I keep screaming inside: why are they letting us die? Why is no one helping us? And here’s the truth, here’s the answer: they just don’t like us.

Tommy Boatwright in The Normal Heart (portrayed by Jim Parsons)

Given my age, that I didn’t come into the gay scene properly until around 2004 and that I didn’t know any older gay guys growing up I had very little idea of the horror, injustice and grief that so many gay men had witnessed or had gone through during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.

Watching The Normal Heart, a 2014 production from HBO based on a play of the same name by Larry Kramer, was my first real unflinching exposure to this extremely unfortunate and tragic part of our recent history.

Though fictionalised in several respects (most of the characters are all based on real people but have different names and sets of circumstances), the film portrays the time in the early 1980s when the AIDS crisis was first rearing its ugly head in the United States, and in New York City in particular, which apparently had the most recorded cases of anywhere in the world at the time.

The focus of The Normal Heart is really on the characters, and how the crisis affects them and the ones they love, but the scope is also broader, demonstrating how the US government ignored the problem for many years: just before the end credits, we are reminded that President Reagen didn’t even use the word AIDS publicly until 1986, a full six years after the first patient was documented in the USA. (Source.)

I found the performances in the film from big names such as Mark Ruffalo (Ned Weeks), Julia Roberts (Dr. Emma Brookner) and Matt Bomer (Felix Turner) to be convincing, moving and nuanced, and they all did a wonderful job of portraying the three main characters.

The supporting cast (Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons, Jim Mantello) also provide several poignant moments where dialogue, delivery and body language all came together to move me to the edge of tears.

This is not a film to be watched for a fun night in with friends or lovers, but I feel it is an important watch, especially if, like me, you are not so knowledgable about this small but impactful part of our history.

While I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as enjoyable, it is well made, the story progresses steadily without feeling dragged out and it evokes a range of emotions, at least in this viewer.

When it came out in the news that the UK government was considering changing the law to allow same sex couples to marry, I jokingly suggested to my partner in a Facebook status update that we get married.

I say jokingly because marriage was never something I particularly wanted or felt I needed. I was happy to support the fight for marriage equality, though I didn’t think I’d ever want to use the right myself. My partner later told me how surprised he was that I suggested it, even as a joke.

A year and a half later, we are just married. It was a very simple ceremony. There were just two guests to act as witnesses, no more. No flower arrangements, no seating plan, no rings.

You see the main motivation for me and my partner of nine years to marry is to have the legal benefits and protections of the union; we’re not particularly interested in the ceremonial stuff or in sharing our love with the world. It is personal; it is for us.

Really, the main protections we will get as a married couple (at least in countries that will recognise our union) are a kind of insurance policy that only become relevant in the worst potential moments of our life together.

If one of us is dying in hospital, the other has the right to visit at any time and without question; if we own property together, one of us won’t be forced to leave when the other dies in order to liquidate the dead partner’s assets. Of course there are positive benefits too, such as paying a slightly lower rate of income tax, but that’s not what we’re doing it for.

However, it’s not all cold, legalese to me. It took me a while to realise (or perhaps rather, to admit to myself), but there is a part of me that is somewhat sentimental about the whole thing. I will enjoy introducing my partner as my husband, ironically co-opting (and perhaps also simultaneously subverting) the elevated status of couples that are married rather than those that are not.

Though we don’t plan to live in the UK again, I am quite proud to be from a country that has had the sense to introduce marriage equality. I now make the most of that right gratefully, in the hope that future generations of same sex couples who want to marry in the UK will not have to think that they are privileged to be able to do so, because they really aren’t.

If you’re not from a country that has marriage equality (or even if you are) and you have a partner you want to have control of important decisions should you not be able to make them for yourself consider setting up a simple power of attorney, as it will be recognised in almost every country in the world. Also, setting up your wills in such a way that you leave your assets to each other could make things a little easier too.

What comes to mind when you think of Berlin in the 30s? Scantily clad women performing cabaret? Swastikas lining the streets? Hunky men meeting in underground bars and getting sexy together?

Probably not that last one, right?

Well, the 2011 BBC TV-movie, Christopher and His Kind staring Matt Smith (best known for his role as the Eleventh Doctor) has all of this and more.

Based on the memoir of British novelist, Christopher Isherwood, the film opens in Los Angeles in 1975 as Isherwood starts writing about his late 20s when he left his family home to meet his friend and occasional lover, W. H. Auden in Berlin.

In the German capital, Auden immediately introduces us to the underground gay scene, seen through Isherwood’s eyes as an exciting, slightly intimidating though not especially seedy place to exist after dark where beautiful men abound.

That such places existed is as much a surprise to the viewer as it initially is to Isherwood, though the film doesn’t linger gratuitously before moving forward with the story.

Through his living situation, Isherwood encounters some fascinating characters, both Germans and other expats alike.

There’s Jean Ross, a wannabe actress and writer who quickly becomes Isherwood’s best friend, Gerald Hamilton, an older masochist with a toupee who takes Isherwood under his wing in his induction to gay Berlin life, and Fräulein Thurau, the amicable and nonjudgmental landlady, who doesn’t baulk at the string of beautiful men Isherwood brings back to his bed.

While it may not be gratuitous, there are definitely some fun, poignant and very intimate sex scenes in the film, though if you were hoping to, you unfortunately won’t get to see Matt Smith fully naked.

What’s more, the portrayal of characters, from the main to minor rings true, making them believable and relatable, and Isherwood’s personal story that takes place along side the historical events of the film is fascinating and touching.

When he first arrived in Berlin, Isherwood was quite adamant that he would not get involved in politics, but when he starts to see the changes happening around him as the Nazi party gain more and more control, he steps up to take his place in the fight alongside his friends.

While Christopher and His Kind is a film set in 1930s Berlin, it’s also a story for our time. The fight for social justice, the illegalisation of love and defiance and opposition in the face of government brutality; all these are themes touched on in the film and that are still all too relevant in our world today and make the film not only an interesting window into the past, but also an accurate mirror to the present.