Everybody's Got a Normal Heart

Julia Roberts has had a recent turn in her 25+ year career as America's Sweetheart - to a fearless performer. She was a force to be reckoned with in last year's Oscar nominated August: Osage County, even opposite Meryl Streep, Roberts was the leading lady who carried the film. For this, it was no shock to me that she gripped me once again as Dr. Emma Brookner in Ryan Murphy's TV movie The Normal Heart, which premiered this week on HBO. Roberts plays a brave doctor (based on Dr. Linda Laubenstein) who suffers from polio, who, although glued to her wheelchair, spends her days as one of the only doctors researching and attempting to save gay men's lives in the early 1980s during the HIV-AIDS crisis. Based on Larry Kramer's 1985 Off-Broadway production, Kramer serves as screenwriter on this film version of The Normal Heart, which took director Ryan Murphy years to obtain the rights to.

Mark Ruffalo plays the lead as Ned Weeks, the openly gay New York writer who is stirred by an article of The New York Times he reads in 1981 entitled "Rare Cancer Diagnosed in 41 Homosexuals." Watching his friends die off almost instantly after experiencing symptoms of this "cancer," Weeks becomes driven, along with Dr. Emma Brookner, to get this unnamed epidemic exposed to the public. With the death count climbing, Weeks forms a community organization called Gay Men's Health Crisis along with his friends, played by Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory), Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights), and Joe Mantello (Broadway star). Mark Ruffalo pulls out all the stops as the unapologetic activist who provokes the media and government to no longer conceal this crisis from those who are unaware of its effects on the human body.

The Normal Heart is one of the most true depictions of gay men on-screen that I have ever seen. Despite the powerful subject matter, Murphy's camera follows the emotions and thought processes of a gay man. He takes you back to an era that no longer exists; though the good of it can be relived - the bad of it must be known. Through the eyes of devoted Ryan Murphy and the piercing words of HIV-positive playwright Larry Kramer, emotion and frustration bleeds on-screen. In many scenes I felt like I was watching a play unfold, as characters exploded with passion, and left their mark on the room before they exited. The stand out was Joe Mantello's outburst about his inability to accept human disregard for young gay men perishing before they've left their mark on the universe. This topic has not been depicted cinematically to this extent, left inside a celluloid closet with those who it has affected. Be enraged at the dismissal of government support for the cause. Be informed. Be safe.

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