Movie reviews should have some semblance of objectivity. This one will not. Sorry about that.
I lived in New York from 1979 to 1990, which means I was at the epicenter of the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic. When it began, in 1981, I was a deeply closeted student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I had zero gay life at the time, and I don’t think the disease even began seeping into my consciousness until at least 1983, which is the first time I knew someone who was diagnosed.
The stunning new documentary How to Survive a Plague begins four years after this, when there had already been several hundred thousand worldwide deaths to this horrifying illness. It’s the story of ACT UP, an activist organization which arose in response to the government’s slow reaction to the epidemic.
The organization was famous (or notorious, depending on your point of view) for its aggressive civil disobedience tactics. It launched nonviolent but highly disruptive assaults on City Hall, the National Institutes of Health, and perhaps most infamously, St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
The problem that ACT UP (which stands for AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, which makes it a sort of compound acronym) was trying to solve was the glacial pace of research and drug testing. The amazing thing about their story is that they actually largely succeeded in their goals.
This was a story that I knew pretty well, but I still found the film riveting, because it is so well made.
One big challenge the filmmakers had was the fact that the footage they needed was mostly decades old, and many of the principal players were dead. They surmounted this challenge admirably, and the film presents a lively cast of fiercely dedicated characters. These were people whose lives had been utterly disrupted by this horribly, mysterious and deadly disease. For them, the stakes couldn’t have been higher.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a film that actually made me feel ashamed. I sat there watching the ferocious dedication these men and women had to saving lives. They put themselves, their very bodies, on the line, time and again. What was I doing during those years? Auditioning for acting parts, working as a word processor, and going to plays and movies. Why didn’t I help? Just because I, as a still-closeted person, was relatively unaffected by the plague? Shame on me.
I was inspired by these activists, many of which knew they themselves were doomed. They knew that the answers they were demanding would most likely come too late to benefit them. They were trying to stave off the holocaust for the future. And as anyone who has benefitted from the protease inhibitors that have helped arrest the development of the virus can tell you, they largely managed to do just that. Sure, there’s no cure yet, but an HIV+ diagnosis is not usually the impending death sentence that it was in 1988.
One more great thing about the movie is that it pulls off a jaw-dropping reveal very late in the movie that I won’t spoil. This gimmick gave the movie even more power than it already had.
If you can take revisiting such a painful time, I highly recommend you check out How to Survive a Plague. Directed by David France.
