Les soldats de l'espérance

"This didn't have to happen. We could've stopped it."

"And the Band Played On" is a decent history of the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in the United States (and a bit of it in France) from a medical research perspective and the related political, professional and scientific obstacles to addressing, let alone containing, the disease in the 1980s. I didn't quite expect, however, although it's the reason I viewed this now, for how much this history of the pandemic reflects the current events of the novel one the world is facing in 2020. As the movie depicts, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is underfunded and, thus, largely ineffective and sidelined as the outbreak expands out of control. In some ways, they're also slow to respond and confused, if not plain wrong, in their public messaging, including advising how the virus is transmitted. Meanwhile, some of the populace remain ill-informed. Personal prophylactic measures aren't heeded. Protesters argue their rights against calls to close public spaces where it has spread (in this case, the bathhouses of the Castro District in San Francisco). The president ignores the problem. And, all the while, many dismiss the epidemic as belonging to a discriminated-against group (here, gay men). Sound familiar?

This HBO movie is an interesting precursor in a cinematic sense as well, being a star-studded ensemble about the spread of a pandemic and with a focus on contact tracing and identification of the virus two decades before Steven Soderbergh's "Contagion" (2011). Being based on a book by journalist Randy Shifts, however, "And the Band Played On" didn't have the same dramatic license to play with facts as did the later movie. Consequently, one of the main dramatic conflicts here, involving the race for the discovery of HIV between researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, two of whom would be awarded Nobel Prizes, and Robert Gallo, who is depicted as an antagonist here, may come across as somewhat muddled and uncompelling to laymen. I, for one, sympathized with the reporter at one press conference shown when he had to ask someone what the French were accusing of Gallo (as it turns out, that he stole their work, basically). On the other hand, the movie's criticism of the big business of blood banks and their obstruction of testing donated blood for HIV--because it would cost a lot of money--is more effective.

The movie has its share of tropes, too. There are those teachable moments where characters blatantly explain things to other characters--but meant for the spectator--in the simplest terms imaginable (Lily Tomlin explaining to Charles Martin Smith at a bathhouse how all peoples like sex is the most egregious to my mind). A character watches TV where each channel he flips to happens to show a program relevant to the narrative, and he has a eureka moment observing a game of Pac-Man (Aha! Pac-Man is the virus, and he's eating T-cells--now I get it!). (Granted, this Pac-Man metaphor still works better than the one in "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch" (2018), but I digress.) But, these are minor objections to what, overall, is a very watchable history lesson, and one that to its credit largely focuses on the issue from the perspective of medical research.

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.

Unbelievable, wrenching film. This movie is told so thoughtfully and well; the sequences are laid out thoughtfully, and this is one of those rare movies literally told from the heart. The cast is just remarkable. What a huge story to tell; this could easily have become garbled due to the overwhelming subject matter. However, it is sequenced well, and acted so well, that you sit there in astonishment that this could happen in a world full of otherwise brilliant people.

I don't know what it will take to remove political considerations from life-and-death struggles...How about we work at saving lives, and worry about who gets credit later? If someone becomes injured due to gang warfare, we don't deny them care or drag our feet because we don't agree with the gangster "lifestyle".

Absorbing, heartbreaking and touching. A fantastic and, obviously, loving job by the entire cast.

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.

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.