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The Normal Heart

HBO delivers the best telemovie of the year in a political, personal, tour de force led by a stunning cast.

2014-07-30_2334Let me make this very easy for you.

The Normal Heart is the finest telemovie we’ve seen this year.

It is powerful, emotional and confronting, with superb performances that gravitate between the bigger picture and intimate, personal stories.

You only have to look at the credentials of this work to know the bar is set high. Playwright Larry Kramer has adapted his Tony Award winning play into this HBO telemovie. It is directed by Ryan Murphy (Glee, American Horror Story) and the cast includes Mark Ruffalo, Jim Parsons, Julia Roberts, Jonathan Groff, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch and Alfred Molina.

Not convinced?

It already has 16 Emmy nominations (including 4 in the supporting actor category) and it will surely dominate the telemovie / miniseries categories this year.

But don’t watch it for the accolades. Watch it because it is a compelling piece of television, the best on the subject of HIV / AIDS since another HBO work, Angels in America and the most political since And the Band Played On.

It begins in the 1980s on Fire Island, where gay men are having weekend parties. It is a liberating time, where sexual freedom leads to excess. For writer Ned Weeks (Mark Ruffalo), who doesn’t quite fit the Muscle Mary image, it is an escape to hedonism.

But his friend Craig (Jonathan Groff) falls ill to a strange, emerging disease that leads him to meet Dr. Emma Brookner (Julia Roberts), an exhausted, wheelchair-bound city doctor overwhelmed by the flurry of gay men being cut down in their prime. Ned is trying to grasp the disease, while Dr. Brookner is struggling to identify and treat it. With such high stakes, they lock horns.

“Tell gay men to stop having sex!” she insists.

“Do you realise you are talking about millions of men who have singled out promiscuity as their single political agenda? How do you deal with that?” he asks.

“Tell them they may die,” she says.

At a communal meeting Dr. Brookner is blunt with a room full of angry and desperate gay men.

“Doesn’t common sense tell you you should cool it for a while?” she tells them.

“What will we have to look forward to?” asks Tommy (Jim Parsons).

The ‘gay cancer’ is soon named Gay-related Immune Deficiency, and skin lesions are Kaposi’s sarcoma.

Ned uses words as his weapon, writing articles on the topic.

“We are all walking time bombs waiting for whatever it is to set us off. If this article doesn’t scare the shit out of you, gay men may have no future here one earth.”

Ned turns to his brother, lawyer Ben Weeks (Molina), to provide free legal advice to the newly-formed Gay Men’s Health Crisis. But despite their abiding affection, the two do not see eye to eye. Ned struggles to see his fury as anything other than a gay vs straight battle to survive.

But he also meets New York Times reporter Felix Turner (Matt Bomer) and pleads for him to write an article on the crisis. While Felix is reluctant to take a public stand on his sexuality, he ends up as Ned’s romantic interest for the remainder of the telemovie.

Within the GMHC dashing new arrival Bruce (Taylor Kitsch) is voted President over the outspoken Ned. While they are fighting for the same cause, their methodologies differ wildly.

“You don’t look that Jewish,” says Bruce.

“You don’t look gay. So I guess we could both pass for white people,” Ben tells him.

It is Ned’s tactics, or lack of them, that frustrate those around him. Politics within and without GMHC tear at the group. While friends are dying, Ned lashes out at those closest to him, even outing a closeted NYC Mayor.

“You get more with honey than vinegar, babe,” Tommy advises.

But he has a friend in Dr. Brookner.

“I scare the shit out of people. I’m a terror in a wheelchair,” she admits.

A national epidemic becomes a plague, with Washington refusing to act. Remarkably, President Reagan’s name is never uttered -perhaps because it was he who refused to name the disease for so long.

Against a backdrop of 80s fashion and songs (I Will Survive, You Make Me Feel Mighty Real, More than This and The Man I Love by the NYC Men’s Chorus), The Normal Heart is rarely an easy watch.

The cast is superb with Ruffalo as the passionate, obstinate, crusader. Julia Roberts is aptly cold and driven, personifying science struggling to deal with an unstoppable force. Matt Bomer gives his best performance yet as the gorgeous, romantic interest and Jim Parsons completely evaporates any Big Bang memories as the biting, sense of reason. This, folks, is a helluva ensemble.

Some of the cast will undergo gob-smacking physical transformations that match Matthew McCanaughey’s rapid weight loss for Dallas Buyer’s Club. They’ll get an Emmy just for their commitment.

Larry Kramer’s script deftly juggles the political and personal ramifications of this assault. Most of the cast are afforded theatrical monologues that allow them to shine. We’re all the better for it.

The Normal Heart is a tour de force.

Don’t miss it.

The Normal Heart airs 8:30pm Sunday on Masterpiece.

6 Responses

  1. Finally got around to watching this and all I can say was that your line that it “is rarely an easy watch” is an understatement.

    I liked the movie & agree with much of what you stated here, but death after death after death just got a bit much for me in the end.

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