A friend recommended HBO's TV movie "Ordinary Heart", which tells the story of a gay organization in New York in the early 1980s about AIDS and the government's struggle. Although the movie is far from perfect, it is pretty good.
The struggle always starts with more marginal characters. The hero of the story, Ned Weeks, is an arrogant writer gay. He is responsible for looking at the clothes when the gay party is almost undressed and dancing. Emma is a female doctor who was paralyzed by polio. She began to come into contact with AIDS-infected men in 1981 and asked Ned for help so that the latter could report this situation to the public. Witnessing one after another infection of his good friends, Ned never asked about political affairs and turned into a fighter, and began to form a gay health crisis organization, hoping that the government can pay attention to the epidemic. In the process, he met Felix, a New York Times reporter. The two fell in love. The career of the gay organization is of course not going well. Felix was infected again. Friends hung up one by one. And Ned's excessively extreme behavior led to internal strife in the organization and was kicked out again. Finally Felix died too.
The movie script is adapted from the stage play of the same name, and the stage script is adapted from real events. The writer Larry Kramer is the prototype of the male protagonist Ned. The "Gay Men's Health Crisis" (Gay Men's Health Crisis, now commonly called GMHC) is not only a real existence, but it is by far the world's largest non-governmental organization helping people living with HIV. Infighting does exist. In fact, the fuse for Kramer to write this script was his disagreement with his colleagues at GMHC in 1983 and he was driven away. At that time, he set up another organization, called AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP for short. Compared with GMHC, ACT UP is politically more radical.
Kramer left GMHC first because of his dissatisfaction with the bureaucracy. Secondly, he believes that the widespread spread of AIDS is a political issue that requires the government to intervene and invest resources. At that time, GMHC was mainly dedicated to providing social services and hospice care to gay men who were infected. The third is because he often makes radical remarks in public without consulting with members of the organization. The fourth possibility is also related to his attitude towards sex. The situation at that time was that AIDS had just begun to spread on a large scale, and people were not clear about the route of its transmission. Some doctors advise gay men not to go to sleep to avoid infection. Kramer believes that GMHC should pass this message to everyone. But in the 1980s, sexual liberation was only ten or twenty years old, and the comrade struggle had just won some phased victories. Many people think that it is their right to sleep to the fullest, and a way to express themselves and connect with other people in the world. They think Kramer is making a fuss.
After being expelled from the GMHC, Kramer went to Europe and visited the Dachau Concentration Camp. This concentration camp was established in 1933. He was surprised that so many people in history had been silent about this. After coming back, he wrote the script of "Ordinary Heart", criticizing the government and politicians for indifferent to the people's right to health, at the same time criticizing the indifference of the gay community to the AIDS issue, and the powerlessness of civil organizations in political advocacy. Of course, in order to balance the emotional color of the script, he deliberately wrote the male lead Ned as someone who looks a bit annoying: the members of the gay organization endured the humiliation for a long time, and finally got a chance to talk to government officials, and Ned was uttered with a big mouth. The attack is gone; I am quite arrogant and rarely consider other people’s feelings when speaking. Even if I am facing my lover, I can say what I hate it casually; I talk about political views at the dating table for fear of others. I didn't know he was going to be a fighter-talking about Dachau concentration camp.
But combined with historical circumstances, you will feel that Ned's extremeness is quite excusable. The government is unwilling to face the outbreak of the epidemic, nor does it invest money in scientific research and medical treatment. There is a slanderous description in the movie. Ned talks to the president's advisers at the White House. The latter closed the door and asked him quietly if the disease was only passed on to gays. It doesn't matter if straight men usually sleep with prostitutes. So far, there is no record of heterosexual infection. In a highly uncertain situation, if the people in it are unwilling to wait for death, they will only have to struggle and shout. There is also a description in the film: a GMHC volunteer had a mental breakdown when he was extremely tired at work, crying that it is possible that AIDS was really a conspiracy made by the government, and the purpose was to wipe out all of us. The real situation is that Kramer's extremely paranoid behavior in the 1980s did increase media exposure, forcing people who did not want to face the problem to realize the existence of the problem.
I have a little knowledge and exposure to the domestic AIDS movement and gay movement, so the relationship between the characters in many films looks familiar. The struggle between radicalism and conservativeness, policy advocacy and "care" has also been encountered in several well-known AIDS organizations in China. What is different is the context in which it happened. In New York, the gay men organized themselves first and forced the government to face up to the problem through constant resistance. In China, the voice of people calling for the government to pay attention to AIDS has been around since the 1990s, but in the end the government started to invest resources, mainly because of the infectious disease and public health crisis caused by SARS. Many gay organizations emerged as an entry point for disease control precisely after the government invested resources.
This background has also led to a closer relationship between gay organizations in China and the government. However, because lesbian organizations did not have the opportunity to shake hands with officials of the Ministry of Health, they turned to grassroots development, and at the same time combined with various feminist issues, they were more radical than gays in marriage and other issues. There is a lot of discord between the two groups. When the crisis comes (if there will be some kind of crisis in the future), will there be a moving scene in which lesbians go to GMHC to volunteer and support gays in the movie.
The overall atmosphere of the film is depressing, one of the few highlights:
The love between Ned and Felix. Felix loves Ned very much. He tolerated Ned, who was irritable, and at the same time saw the fear deep in Ned's heart. In the end, he left all the inheritance to Ned, and told the latter to find a chance to continue the struggle. Felix is also very good-looking. In short, this is a perfect lover. In reality, Kramer in the 1980s broke up with his partner because of the protest movement. Before that, he had written a controversial novel, Faggots, in which the male protagonist also used himself as a prototype, seeking a long-term and stable relationship, but was unable to find it, and suffered from it. Probably he was fulfilling his dream of finding true love in the script. In the end, the wedding in the ward was very warm and touching.
The paralyzed female doctor Emma played by Big Mouth Ju. Calm, courageous, and always restrained until the final hearing broke out. It's more interesting here, but the one that hasn't been clear is actually the relationship between her and Ned. In the movie, she was the first to detect the problem, and was the first to go to the gay party to let everyone cool down. (Then she was scolded as "a bitch in a wheelchair.") She seemed to be attracted by Ned a little bit, and leaned on a cane into the latter's arms. But immediately he said, put me back in the wheelchair. The creation of such a character that is almost asexual, I don't know if it is also related to Kramer's attitude towards sex at the time.
Tommy, the GMHC staff member played by Xie Er. A very gentle person who has been fighting, always trying to reconcile the irritable Ned and Bruce who has not yet come out but is the leader of the organization. He seemed to comfort and hug everyone in the movie. There are several hints in the film that he also likes Ned. (Ah, why do everyone like this male protagonist who is not very good-looking and not very good.)
Now, the transmission route of AIDS has been figured out. Although no cure or vaccine has been found, the method of controlling the disease is quite mature. "You don't have to die." An AIDS activist I had contacted told me, "If you must get a chronic disease, it would be AIDS rather than heart disease or diabetes." The struggle in the real world. , The ending is brighter than in the movie. It's just that when I learned that the script was not an afterthought when the dust had settled, it had been staged when the struggle was in full swing in the 1980s, and it had been touring around the world for a long time, and my heart trembled a little.
View more about The Normal Heart reviews
