The Normal Heart

(2014, directed by Ryan Murphy, starring Mark Ruffalo, Jonathan Groff, Frank De Julio, and Taylor Kitsch)

The Normal Heart is a film that depicts the HIV epidemic in New York of the early 1980s. The lives of HIV advocacy founder Ned weeks, his male lover, and members of his community are explored in order to present the struggle that homosexual men faced within political circles, the workplace, or even in their own neighbourhoods. The film did and still does leave me a bit shocked and uncomfortable for two reasons.  The first reason is that the film was very sexually explicit.  The second reason was the way that symptoms attributed to HIV were shown through various characters. It was very graphic and disturbing. I understand the approach that was used in order to display the human body as valuable and beautiful but at the same time very vulnerable and fragile. Overall the film is very complex and I feel that there were a lot of layers in terms of themes and issues that coincided with each other, making the viewing experience very intense.

Ned Weeks was very passionate about his cause, due to the fact that his colleagues and close friends were affected by HIV. He witnessed many of them go through stages of the illness and attended many funerals. That reality must have brought on feelings of  sadness, emotional numbness, and hopeless. Weeks made a point to speak up in defense of the gay community, however I really could not understand his approach as depicted in the movie. He often sabotaged himself because he did not have the ability to be diplomatic, build rapport, have charisma, and negotiate. His passion was greatly appreciated, however he did not know how to conduct himself around politicians or people who were uncomfortable about his sexual preference, but were in a position to help his cause.

There are various scenes that show him going to conferences and interviews without the consent or knowledge of his advocacy group. He would often make very general and strong statements or initiate verbal battles, that reflected his personal interests rather than that of his community. He was not voted in as president of his own group and he was eventually voted out of the group all together.

In the film Weeks was depicted as someone who had a lot of emotional baggage. It was easy to pick this up when he had discussions with his older brother.  They would discuss their childhood and therapy. I would have been interested in seeing a little more of a story between Weeks and his brother. The scene where Ben took Felix to the hospital and stayed while both Ned and Felix were married by Dr. Emma Brookner, was very powerful. Ben and Ned were reunited and Ned finally received Ben’s acceptance towards his sexual identity and personal choices.

As a learning tool about gender, sexuality, and love this is a very good film choice. Even though as I stated above there are many elements occurring simultaneously in this film, love is a very central and well developed theme.