia Roberts, and even beautiful Taylor Kitsch is pretty good. Paul Simon's haunting "The Only Living Boy in New York" is absolutely perfect at the end.
It's essentially an autobiographical account of Kramer's experiences as a vocal and belligerent activist at the beginning of the AIDS crisis in New York in the early 1980s. I never saw the play, and the movie adaptation is so cinematic that, if I hadn't known, I never would gave guessed it was originally written for the stage. It doesn't seem at all like a filmed play, as so many do.
It is a very beautifully written and acted movie. I expected a tiresome polemic about AIDS, and I was surprised and delighted to find much more.
It IS an issue movie, with AIDS as the issue, and it's also a document of what life was like for some gay men in early-80s New York. But, much more importantly to me, it's a very entertaining and moving story about a brilliant and fiery and difficult man on a mission he couldn't have shirked even if he'd wanted to.
It's about family, in all senses. It's about love when love isn't easy. It's deeply romantic and it's heart-rending but never maudlin. It's about injustice and survival and life and death and joy.
It's about very real people - and I don't just mean individual people who really did (and do) exist. It's about being a human being in a difficult world, so it's profoundly relevant to everybody, not just gay men. I loved it.
I'm in awe of Mark Ruffalo now. I'd come to think of him as a quirky but predictable actor who pretty much just played himself in every movie he made, but he blew all that crap away with his performance in this movie. He's amazing.
So are Matt Bomer and Julia Roberts, and even beautiful Taylor Kitsch is pretty good. Paul Simon's haunting "The Only Living Boy in New York" is absolutely perfect at the end.