...und das Leben geht weiter

This is a HBO movie about the first few years of the AIDS epidemic in America. Dr. Don Francis (Matthew Modine) is an immunologist with experience with WHO in Africa. He joins the CDC to investigate the new disease. The gay community in San Francisco led by Bill Kraus (Ian McKellen) is divided about the mysterious deaths and the fear of the new Reagan administration. Dr. Robert Gallo (Alan Alda) is the arrogant American virologist who discovers the first human retrovirus in competition with his French counterpart to lay claim and credit for the discovery.

This is a big vast complicated story. The beauty of this movie is its ability to maintain the narrative. It is a compelling watch despite the wide ranging story and the variety of characters. It is really a horror thriller at its core with AIDS as the bogeyman. The cast is deep and talented. When Gallo enters the picture, this movie transforms into a personality clash. There are many outstanding performances including Alan Alda, Saul Rubinek and the easily dismissed Matthew Modine. It would be a mistake to forget about Modine who must embody the frustration of the audience. This is a well made understandable movie of a complicated issue.

I decided to watch this movie again tonight for the first time in several years. I lived in San Francisco when the epidemic began and had a first hand view of the fear, paranoia, and grief.

The movie brings back memories of worrying about my gay child and many of my friends. We attended more than a few memorial services. My son, praise be, is fine.

The best thing about watching it so many years later is to realize how far we've come since then. AIDS is no longer the death sentence it once was. The book and the film did a great deal to raise public awareness. HBO was courageous, the actors were all first class and I believe it was realistic in its portrayal of the heroes, the villains, and the public ignorance and apathy of the time.

And The Band Played On is an extremely powerful movie. This movie should be required viewing in any high school. The fact that it took so incredibly long for the then higher powers to admit to the existence of AIDS is stunning and sad. The performances throughout the movie were moving and effective. I thought that Sir Ian McKellan and Richard Gere represented respectfully the signs of strength and fear.

I was also disheartened to learn that throughout this tragedy, there were individuals who might have been more concerned with helping and protecting their own reputation and agenda as well as accepting the credit for their work in breaking down point by point the disease known as AIDS. Alan Alda as Dr. Gallo was fascinating. In fact all of the performances from Matthew Modine and Richard Gere to Steve Martin and BD Wong were great. The most important thing here though is the history of this disease and the hope that we can learn from it.

Much has been made about the "good guys" and "bad guys" portrayed in "And The Band Played On". And with good reason. I can't help wonder what personal agendas are being followed when a prominent 'real-life' scientist like Dr. Robert Gallo (Alan Alda) is portrayed in such a shallow way. But simultaneously, the filmmakers coyly hide the fact from us that Richard Gere's choreographer is "A Chorus Line" creator Michael Bennett. They withhold that information like "The Simpsons" hide which state Springfield is in. With a wink of an eye.

While these imperfections in the film can be distracting, they are also quite trivial. What many overlook is that "And The Band Plays On" is first...and foremost...a story of DENIAL.

Throughout the first act, there is a reluctance to accept the seriousness of "GRID" ("Gay Related Immune Deficiency"). Once there is no escaping the growing horror, the film accurately describes how all parties (The C-D-C, Bill Krause, gay groups, Jerry Falwell, blood banks, Gallo, The Reagan Administration, etc.) react to preserve their own best interests. And while those special interests clash on how to proceed next, thousands of helpless people keep dying. (There's your tie-in to the Titanic-inspired title).

In the spirit of Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper, Matthew Modine is best-suited to playing an 'everyman'. Modine's 'everyman' in this film (Dr. Don Francis)understands the growing, deadly consequences of H-I-V, but has his own ghosts to exorcise (an Ebola plague victim who grabs his wrist, covering it in blood). While Modine's character is the voice of reason, he is not immune from reacting irrationally to this plague. It is only at the end of the film, as he comforts the dying Bill Krause, that Francis begins to overcome his own fears.

The message of this film is simple: We must be "pro-active" in addressing our problems. For if we wait for a "reactive" response, the resulting panic and confusion will only make things worse. In that respect,"And The Band Plays On" is one of the most important films to be made during the 1990s. For even with it's minor distractions, inaccuracies and agendas -- it truly is "MUST SEE T-V".

American doctors from the underfunded Center for Disease Control scramble to figure out the origin of--and the causes behind--the alarming rate of homosexual male deaths in the early 1980s. As the fatal strain of pneumonia and hepatitis B cases begin appearing, politicos in Reagan-era D. C. veto the mysterious disease as non-newsworthy; meanwhile, members of the gay community are not shown to be radically adept at helping their own cause, labeling the early cases as products of the Gay Cancer. Adaptation of Randy Shilts' frightening, groundbreaking book has an all-star cast but impresses mainly with its handling of the packed narrative, particularly when detailing the CDC's battles in coming up with an inexpensive way of filtering out contaminated blood from the National Blood Supply. Making a movie from the source material was seemingly an impossible undertaking, and yet HBO Films and co-producer Aaron Spelling manage to lay all Shilts' information out adroitly and adeptly. Some of the character interaction is awkwardly interjected, but most of the principal players do very good work with their technical roles. Alan Alda positively revels in the opportunity to play sniveling medical scientist Dr. Robert Gallo, who felt usurped when French scientists initially gained prestige for isolating the virus; as Dr. Mary Guinan, Glenne Headly does some of the best work of her career (while interviewing a sexually promiscuous airline steward, one of the earliest men to fall prey to the disease, Headly is remarkably natural and charming); and Saul Rubinek as Dr. Curran, who initiates the investigation and helps sort out all the jargon, is in masterful form. Some of the high-profile cameos stick out as artifices--such as Richard Gere's bit as a stricken choreographer--though it is commendable to see these marquee names taking part in the project. "Band" isn't compact--it isn't a quick-fix wallow or a time-filler--instead, it's a serious, frustrating, angry movie with no easy answers...and that's as it should be.