The Normal Heart, airing May 25 on HBO, is the story of that hole: how it opened, what it claimed, the

rage and tears it took to keep it from swallowing even more people. When it debuted in 1985 as a stage
play by activist Larry Kramer, it was an alarm bell for a fire fully blazing, demanding that people pay
attention and unresponsive governments fight the epidemic. Now set on film by director Ryan Murphy
(and Kramer, adapting his own play), after the disease his been dampened if not eliminated, it’s history–
but an insistent, furious history, demanding that it not be shelved and forgotten, lest it repeat.

The film opens, like a disaster movie, on the last moments before calamity strikes: in 1981, on Fire
Island, whose habitués are enjoying a sun-drenched weekend of sexual freedom. The sun slicks men’s
toned flesh; Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love” plays from a speaker on the beach. Then a seemingly
healthy young man (Jonathan Groff) collapses in the surf. As the “gay cancer” spreads, perplexing the
medical and gay communities, Ned Weeks (Mark Ruffalo), an activist writer much like Kramer himself,
meets with Dr. Emma Brookner (Julia Roberts), who suspects the “cancer” is sexually transmitted.
“Where’s this big mouth I hear you’ve got?” she asks him. “Is big mouth a symptom?” he retorts. “No,”
she says. “It’s the cure.”

It’s a medicine that no one much wants to swallow, however–not the national and New
York City government, slow to devote resources to the epidemic, nor leading gay
organizations, who have made sexual freedom part of their identity and don’t want to
hear a message of abstinence because “fucking can kill you.” Weeks is used to being an
irritant; he already made himself unpopular with a novel that argued to gay hedonists
that “having so much sex makes finding love impossible.” (The analogue here is
Kramer’s 1978 novel Faggots.) Now he’s an irritant with a cause, a hammer in a world
full of nails, and Ruffalo plays him with blunt, barking energy.

Beyond portraying the dawning horror of AIDS, this is a story broadly about activism
and what it takes to make change. Working inside the system or outside the system?
Moderation or militancy? Raising sympathy or raising hell? Kramer’s script, true to his
and Weeks’ philosophy, takes sides, refusing to on-the-other-hand the story as Weeks
butts up against the moderate likes of Bruce Niles (Taylor Kitsch) a closeted war veteran
chosen to be the palatable face of AIDS activism. Weeks may have a general
predisposition to be That Guy–the one who yells, discomfits, outs people, triggers
Godwin’s Law–but he also, in the light of history, has a damn urgent reason. A lot of
people are dying, and a lot of people would rather think about something else.

The story of a provocateur is a good fit for Murphy, whose TV series (Glee, American
Horror Story) treat provocation like a moral imperative; if something is worth saying,
it’s worth saying with fireworks and maybe a musical number. Murphy’s direction here
isn’t ostentatious or even especially distinctive (one exception is a flashback to the ’70s
bathhouse era, shot in the style of a late-night adult-TV ad). But it’s unflinching: one
sequence, depicting the indignities of an AIDS victim’s last hours alive–and first hours
dead, wheeled to a hospital alley in a garbage bag–makes the poisonous combination of
homophobia and fear raw and real. The film’s philosophical and visual mission is to
make you look longer than you might–at seizures, at Karposi’s lesions, at fights that
drag into ugly, anguished pathos.
At the same time, it’s a love story, between Weeks and New York Times reporter Felix
Turner (Matt Bomer), whose relationship begins testy, grows sexy, and–as Felix
contracts AIDS himself–becomes tender and tragic. (A scene in which Ned helps Felix
shower after a bad episode heartbreakingly parallels their early, lusty encounter in the
bathhouse.)

The Normal Heart is not a nuanced film; it would probably be a betrayal of the material
to turn it into one. Compared with, say, Angels in America (memorably adapted for
HBO a decade ago), there’s not much effort to make the antagonists three-dimensional;
the film doesn’t much balance the merits of Weeks’ gay-community opponents’
arguments nor–given the story’s early-’80s timeframe–explore what results Weeks’
tactics yielded in the long run. It’s a first draft told by a first responder, with no time for
niceties. But it is deepened and rounded out by some remarkable supporting
performances, especially a fantastic Jim Parsons as Tommy, a warmhearted activist
volunteer. As he speaks at a friend’s memorial–remembering the many, many other
friends he’s memorialized–his kindly optimism gives way to despair at the waste of lives
and inaction of the larger society, and it is devastating: “They just don’t like us.”

This movie’s answer is that this crisis, this moment, demanded people like Weeks, who
didn’t much care if anyone liked him. The first time this story was told on stage, it was–
to borrow the slogan of the group Kramer later helped found–a cry to act up and fight
back. Some 30 years later, this movie–strident, passionate, frenetic, and aching–is a
reminder, as Memorial Day weekend begins the summer, of all those empty spots the
plague left on the beach.

The story of a provocateur is a good fit for Murphy, whose TV series (Glee, American
Horror Story) treat provocation like a moral imperative; if something is worth saying,
it’s worth saying with fireworks and maybe a musical number. Murphy’s direction here
isn’t ostentatious or even especially distinctive (one exception is a flashback to the ’70s
bathhouse era, shot in the style of a late-night adult-TV ad). But it’s unflinching: one
sequence, depicting the indignities of an AIDS victim’s last hours alive–and first hours
dead, wheeled to a hospital alley in a garbage bag–makes the poisonous combination of
homophobia and fear raw and real. The film’s philosophical and visual mission is to
make you look longer than you might–at seizures, at Karposi’s lesions, at fights that
drag into ugly, anguished pathos.

At the same time, it’s a love story, between Weeks and New York Times reporter Felix
Turner (Matt Bomer), whose relationship begins testy, grows sexy, and–as Felix
contracts AIDS himself–becomes tender and tragic. (A scene in which Ned helps Felix
shower after a bad episode heartbreakingly parallels their early, lusty encounter in the
bathhouse.)

The Normal Heart is not a nuanced film; it would probably be a betrayal of the material
to turn it into one. Compared with, say, Angels in America (memorably adapted for
HBO a decade ago), there’s not much effort to make the antagonists three-dimensional;
the film doesn’t much balance the merits of Weeks’ gay-community opponents’
arguments nor–given the story’s early-’80s timeframe–explore what results Weeks’
tactics yielded in the long run. It’s a first draft told by a first responder, with no time for
niceties. But it is deepened and rounded out by some remarkable supporting
performances, especially a fantastic Jim Parsons as Tommy, a warmhearted activist
volunteer. As he speaks at a friend’s memorial–remembering the many, many other
friends he’s memorialized–his kindly optimism gives way to despair at the waste of lives
and inaction of the larger society, and it is devastating: “They just don’t like us.”

This movie’s answer is that this crisis, this moment, demanded people like Weeks, who
didn’t much care if anyone liked him. The first time this story was told on stage, it was–
to borrow the slogan of the group Kramer later helped found–a cry to act up and fight
back. Some 30 years later, this movie–strident, passionate, frenetic, and aching–is a
reminder, as Memorial Day weekend begins the summer, of all those empty spots the
plague left on the beach