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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing -- a movie musical about AIDS, November 22, 1999
A very ambitious film telling a touching story with stunning cinematography and songs that are clever, catchy, and sometimes corny. The title sequence features a man dancing with a mirror ball, and a co-ed water ballet. Michael Callen appears to sing one of several reprises of the wonderful "Tell a Story (Scheherazade)". Not merely a divine singer, Callen literally wrote the book on safer sex. The film is in part a response to Randy Shilts' AIDS journalism and his book "And the Band Played On". The protagonist is none other than Shilts' so-called "Patient Zero", the French-Canadian flight attendant who turned up at the center of the early "contact study" trying to trace the contagion of what was not yet known as AIDS. The story and the songs are about a yearning for love, PWAs' struggle for empowerment, philosophy of history, the need for us all to tell our own stories, the strengths and failings of science, and the politics of AIDS. This film is not for children, nor for those offended by frank but not graphic depiction of love and sex between men. Some of it may seem a bit dated -- it's several years since I've seen it, and the world has changed a bit. The soundtrack still has some rollicking good songs.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Frank and Touching Alternative View, February 11, 2000
This movie, though shot on a budget, provides the viewer with an alternative take on the history of the AIDS epidemic in North America, with a frank and revisionist view of the insane determination of science and the media to seek out and label a 'villain' upon whom to place the responsibility for the intrusion of AIDS into 'Western civilization'. The traditional scapegoating of Gaetan Dugas as 'PATIENT ZERO' is turned on its head as the ghost of Dugas and a manic museum exhibition curator and designer lock horns over how to structure an upcoming exhibit on the 'History of AIDS'. Intertwined with their story is that of a Canadian schoolteacher and member of the Canadian equivalent of ACT UP caught in a dilemma of loyalty to the activist dogma of greedy pharmaceutical companies and uncaring government officials and a deeper fear that the entire charade of VILLAIN/HERO and VICTIM/VICTIMIZER may be standing in the way of any rational and helpful response to his condition. His story accentuates the Dugas Ghost/Curator story of gradual change and coming to terms with a radically new point of view. The songs are, for the most part, excellent - with a touch of 30's musical and 50's flambouyance comingled with some biting social commentary. A particular standout is the medley that takes place in the museum as the exhibition animals transform into humans and belt out a ballad of anger and disdain for the projection of human frailities and failures on them. This film will definitely make you re-think the entire history and historiography of AIDS - as well as challenge your perception of Gaetan Dugas. For as Gaetan himself said when he was alive, "If its sexually transmitted, then someone gave it to me."
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the politics of containment, March 4, 2000
I don't like the public much so I rarely go to the movies, and until recently the cinemas in my town were smelly and uncomfortable. Yet I went to this film and forgot where I was. It made me laugh like Peter Jackson's "Braindead". And it made me think about anthropology, and the complicity of us all in the reproduction of social exclusion. As reviewers have noted, "Zero Patience" responds to Randy Shilt's "And the Band Played On" (there is also a film of the same title). While these works reveal the deafening silence of the Regan administration in responding to the growing epidemic, "Zero Patience" marks more explicitly the racialization of the global politics of HIV/AIDS. Greyson plays together a range of genres, using the pleasure of spectacle to tell a story of the politics of misinformation. The story of the exclusions and silences around HIV?AIDS still require telling: this is a world where the myth of external agents of contagion can no longer be sustained. (I have a question here: what is the correlation between hiv rates of transmission and catholocism in colonial contexts? i am not trying to start trouble it is just a question). Where can people who are allergic to latex get condoms? Zero Patience has particular resonance when we locate hiv/aids within a contemporary global politics which remains racialised; both within western nations, and across the so-called "developed" and "underdeveloped" worlds. At "home" in America the "right" can imagine a threat "out of Africa" (or as "Zero Patience" plays out, via the French Canadian "patient zero") but this isn't going to keep the kids safe. Talk about it. "Zero Patience" combines the pleasures of "Can't Stop the Music" with the politics of Haraway, and the humour of the fatboy slim "Praise" video. Very cool. Further reading: Sander Gilman, Douglas Crimp, Emily Martin, Donna Haraway, Kobena Mercer ....
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