How to Survive a Plague is a documentary that follows members of the AIDS activist group Act Up during the tumultuous time between 1986 and 1996. With people dying left and right and members of the gay community watching their friends and lovers drop like flies to this terrifying disease, the U.S. government wasn't giving the epidemic nearly enough attention. The mysteriousness of the disease was one thing, as was the stigma of how it was transmitted, and anti-gay sentiments had many feeling like if "these people" didn't make these lifestyle choices, they wouldn't be dying.
Obviously, the focus of the film is on AIDS and its victims, and the treatment of these patients - being turned away at hospitals, having their bodies disposed of in trash bags - is appalling. However, the film is also a lesson in how to get stuff done as activists. While Act Up did the traditional stuff - picketing, chanting, sign-waving, creating human chains to block traffic, holding up effigies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush - they also had a real game plan. With the help of sympathetic doctors and scientists, they educated themselves on the medical aspects of the disease and various treatments that other countries had adopted. When the FDA and NIH weren't moving fast enough to develop real treatments, they created their own action plan that the federal agencies simply had to adopt. The battle was a long and heart-breaking one and you see some of the activists get sicker and sicker until they die (one of the most heartbreaking parts is when scenes the outgoing guy who dressed as Jesus while they protested the Catholic church's stance on homosexuality and condom usage are followed by the same guy sitting in a wheelchair, having lost his eyesight and hearing and still talking about being grateful for what he has).
There are a few things that stood out to me about how the film was made. Other than showing a few modern-day interviews with key players, almost all of the footage is original from the time - of rallies, meetings, speeches, and more. Another clever tool was how the filmmaker didn't use interviews for a lot of the strongest advocates until the very end, allowing you to think that these guys eventually succumbed to the disease. Some did, but a lot didn't, thanks to the combination treatment plan that served as a Godsend for many victims.
I was born a year before the time period that this documentary focuses on, and so wasn't cognizant of any of the things that were happening with AIDS. I have vague memories of Magic Johnson's announcement, and I remember players being concerned about Magic bleeding on the court because that's how the disease spread. By the time I learned about it in my elementary and high school health classes, these treatments were discovered and I only heard about the prevention techniques - not touching anyone else's blood in elementary school, wearing a condom in high school. Watching this with a filter of the present, I had a lot of strong reactions. One was how far we've come in gay rights. Sure, there is a long way to go, but watching Jesse Helms talk about the abomination of homosexuality on the Senate floor made my stomach turn. There are still those people out there, but in an era where the president is mentioning gay rights in his inauguration speech and each year sees more and more states approve same sex marriage amendments, progress is being made.
The second thing I took away from this was the power of real, motivated activism. The film was called How to Survive a Plague but it could have just as easily been called How to Change the World. Every time I saw footage of one of the street protests, with people laying in the road and blocking traffic, it reminded me of last year's Occupy Wall Street phenomena. But when they showed the meetings where filmmakers and actors and average joes were memorizing glossaries of medical terms in order to educate themselves on the disease and its treatments, you see just how pointless the Occupy movement was. I'm not saying I disagreed with what they were protesting, but their action plan was...well, they didn't really seem to have one, other than to camp out for several weeks. Nice fodder for some memoirs in the next few years but not really a way to get stuff done.
This is the first movie I've seen from the Best Documentary Feature category, so I don't really have anything to compare it to. I'm looking forward to seeing Searching for Sugar Man too. But whether it wins or not, it was a powerful movie that I'm glad I saw.
Updated Oscar Viewing List:
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
The Master
Flight
The Impossible
The Sessions
Frankenweenie
Wreck-It Ralph
ParaNorman
Brave
The Pirates! Band of Misfits
5 Broken Cameras
The Gatekeepers
The Invisible War
Searching for Sugarman
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