esrosedotblog

HARD ROAD

Today's film was the NYTimes Critics' Pick documentary

How To Survive a Plague (2012)

This extremely lucid record of the AIDS years between onset and potent cocktail treatment is a blunt instrument meant to show us that pure dependence on government to solve our problems is an idle fancy.

Only the most extreme advocacy was instrumental in moving the gears of science, government and the public to not only do something about the plague but to, most of all, be kind.

Our villains are displayed and then dispatched. George Bush, Jesse Helms, Ed Koch and even Bill Clinton.

The heroes of the movement were the ACT UP people. It is really their film.

They are shown warts and all through their many trials and errors, breakups and coming back together.

AIDS was "discovered" about five years after I came out again. John and I met before the major onset. We missed the enormous bullet.

But friends died. Disappeared. Horror show.

If anyone feels sorry about "the gays" as an oppressed minority, they can get over it. Sure. True. But these people took their lives into their own hands and turned the horror around.

There are enough of the activists around to make a nice set of talking heads.

The editing is superb.

Many guys who made it through all this found that they had some survivor guilt as well as a kind of "what do I do now?" feeling. They had never made any long term plans or were able to see into a different future than the one they had. I know guys who had this happen. They recovered their lives. In the end titles they show many of the people in this film and tell what and where they are doing.

Very nice. I liked it and once was enough. A 3 out of Netflix5.

Labels: films, gay history