Ned Weeks (Mark Ruffalo) has looked for love his entire life, from his brother (Alfred Molina) to a string of lovers but his internalized self-loathing for being gay has sabotaged everything. Then he meets Felix (Matt Bomer), a handsome self-assured fashion reporter for the New York Times and it's everything Ned could have dreamed of. Except gay men are starting to die. A mysterious disease, first thought to be a rare cancer, is affecting predominantly homosexual men. Only one doctor (Julia Roberts) is sounding the alarm, herself a polio survivor, that this could be something more, something dangerous. As the AIDS pandemic grows and spreads, Ned grows increasingly desperate to get someone, anyone to listen and to care.
Yeah, so this was a hard watch. For a lot of reasons. It makes a great corollary to How to Survive a Plague but I don't know that I could recommend watching both in the same day. Be kind to yourself.
In addition to the "life in a pandemic" narrative, I also really identified with Ned's personality struggles. Too abrasive, too loud, too confrontational, too smart (but not in a good way), and too angry. Too close to home.
It is a very good movie. Taylor Kitsch in particular gives probably the performance of his career. Roberts goes against type and plays a brittle, borderline unlikeable woman. Bomer and Ruffalo are great together. Really just excellent casting all around. It's based on a stage play by Larry Kramer, who also adapted the screenplay if I remember correctly. The Normal Heart is currently streaming on HBO Max.
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