How to Survive a Plague

How to Survive a Plague, directed by David France, was one of the nominees for the most recent Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It was defeated by Searching for Sugar Man, but it is an excellent, unsentimental look at an instance when protest worked.

Ostensibly a history of AIDS activism, from the formation of ACT UP in 1987, the film chronicles how people with AIDS and their advocates had enough of government looking the other way as the death toll rose. A group of activists got together and did something about it, picketing pharmaceutical companies, the Catholic church, and governmental health organizations.

At the time, the opposition considered AIDS a result of behavior, which therefore made the sufferers less sympathetic, I guess. Jesse Helms went on the floor of the senate and declared that homosexuality was disgusting, and there was nothing "gay" about sodomy. Victims were stigmatized, with AIDS patients routinely refused treatment at hospitals, and research dragged its feet on looking for treatment.

But ACT UP's protests worked. First of all, they became knowledgeable about drug trials and the science involved, which has something to do with protease inhibitors. They drafted their own suggestions, which stunned the scientific community, because they didn't expect them to actually have a legitimate agenda.

The protests are shown here in archival footage, from the first one, at City Hall (this film comes on the heels of Ed Koch's death, and his most negative legacy is his avoidance of dealing with AIDS), St. Patrick's Cathedral in the middle of mass, the FDA, and the National Institute of Health.

There were divisions within ACT UP. The more scientifically minded of the group, led by Peter Staley, broke off, concentrating on a getting drugs to save his own life, versus the more grandstanding vision of other members. There's a great moment when Larry Kramer, long a face of AIDS activism, quells a disturbance at a meeting shouting repeatedly, "Plague!"

Anyone who lived in New York or other major cities in the late '80s and early '90s knew someone who died of AIDS. My friend Nick Bucci died in 1991. The "Silence = Death" posters, with pink triangles, were omnipresent. This film is a terrific snapshot of that era, and shows how committed people can get something done. Though there still is no cure, in 1995 a combination of drugs was discovered that can at least halt the progress of the disease. Peter Staley is still alive, having lived more than 20 years with AIDS. But did the inaction of people like Ronald Reagan and George Bush prevent his from happening earlier, which would have saved millions of lives? The film says yes, passionately.

Coincidentally, on the same day I saw this film, it was announced that a child with HIV has been cured, the virus completely eradicated from her body.

After the Oscars, there were some that grumbled that this film didn't win, and that Searching for Sugar Man wasn't an "issue" film. Every year it seems people think this award is for the best cause. It's not, it's for the best film. I applaud men like Staley and Kramer. This is a very good film indeed, and gives a lot of good information, but to suggest it should win because the cause is a good one is missing the point. Just sayin'.