Review: "How to Survive A Plague"

Directed by David France
Written by David France, Todd Woody Richman, Tyler H. Walk
2013 Best Documentary Nominee (Academy Awards)
Currently streaming on Netflix

"PLAGUE! A PLAGUE is upon us and all you can do is argue with each other? That's what this is. Over 40 million infected is a plague! And what have we done, what have we done to stop this? Till we get our acts together we are as good as dead." 

I didn't know this story.

At 26 years old, I am too young to remember the AIDS crisis and have never really looked into. Why should I? AIDS doesn't draw the same fear and visceral reaction that it once did. It is still a scary disease that can and does kill, but we know about it. We know famous people with it. We know how it spreads and how we can protect ourselves. There is little left to the imagination about what it can do.


"How to Survive a Plague" brings us back to a time when HIV and AIDS were death sentences. When the worst fears about a disease could be true and there were few places to get answers, and fewer to get treatment. It takes us to a very scary time that was not all that long ago.

The film follows two gay rights activist groups, ACT UP and TAG, as they attempt to educate the community and world about the AIDS crisis and force the government into action to treat and to help stop the spread of the disease.

As the documentary progresses it shows the different tactics and goals of both groups and how they overlap and conflict over time, especially as change is slow to come. This wasn't one voice, but rather many calling for faster testing of drugs, more support for those already infected and greater education on prevention methods. The documentary shows these are all problems the U.S Food and Drug Administration and the government has no leadership for. Instead they are spending time testing drugs that have been approved by other countries for years in their slow and intensive process, leaving AIDS victims to experiment on their own or use black market drugs. Indeed, the heart of the movie shows that if the government hadn't ignored what was a quickly growing crisis there may well have been fewer deaths and certainly less suffering from poor combinations of medicines.

The documentary does a great job of showing the general consensus in the 1980s that this was a white homosexual male problem and it would stay that way through TV interviews and public comments which is partially why it took so long to get anything going. Most people were ignorant about the disease from transmission to symptoms which created a lot of bias and miss information. My favorite part of the film was a news anchor asking a AIDS patient if there were any people of color or women in his study to which he said no.

"Well why do you think that is?"
"This just the start of the problem."

There isn't much science in the movie and that is probably a good thing. The parts where we talk to chemists and doctors are simple and not filled with a lot of jargon which would have been easy to do. Instead we are shown the faces of the people effected and the people who are trying to get help. Their stories are the most vivid and the most heartbreaking.

Cobbled together from home recordings and old footage, the documentary also mixes in a light sprinkling of current interviews for context. I can only speculate as to the amount of film that had to have been combed to get these great images of the protests and meetings, but the result is an impressive background document that isn't overwhelming in context or information. The added value from archive material is a real sense of time and place along with the urgency the two groups are feeling to get something done as people who appear one screen are literally dying.

Spoilers ahead

I connected most with Bob Rafsky, an activist who brought the AIDS conversation to the front of the election cycle when he questioned then candidate Bill Clinton from the stands on his position. His speeches were empowering and I found myself wonder why I had not heard his name before. His death towards the end was an emotional turning point in the film and it was amazing to see his anger and confidence till the end. You can read about him here, though I would also point to the stories of Ray Navarro and others as equally moving and in need of telling.

"How to Survive A Plague" is a remarkable achievement and a testament to the social changes that can happen when the people say they have had enough. The movie is not just about gay rights, or an unchecked health crisis, but about civil rights and the availability of care for all human beings. It deserves to be, and must be, seen by everyone.