And The Band Played On
Late last night I was getting tired of reading my book and so I decided to flip on the TV to see what was on. As I was changing the channels I came across a movie on Bravo! I saw some actor I couldn't place so I kept watching to see who the guy was. Two hours later I've finished one of the better movies I've seen in a while.It's called And The Band Marches On and was a made for TV movie back in 1993. It has a huge cast of stars including Ian McKellan, Allan Alda, Lilly Tomlin and Phil Collins, just to name a few. It revolves around the origin of the disease we've all come to know as HIV/AIDS.
It follows the behind the scenes story from the early days of the disease to it's ultimate indentification. It also chronicles the politics that would go into such a drastic overhaul of the way certain medical practices were undertaken.
I had never really looked into the subject other than in passing, so this movie opened my eyes quite a bit to the struggles the people who were the first among millions in dealing with this horrible illness.
The protaganist is a young Matthew Modine - who I've since come to realize was the sleezy land developer from Showtime's Weeds - a young and ambitious scientist in the fight to find out where this unknown virus came from. He's working with others at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) who, strapped by lack of funding from the Reagan administration, have to try and find the origins of a disease that's killing and infecting hundreds of homosexual men every time they blinked.
During that time however, it was played out as a disease or cancer affecting only gay men, therefore ostracising an entire community of people who had just recently began their fight to be more open about who they were.
If you can find this movie anywhere I recommend giving it a watch. It's especially eye-opening if you've never really paid much attention to the early days of the disease we hear so much about today.
5/5
posted by Sean @ 3:37 PM
Comments: 2
