The Normal Heart

[Soapsuds]

Discuss....had forgotten about this movie until Dan R. reminded me of it.

[Graham]

I wish I could find a torrent of this. Piratebay doesn't seem to have it yet.

[Faulkner]

Mark Ruffalo wasn't bad, but Joe Mantello should have reprised his role as Ned Weeks from the Broadway production. He was great in the stage play, and his monologue in the film was ferocious and deeply felt in a way Ruffalo never was to me.

[ThePrinceOfSunspear]

It was a very depressing film but I felt it was necessary to watch it. The ending was quite adrupt IMO and just kind of awkward. Wasn't sure how to feel at the end especially given what had just happened moments earlier.

Matt Bomer and Mark Ruffalo were amazing. Their relationship was just so moving and believable. Taylor Kitsch's character surprised me as did the actor. The whole cast was actually very good and if not for their acting I don't know how I could have made it through the movie. Julia Roberts monologue in the latter half was especially good.

Being younger I couldn't help but feel a little angry though at the beginning of the movie. I know hindsight is 20/20 and all that but it just seemed so ignorant of them to keep screwing around despite all the warnings Julia Robert's character was providing.....then the whole playing the political game versus go out in the streets screaming debate was very interesting to me. I tend to go with the former and in this case the character of Weeks was very annoying to me for most of the film (aside from the scenes with Bomer).

The marriage scene.....just heartbreaking

[Soapsuds]

https://tv.yahoo.com/blogs/tv-news/-the-normal-heart--review--and-let-the-emmys-roll-in---001313771.html

[BKuzak]

I thought the begining scenes were very true to the gay lifestyle of the 1970's. and the AIDS part was very real to the what was going on in the 80's. I just wish they talked about how Elizabeth Taylor got involved and really shined a spotlight on the diease...something the president didn't even do. Thanks to Elizabeth Taylor, AIDS paitents are living much longer now once they get on good medication. It's stil a death sentence but some people could live a pretty healthy life for years before they get sick. Not like in the 80's when there wasn't much treatment available and people were dying like flies.

It reminded me a little of a similar movie called "Longtime companion". That also showed the AIDS crises throughout the 80's but not as graphic.

Did anyone notice that HBO showed the logo it had in 1981 at the very begining of the movie. I thought that was pretty cool.

on a purley selfish level, i liked the short sex scenes with Bomer and the eariler one with the gangbang.

[DRW50]

If this wasn't directed by a man who is so deeply bigoted himself, I'd be more likely to watch it.

[Bright Eyes]

Yes, but he didn't write it and with the strong performances you really shouldn't worry about his influence.

[JackPeyton]

I thought it was really good.

I think all the acting was great but MB was the standout.

[BKuzak]

I don't want to get too political here but the part that really sickened me was at the end when they said Reagan wanted to decreese the amount of money that was being spent on finding a cure for AIDS. I know it was the 1980's but That was awful. I'll always like Nancy Reagan but that just put a big dark cloud over my feelings for him.

[ThePrinceOfSunspear]

Maybe I'm not connecting the dots but I don't understand how certain characters died and yet others didn't. Take Ned for example....Felix was healthy when they met each other right and yet he got sick and died of AIDS. So was he cheating on Ned while they were together and that's how he got it? Or did he have it all along and since he was the receiver Ned wasn't exposed to the disease.

Then there's Taylor Kitsch's character. His first boyfriend died of the disease and his second boyfriend died of it (that particular scene on the plane and afterwards was brutal). Yet Taylor's character never got sick...not even one cough.

It just seemed very random the people who were dying left and right.

And this is all fictional right? Was there really a Ned Weeks or is that just completely made up. I know the movie is based on the play by that Kramer fellow but did he actually do any of half of the stuff Ned Weeks did in the film?

[Bright Eyes]

Taylor Kitsch's character died at the end.

[ThePrinceOfSunspear]

True I guess it just seemed strange time wise. But I guess his immune system was a lot stronger than theirs. Ugghhh that ending....

[Graham]

Finally got around to seeing it. It didn't translate as well as I thought it would. I saw the revival and it still felt very "play" to me. Script could have used some tightening. Julia Roberts didn't suck so I guess there's that.

[SFK]

Prince, Ned is essentially a fictionalized yet very autobiographical version of Larry Kramer. Ned's lawyer brother and colleagues at GMHC were based on Larry's real-life counterparts.

My guess is that Felix had been HIV positive for quite some time, years before he met Ned. Not until he discovered the KS on his foot did he realize he had what we'd come to identify as full-blown AIDS. The first cases of GRID popping up in the late seventies and early eighties indicate that men were being infected in the early/mid-seventies as we now know that HIV even untreated can exist in the body for years before a person develops AIDS.

I'm really fascinated by the Robert R. story, a 16 year old black boy from St. Louis whose awful condition had doctors baffled in 1969. They saved several tissue/plasma samples and some twenty years later realized he had what was most likely one of the first documented cases of then unknown AIDS.

Arena Stage here in Washington did a very successful production two years ago, and I'm really sorry that I missed it. I'm guessing that things like the brutal airplane sequence trusted solely on a monologue in an able actor's hands.