The Normal Heart (2014) Review

The story about a gay activist trying to raise awareness and help the men coming down with a very strange disease, with the breakout of HIV/AIDS.

Considering this was a made for TV movie, it really does have a very impressive cast who put in very good yet hard to watch performances. The subject matter of HIV/AIDS is still very difficult to watch, even more so with this one and the story showing how no help was given from the US government and wanting to admit the problem. Mainly because to begin with it was only affecting gay men.

Mark Ruffalo is Ned Weeks and really does drive the film and is probably the best ever performance I have seen from him. He really shows what a good actor he is and what he is capable of in a lead role. Lets face it he usually has a supporting role and while he always puts in good performances but this one is different he leads the film.

When watching this film I didn’t even realise Julia Roberts was in it, but she again takes on a slightly different role and is very engaging as the only doctor who seems to actually help. With her own reasons behind why she is helping, which turns out to be very sad yet heartwarming. The whole film has plenty of relationships in it and not forgetting a nice love story at the core, which you always know is not going to end well at all.

You must remember this is about the outbreak of AIDs and how that originally happened, therefore it does contain some very graphic sex scenes. Which at times was not a good choice for a film I decided to watch on a flight. But the scenes aren’t in bad taste and help to build the story and understand what it was like at the time.

It really does paint a very vivid picture and should be more widely released in my opinion, it was a very important and key event in history. It was a horrible time and a disease which is still around now, but more can be done of it. The way some of the men were treated really was inhumane and disgraceful, we have to just hope that people will not be treated like that in the future if an outbreak of any other disease takes hold like this did.

I would recommend seeing this film if you get the chance to as the performances really are impressive, as I mentioned earlier that Mark Ruffalo is outstanding. Honestly I will change your opinion on him has an actor within the first ten minutes. Yes he really is that good in this, so don’t miss it if you have the chance to watch it!