The Normal Heart **** (2014, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons, Alfred Molina, Joe Mantello, Jonathan Groff, Julia Roberts) – Classic Movie Review 12,853

Ryan Murphy’s passionate 2014 TV drama film The Normal Heart is written by Larry Kramer, based on his 1985 play, and stars Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons, Alfred Molina and Julia Roberts.

Director Ryan Murphy’s 2014 American TV drama film The Normal Heart is written by Larry Kramer, based on his 1985 play, and stars Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons, Alfred Molina, Joe Mantello, Jonathan Groff, and Julia Roberts.

The film is set at the time of the HIV-AIDS crisis in New York City between 1981 and 1984, and seen through the eyes of writer/ gay activist Ned Weeks (Mark Ruffalo), the founder of a prominent HIV advocacy group called Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC). Weeks clashes with his GMHC associates, friends and closeted newspaper reporter lover Felix Turner (Matt Bomer) over how to handle their cause, preferring loud public confrontations to subtler, calmer behind-the-scenes strategies.

There’s not a dry eye throughout this emotional rollercoaster drama that is potent, passionate and still relevant. It mixes tear-jerking personal and intimate moments with intelligent analysis and ragingly vigorous recollection of vitally important facts and ideas and a heart-felt rallying-cry for its much-denied but rightful cause. There are a lot of tears, there is a lot of anger, and rightly so. It is quite painful and upsetting to watch.

A great deal of time has gone by, and it is important that the facts and lessons of this awful story are told and retold in the present. The fight is not over. It is only at the end of the film that the story’s main villain President Reagan is mentioned by name, just like he avoided mentioning AIDS by name for so long, and doing nothing for so long while so many people died.

Mark Ruffalo is a very good choice and gives a standout performance in the main role: he won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor for playing Ned Weeks. Jim Parsons is the outstanding actor in the supporting cast as the kind and understanding activist Tommy Boatwright. But all the actors are excellent, pulling their weight. Matt Bomer as the lover Felix, Taylor Kitsch as the handsome GMHC leader Bruce Niles, and Alfred Molina as Ned’s straight older lawyer brother Ben Weeks all impress. Julia Roberts honourably adds star power as AIDS research doctor Dr Emma Brookner, a wheelchair user thanks to contracting the polio virus as a child.

It runs a swift-moving 132 minutes.

It is produced by HBO, Blumhouse Productions (Jason Blum’s company), Ryan Murphy Productions, 20th Century Fox Television and Plan B Entertainment (Brad Pitt’s company).

The Normal Heart premiered at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on 23 May 2014 and debuted on HBO on 25 May 2014. It was then released on DVD and Blu-ray on 26 August 2014.

The cast are Mark Ruffalo as Ned Weeks (based on Larry Kramer), Matt Bomer as Felix Turner (based on John Duka), Taylor Kitsch as Bruce Niles (based on Paul Popham), Jim Parsons as Tommy Boatwright (based on Rodger McFarlane), Alfred Molina as Ben Weeks (based on Arthur Kramer), Julia Roberts as Dr Emma Brookner (based on Dr Linda Laubenstein), Joe Mantello as Mickey Marcus, B D Wong as Buzzy, Jonathan Groff as Craig Donner, Stephen Spinella as Sanford, Finn Wittrock as Albert, Denis O’Hare as Hiram Keebler, Corey Stoll as John Bruno, Danielle Ferland as Estelle, Frank De Julio as Nick, and Adam B. Shapiro as Bella.

Ruffalo, who had a childhood friend who struggled with his homosexuality, first saw the play in 1986. Ruffalo initially argued that a gay actor should have the role of Ned, but Murphy persuaded him to change his mind.

For many years Barbra Streisand tried with Larry Kramer to get a cinema movie of The Normal Heart made with her as director. It never happened. But on 18 April 1993 she organised and introduced a benefit reading for Broadway Cares at the Roundabout Theatre Company, starring Kevin Bacon, John Turturro, Harry Hamlin, D W Moffett, Tony Roberts and Stockard Channing.

Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS is an American non-profit organisation based in New York City that raises funds for AIDS-related causes across the US.

The 1985 paperback edition of the play.

The original stage play premiered off-Broadway at The Public Theater on 21 April 1985. Brad Davis starred as Ned, later replaced by Joel Grey. It ran for almost a year. The play was staged in Los Angeles and then in London in 1986 at the Royal Court Theatre, with Martin Sheen as Ned. Tom Hulce and then John Shea starred when it transferred to the Albery Theatre.

It was revived off-Broadway in 2004, and finally made its Broadway debut in 2011, winning the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

Both Jim Parsons Parsons (making his Broadway debut) and Joe Mantello starred in the 2011 Broadway revival of the play, although Parsons is the only one to reprise his role as Mantello played Ned on stage.

A London revival began previews on 23 September 2021 at the National’s Olivier Theatre, and ran until 6 November 2021. Ben Daniels won a Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Best Actor.

Laurence David Kramer (June 25, 1935 – May 27, 2020).

Larry Kramer died of pneumonia on 27 May 2020, aged 84. He co-founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC). His first writing credit is as a dialogue writer for Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, (1968), followed by the 1969 screenplay Women in Love, which was nominated for an Oscar.

Kramer wrote a sequel about Ned Weeks, The Destiny of Me, performed by the Circle Repertory Company in October 1992 in the off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Theater  at 121 Christopher Street in Manhattan’s West Village.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,853

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