Calvin Holbrook gives readers
a tour of movies that tackle HIV
There’s
nothing like a good flick to take away your troubles for a couple of hours,
and we all know life with HIV can create more strife than we’d care
for.
But how has HIV itself been represented in the movies? After all, it’s
hardly a topic that packs ‘em in at the multiplex.
In the early days of the epidemic, Hollywood was too afraid to touch the subject.
It took a decade and the deaths of many of its own for Tinseltown to take
the subject seriously. Robert Epstein’s 1989 award-winning documentary
Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt was one of the first film to focus
on the lives and deaths of people with Aids.
When feature films about HIV finally emerged in the 1990s, people living with
the virus were often stereotypically portrayed as sufferers and victims. Of
course, pre-HAART a diagnosis was often a death sentence. And no one, let
alone filmmakers, knew what impact the virus would have on the world.
Thankfully, life with HIV, at least in the prosperous west, has changed dramatically
over the past 20 years, and so has its cinematic portrayal. Producers are
beginning to mine a much richer seam of HIV positive characters and better
reflect the politics and black humour as well as the tragedy.
Longtime Companion
Norman Rene’s 1990 film made at MGM studios was perhaps the first Hollywood
release to put a human face on the HIV epidemic and its impact on an entire
generation of gay men in New York.
It chronicles the lives of a group of friends between 1981, when they first
become aware of the virus, and 1989, when loved ones are memorialised and
buried. The men start the film riding high; they live in Manhattan and party
at Fire Ireland clubs. They have well-paid jobs, flash their cash in Bloomingdales
and are all incredibly handsome. But as the virus takes its toll, the movie
shows men once devoted to hedonism taking up new responsibilities; caring
for each other unto death.
Longtime Companion, the term newspapers used to describe the surviving same-sex
partner of someone who has died of Aids, picked up honours and awards; many
for Bruce Davison’s performance that won a Golden Globe and an Oscar
nomination.
Breaking taboos
A
few years later, Tom Hanks went a step further and bagged himself one of the
little gold statues for his heartfelt performance in Jonathan Demme’s
Philadelphia (1993). This was first star-studded Hollywood film about the
virus and arguably the most wide-reaching.
Hanks plays Andrew Beckett, a lawyer fired by his conservative law firm for
being HIV positive. He sues his former employer with the help of an initially
homophobic lawyer played by Denzil Washington. Beckett refuses to back down
in the face of prejudice and wins his case before succumbing to the virus
in the last, tear-jerking scene.
Philadelphia was controversial but played a large part in changing people’s
attitudes to HIV. While it was certainly a breakthrough in terms of bringing
the virus to the big screen, many subsequent Hollywood films still represented
HIV in terms of death and dying, rather than showing people living with the
virus; this is a trap more independent films have resisted.
Patient Zero and Reagan science
1993 was also the year HBO released an adaption of Randy Shilt’s 1987
book And the Band Played On featuring Matthew Modine and a young(ish) Richard
Gere. It told of the scientific, political and human story of dedicated medical
researchers struggling to understand HIV between 1980 and 1985, and how politicians
under Reagan’s control denied them adequate funding. But the filmmakers
were so intent on bombarding us with facts and figures they forgot to provide
a dramatic human framework. The film also drew criticism for its portrayal
of flight attendant Gaetan Dugas, dubbed ‘Patient Zero’, who was
assumed by Shilts to have been the original source of HIV infection in gay
men in North America. The idea of a single patient zero has since been debunked
by scientists.
Angels
The critically acclaimed Angels in America (2003) was a much greater success
for HBO. A US TV mini-series adapted from Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer-prize
winning play, Angels is widely regarded - and for good reason - as the greatest
film inspired by HIV and the people whose lives it touches.
Starring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson, the film concerns a group
of New Yorkers caught up in a series of disasters in the early 1980s. In the
midst of all this, an Aids patient called Prior starts having angelic visions
that may or not be real.
It’s an intense film with outrageous humour and unexpected twists. At
six hours it will probably take a couple of sittings, but it is worth it.
There are many phenomenal performances, not least Pacino’s portrayal
of Roy Cohn, the commie-hunting, power- hungry McCarthyite lawyer who died
of Aids in 1986, still denying his sexuality and railing against gay men and
poor people.
A flowering
Hollywood’s most recent blockbuster to feature HIV is The Constant Gardener,
a unique love story with the main characters played by Rachel Weisz and Ralph
Fiennes. It is a powerful, sophisticated movie examining corruption in Kenya,
centered around clinical trials for HIV and TB drugs, and the role of pharmaceuticals
and international politics in the developing world.
Spanish leaders
When it comes to a more realistic representation of people living with HIV,
Spanish art- house directors have lead the way. One of the first and funniest
is Pedro Almodóvar’s matriarchal masterpiece All About My Mother
(1999). The plot revolves around single mum Manuela (Cecilia Roth) whose artistic
son Esteban is killed when knocked down by a car. Fleeing to Barcelona to
track down Esteban’s long-lost father, an HIV positive transvestite
called Lola, Manuela encounters her old trannie friend, Agrado. The hilarious
Agrado introduces Manuela, and us, to Rosa, a young nun played by Penélope
Cruz.
When she finds out she is pregnant, Rosa also discovers she is HIV positive
too, as the father of the unborn child is Lola. Rosa dies after giving birth
to baby Esteban and it’s only at her funeral that Lola bumps into his
ex, Manuela, and she helps him to get to know his newborn son - also carrying
the virus - before Lola succumbs to the virus too.
The film successfully addresses issues around HIV and avoids stereotyping
Lola and Rosa. The action is all set pre-HAART hence the high death rate.
Despite this the film ends on an unplifting note when Manuela learns baby
Esteban has somehow managed to clear HIV completely from his blood.
Real
people
For one of the best representations of modern life with HIV check out Bear
Cub (2004). Pedro, a Madrid-based, HIV positive dentist manages to juggle
life with the virus with work, play and being surrogate father to his nine-year-old
nephew. It’s a heart-warming tale that realistically represents Pedro’s
life and issues with HIV; yes, he gets sick and is discriminated against,
but HIV does not stop him caring and being an appropriate guardian for his
nephew or maintaining his voracious sexual appetite: if this was a big American
movie, things could have been very different.
From Hollywood to Bollywood
With an estimated 5.7 million living with the virus, India is the worst affected
nation. Most people there do not discuss HIV openly, but recently Bollywood
filmmakers have tried to raise awareness, particulary among the heterosexuals.
Phir Milenge (We’ll Meet Again, 2004) was the first Bollywood film to
do this. The plot is loosely based on Philadelphia and stars recent Celebrity
Big Brother winner Shilpa Shetty as Tamanna, a marketing executive who loses
her job and shuts herself off when she finds she has HIV. Strong-willed, she
fights back for her right to work and be ‘normal’. The film however
fails to mentions antiretrovirals and how these can help people lead regular
lives, something communities watching the film might not necessarily know.
Abstinence cinema
More recently, India’s Roman Catholic Church funded Aisa Kyun Hota Hai
(Why Does This Happen? 2006), a Bollywood film in which a playboy son contracts
the virus, specifically produced to help spread HIV awareness among India’s
heterosexual population. Producer, Reverend Dominic Emmanuel, said: “The
message is that today’s youngsters should delay their sexual debut,
practise safe sex and be loyal in their relationships. We decided to use Bollywood
cinema as that way it reaches the maximum number of people.” Whether
India’s youth take notice of this abstinence message remains to be seen.
Film future
HIV is not going away and filmmakers have slowly started to reflect this but
living with HIV still hasn’t received the attention it deserves. Sex
and glamour sells, so who wants to hear about HIV?
But with more realistic portrayals of people living with HIV there is hope
that increasingly modern films can help challenge stigma and educate people
about HIV. To do this there needs to be more films about different aspects
of HIV; heterosexuals with the virus, mixed poz-neg relationships, taking
meds, going out and having fun.
And now Bollywood has taken the lead in delivering the safe sex message, maybe
Hollywood should follow suit. After all, when did you last see someone slip
a condom on before getting jiggy with it in a film?
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