On Dallas Buyers Club

All films are about something, but Dallas Buyers Club is a film about issues and issues that matter. Within a biography (of Ron Woodruff) the film addresses, without favouring one over the other, the story of Woodruff from his diagnosis with HIV to the end of his court battle, with a biting criticism of the American health care system and a recent history of homophobia. The balancing act is impressive. 

The budget, comparatively with US films at the cinema staring mainstream actors is minuscule, and this shows on screen and adds a certain underdog charm that parallels the battle Woodruff engages in with the FDA, a battle we know he is destined to loose, despite wishing otherwise. This isn't Erin Brockovich (2000). Here the more common story is told, the story where big business wins.

Set in the 1980s Dallas Buyers Club can trace the rise of HIV and the Aids virus and the growing homophobia that swept across America. As with all the issues the film addresses, Matthew McConaughey's character encompasses them all in what will be a highlight of his career. McConaughey, with great subtly moves Woodruff from seeing his fellow HIV sufferers as hard cash into genuine sympathy and empathy, becoming an outraged public fighter; he simply claims at one point, with a mixture of exhaustion, disbelief and supplication that "people are dying". His outrage is all the more vicious as he's an outsider, a straight man with a 'gay' disease.  Where his fellow sufferers appear battle worn from the homophobia they've faced and still face, Woodruff is fresh for the fight, especially as he comes from the other side. 

McConaughey's performance has been rightly lauded, yet he is surrounded by an excellent supporting cast. The transition in McConaughey's career has been clear with the choices he has recently made although a look back over his CV shows an actor unafraid to take risks, A Time to Kill (1996), Contact (1997) and Tropic Thunder (2008) where he lampoons his persona to name but a few. Yet Dallas Buyers Club is and will remain a highlight both for McConaughey's and everyone involved. A small film deserving of a big audience.  

On Desperation and Out of the Furnace

Out of the Furnace could be a visual accompaniment to the music of Bruce Springsteen whose music has its roots in the struggles of working class Americans. Set in mining community, evocative of The Deer Hunter (1978), Out of the Furnace explores the severe effects of a country in deep recession and replete with inequality.

Unemployment for the film’s protagonists is a constant threat and where these characters may have at one time been perceived as lazy, here they are hardworking, but desperate, reflecting the terrifying statistic that for every job place in America, there are four Americans vying for it. The platitude of dead or in jail couldn’t be more apt than here, but again the characters are sympathetic, with the exception of Woody Harrelson’s cartoonish villain. The brother’s whose story Out of the Furnace follows want to work, yet for one crime and eventually death beckons and for the other, with the closure of the mining plant, an uncertain future awaits, but jail is not a stretch. Yet these are good people and the film posits their fate is the responsibility of a poorly managed economy.

Neither does the war escape criticism as Casey Affleck’s returning soldier finds his future bleak outside of the army. As he stresses in one of the film’s most powerful scenes, he offered his life for his country and has now been casually cast aside. The soldier welcomes death as the only release from the horrors he has seen as a country unwilling to acknowledge his service.

In these ways, Out of the Furnace is symbolic of America, specifically the Bush administration, but sadly also the administration of change unfulfilled that Obama is becoming associated with. The film is powerfully acted and opens with a quiet assertiveness that disappears as the inevitable ending approaches. Still, this is an important, well made film with a message not to be ignored.

On a Long Journey with Inside Llewyn Davis

Ulysses, the 1922 James Joyce novel takes its title from the Roman name for Odysseus, the protagonist of Homer’s Odyssey who took ten years to return home. The idea of an almost endless journey for a frustrated ‘hero’ is not one uncommon to the Coen brothers. Many of their characters do not reach a traditional narrative ending and feel so ingrained in their landscape that they could have been born within it. Tommy Lee Jones’ Ed Tom Bell from No Country For Old Men (2007) being a prime example as the films cuts of mid story suggesting his is one that never ends. The Gopnik family from their underrated A Serious Man (2009) are perpetually dogged by bad luck and the film ends with a continuation of this. There 2000 O Brother Where Art Thou? is loosely based on the Odyssey, with the unlucky trio meeting many interesting characters on  their journey, including the sirens.

The Coens’ most recent and highly acclaimed film, Inside Llewyn Davis (with a cat named Ulysses) employs a cyclical narrative suggesting an unending struggle for the eponymous Llewyn. Llewyn’s journey throughout the film has a sense of timelessness; he even comments at one point that only a couple of days have passed, but it feels like much longer. This sums up the feeling that Inside Llewyn Davis communicates. Llewyn’s life is one so difficult that we would feel sorry for him if he weren’t so responsible for much of his difficulties. That he is a musician, trying to make what he sees as real music against a backdrop of commercialism places his journey again within a timeless setting.

That the Coen brothers show us full song performances goes against what we expect of traditional narrative cinema, but feels necessary for Inside Llewyn Davis as the lyrics provide narrative support and the slow, steady camera supports the sensation of Llewyn’s long journey. This is further brought to life by Bruno Delbonnel’s photography, which presents New York and more specifically Greenwich Village as being trapped in a shade of grey where there is no escape from the cold.

Inside Llewyn Davis is accomplished filmmaking from two men who are perhaps the most accomplished filmmakers working in America and continues a thematic narrative technique of characters, difficult and put-upon in their own unique ways, trying to move their way through life.