Trailer for The Normal Heart.
Director Ryan Murphy takes on playwright Larry Kramer’s breakthrough 1985 play with a cast that includes Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch, Alfred Molina and Julia Roberts. In a piece that’s semiautobiographical, Kramer’s landmark work was one of the first major off-Broadway plays to dramatize the ravaging scourge of AIDS. The film traces the impact of AIDS on the life of gay activist Ned Weeks (Ruffalo) and how the disease takes its merciless toll on people in his circle. Heart follows the breaking news of the era, as the condition became more public as new information—and misinformation—was disseminated. Dr. Bruckner (Roberts), a physician with the most knowledge on the issue, offers her specific—and at the time, unusual—advice on handling this burgeoning crisis. Ned, petitioning the government to take an active stance on the epidemic, finds an inadvertent nemesis in Bruce (Kitsch), a fellow activist whose genial demeanor is a counterpoint to Ned’s fiery rhetoric and militancy.