the Blackthorn Orphans
  • B L O G
  • The Blackthorn Orphans: read it onsite
  • The Blackthorn Orphans TRANSLATIONS PAGE
  • Lovely R BLOG
  • PHOTOESSAYS
  • SELECTED RAVINGS: essays & opinion
  • RUBYHUE Lipstick Review
  • blackthorn ROSE REVIEW
  • KITCHEN BITCH: Recipes etc.
  • verse
  • Hostile Witness FILM REVIEW
  • ALOES & SUCCULENTS
  • Blackthorn Perfume Review
  • B I O
  • C O N T A C T

Hostile Witness Film Review: Dallas Buyers Club (2013, Jean-Marc Vallée)

2/10/2014

 
Picture
Sigh.  Those obligatory Oscar watches, eh?  Dallas Buyers Club isn't something I was gagging to wrap my corneas around.  I'd already formed an opinion, scraped like gilt with my magic mental teaspoon (I trust that thing implicitly) from the reactions of others and let's just say the result hadn't frogmarched me to the cinema.  But in the interests of this review I swept the old intellectual desktop clean and gave it a chance.

Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) is a skanky electrician rolling round Texas rodeos in the mid-eighties.  He contracts AIDS, is given a month to live and sets about obtaining alternative treatments for himself and others with the help of the transgendered Rayon (Jared Leto), who gives him entrée to the queer community he despises.  His entrepreneurial efforts set him against the medical establishment and more importantly the American Food and Drug Administration, who prosecute and sanction him at every turn.  A simple, cogent premise that could travel in a dozen riveting directions, right?

Picture
I'll speak first to my fellow beady hypercriticals and say depleted palette.  Because a lot of you will know what that means- code brown, my friends.  Arthouse lite.  Fincher institutional colours/take my secretive genius seriously filter.  It's such a Pavlovian cue now and fucking everyone's doing it, so note to filmmakers everywhere; enough with the backed-off sepia and faux-polaroid anachronistic foolishness.  It's played out, mmmokay?

Overworked stylistic flourishes do have a value in that they refer, perversely and rather ruthlessly, to both narrative deficits and dodgy performances.  Dallas Buyers Club features both.  While Woodroof's persistence and native resourcefulness are explored, the story is undercooked and overlong; in a word, flabby.  Sometimes boring, and without even using that grind to put us into his skin or really serving the matter to hand.  There is at least some laudable ambiguity around the morality of Woodroof's modus, but I felt that was something dumped in front of me and left to languish, bereft of the examination it possibly deserved. 

At the heart of the film's problems is the division of attention.  Too much was/is lavished upon the two leads, who can't really reward or sustain that scrutiny while everyone else is reduced to walk-on cardboard, including token chick Dr Saks (Jennifer Garner).  She bangs a wall with a hammer in frustration (I shit you not), but then I've yet to see Garner even come close to transcending the mediocre material that seems to be her lot.

Picture
McConaughey's performance is adequate, if you accept that you're only going to get the very few things he can do, regardless of what is actually required (exhibit A: True Detective).  Leto is typically, terribly thirsty, tooth-achingly self-conscious, running out of stunt queen moves halfway through his role and just tapping out and going limp when shit gets real.  That he could not rise to the dramatic opportunities posed by parental confrontation and pointy-end mortality tells you... well, everything you need to know.  

It's not all his fault; as a character, Rayon is superficially recognisable, but also a sloppy pastiche of workhorse clichés and lazy framing, a microcosm of this thing in the round and here's where I go into mini-rant mode.  No one would argue that clichés are without value or even authenticity; they are one of the founding structures of any subcultural expression after all.  But in the game of militant personal identity, attendant clichés are also knowingly subverted, kicked around and punted into the stands rather than regarded as the kind of gospel suggested by these hamfisted depictions.  So many extrinsic observers of otherness miss this glaring subtext.  Let loose without an ounce of subtlety or irony between them, McConaughey and Leto look like the mugging goons they are.  Two fucking Oscars, my arse.

Picture
Anyone with even a passing interest in the AIDS crisis and the establishment's response knows the FDA and successive political/medical administrations have been major villains in the tragedy that is still unfolding.  Dallas Buyers Club could have gone a lot further into those still trackless woods and profited greatly from the telling of such dreadful and complicated things.  But it's just not that kind of film.  After all the hype and oversaucing, DBC is still a B-, and that's only because I'm in a good mood.

*   More Hostile Witness Film Review   *   Best of the Blog   *   Read the Book onsite   *



Comments are closed.

    RSS Feed

    Picture

    Independent Creativity
    Hi-Fi Introversion

    ORIGINAL CONTENT
    HONEST REVIEWS
    VELVETEEN VERBIAGE
    VISUAL LUXURY
    MORBID IDLING
    THE NATURAL WORLD
     
    ​photography  
    film
    flora  fauna  culinary
    ethnography  objet
    ​

    modest living
    ​vintage shit

    A U T H O R
    Picture
    K ✂︎ l l y
    congenital delinquent
    Human Durian
    celebrating
    glorious deviation in the land of
     the long white cloud

    -  New Zealand  -


    - T h e   B o o k -

    Picture
    T H E  
    B L A C K T H O R N
    O R P H A N S


    What is freedom, when it is
    all that remains to you?
    In exile two brothers pursue an anarchist's trajectory,  from an old world into the new, from East to West, subject always to the pleasures & horrors of an enduring flesh, to the ironies of karma & impunity. Love bears thorns, the lost return & the dead are haunted by the living. 
    ​

    E P I C   D A R K   F I C T I O N
    *   R E A D   *
    T H E
    B L A C K T H O R N 
    O R P H A N S
     O N S I T E  

    H e r e



    Picture

    Selected
    ​Ravings

    opinion essays observation private regret public 
    exaltation semicoherent speculation 

    Picture

    Photoessay​

    epic undertakings
    documented

    ​
    Picture

    Hostile Witness FilmReview

    Cruel but fair

    Picture

    RubyHue 
    ​
    Lipstick Review

    Lipstick: love it
    ​

    Picture

    Our Photography​

    we've seen worse
    ​

    Picture

    Port Chalmers​

    Dunedin, New Zealand
    ​

    Picture

    Blackthorn ​
    ​Rose Review

    Garden Hoe Wisdom
    Picture

    Verse​

    Loss, love, truth, beauty everything, everything
    ​
    Picture

    The  Lovely R's Blog​

    Likes photography  Knows a bit about it

    Picture

    We Liked This​

    Amazing things from other people
    ​

    Picture

    Cacti, Aloes
    ​&
     
    Flora​

    Our garden & general vegetal splendours
    ​

    Picture

    KitchenBitch

    Home cooking
    & raw ingredients
    ​
    Picture

    Ethnographic​

    Strange wonderful things from elsewhere
    ​

    Picture

    Jewellery
    ​

    Picture

    Tiny Little 
    Dinosaurs
    - a book for children -


    All images & text property of the authors 
    ​
    unless stated

    © us
    & original sources
    All Rights Reserved



    Picture

    Privacy Policy
    ​This is a noncommercial site.
    No ads. No shady data jacks. 
    No interest in your bizniz.

    ​We don't personally view, utilise or sell your data, apart from occasionally checking totally anonymous + super basic site view stats. We don't even know how to monetise that stuff, so don't worry.  Everyone's privacy is important to us.

    Our platform is probably harvesting your data, though, via their cookies. Look at their privacy page so you can see what they're up to.

    Please use Adblock or something similar.
    ​
    Google et al superimpose ads that we never see a penny from so fuck them.

    Picture

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013


    Picture

    Categories

    All
    A Thing Of Beauty
    Blackthorn Orphans
    Blackthorn Rose Review
    Cacti & Aloes
    Ethnographica
    Flora
    Hostile Witness Film Reviews
    Jewellery
    Kitchen Bitch
    Make Up Review
    Maximum Respect
    Perfume Reviews
    Photo Du Jour
    Photo Essay
    Places & Things: A Blackthorn Review
    Port Chalmers
    Remembering Dreams
    Roses
    Selected Ravings
    Softcore Rendition
    Sweetmeat
    Textiles
    The Lovely R
    Verse
    We Liked This

    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.