Why Philadelphia remains a flawed but vital… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Why Philadel­phia remains a flawed but vital por­tray­al of the AIDS crisis

02 Mar 2022

Words by Adam Solomons

Two men in suits seated at a table, a group of people in the background, and a courtroom setting.
Two men in suits seated at a table, a group of people in the background, and a courtroom setting.
Jonathan Demme’s 1993 dra­ma played an impor­tant role in bring­ing straight audi­ences up to speed with the epidemic.

Explain it to me like I’m a six-year-old,” Den­zel Washington’s low-class lawyer, Joe Miller, says, repeat­ed­ly and mem­o­rably, through­out Philadel­phia. Well, okay. For as long as the movies have exist­ed, so has homophobia.

Ever since sis­sy” gay men and macho” les­bians became sor­did sta­ples dur­ing cinema’s silent era, out­right homo­pho­bia has been an all-too com­mon sight on our screens. Mean­while, there are con­tro­ver­sial films like William Friedkin’s Cruis­ing, which is less homo­pho­bic upon reflec­tion; and oth­ers like The Dan­ish Girl, greet­ed with acclaim by the Acad­e­my, but now regard­ed as decid­ed­ly homo­pho­bic (not to men­tion transphobic).

Then there’s Philadel­phia. Jonathan Demmes 1993 AIDS dra­ma – the first stu­dio film to tack­le the epi­dem­ic sen­si­tive­ly – was nev­er going to be a new pin­na­cle for queer cin­e­ma. Boast­ing a straight direc­tor, pro­duc­ers and lead actors (screen­writer Ron Nyswan­er is gay), it’s hard to even call Philadel­phia a gay film’. Same-sex inti­ma­cy is scant. Miller’s free use of the F‑word is dis­missed with eye­rolls rather than indig­na­tion. Play­wright-activist Lar­ry Kramer said he hat­ed” the film, pre­sum­ably because he felt treat­ing a main­stream Amer­i­can audi­ence like six-year-olds was let­ting them off the hook.

All of this is true, and because of that, Philadel­phia will nev­er be described as the defin­i­tive AIDS dra­ma. (Angels in Amer­i­ca wears that crown well.) Then again, Demme nev­er intend­ed it to be. Instead, Philadel­phia strains for a sim­pler kind of moral clar­i­ty, with loy­al and well-mean­ing char­ac­ters pit­ted against cyn­i­cal and igno­rant ones. The film also plays out as the ini­tial out­line sug­gests: Andrew Beck­ett (Tom Han­ks) finds an unlike­ly ally in homo­pho­bic lawyer Joe Miller (Wash­ing­ton) after con­tract­ing HIV and being wrong­ful­ly dis­missed from his employ­er. A court­room bat­tle ensues while Beck­ett suf­fers under debil­i­tat­ing symptoms.

Greet­ed as Hollywood’s first seri­ous engage­ment with the AIDS cri­sis, Philadel­phia car­ried the impos­si­ble bur­den of mourn­ing the more than 100,000 Amer­i­cans who had lost their lives to the dis­ease up to that point. Demme hoped for his audi­ence to mourn just one. Han­ks put it well in the 2003 fea­turette Peo­ple Like Us: The Mak­ing of Philadel­phia: I think the movie was made for peo­ple who thought they didn’t know any­one who died of AIDS. And after the movie, they knew some­one who died of AIDS.”

Demme reminds us that the AIDS epidemic is taking place on the street corners of American cities, woven into everyday scenes.

Who bet­ter than Demme to forge an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion between a naïve audi­ence and a des­per­ate (and des­per­ate­ly angry) com­mu­ni­ty? Philadel­phia is just one exam­ple; the emo­tion­al intel­li­gence of the director’s films and music video work nev­er fails to shine through. His sig­na­ture use of close-up, which pulls the audi­ence in toward the char­ac­ters, is weaponised here. When Han­ks or Wash­ing­ton or one of the court­room wit­ness­es stares down the bar­rel of the cam­era, we can’t help but be reeled in.

It’s hard­ly sub­tle, but it doesn’t mat­ter. Lit­tle in Philadel­phia is. Opt­ing for that very set­ting, rather than New York City or San Fran­cis­co, which are more com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with America’s gay com­mu­ni­ty, is a state­ment in itself. A post-indus­tri­al heart­land with a now-clichéd rugged­ness, the so-called City of Broth­er­ly Love” is more imme­di­ate­ly relat­able to het­ero­sex­u­al Amer­i­ca. Tra­di­tion abounds, whether in the form of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence or Rocky.

Demme fur­ther insured the film against accu­sa­tions of lib­er­al elit­ism by ask­ing Neil Young and Bruce Spring­steen, both paragons of straight cul­ture, for a boun­cy rock anthem to open the film and reas­sure a reluc­tant audi­ence. Both sent back eerie bal­lads which touched on the suf­fer­ing and injus­tices faced by AIDS vic­tims nation­wide. Demme said: Maybe they have more faith in my movie than I do.”

Springsteen’s Streets of Philadel­phia’ was slot­ted in next to the open­ing cred­its, inter­rupt­ed by sounds of the city and shots of local play­grounds, butch­ers and bar­bers. Once again, Demme reminds us that the AIDS epi­dem­ic is tak­ing place on the street cor­ners of Amer­i­can cities, woven into every­day scenes. Indeed, the film’s orig­i­nal title was Peo­ple Like Us, a like­ly ref­er­ence to a song by Talk­ing Heads, for whom Demme had direct­ed the con­cert film Stop Mak­ing Sense.

Upon release, Philadel­phia grossed a handy $77.5m in the US and $124m over­seas –almost 10 times its bud­get. But crit­ics, par­tic­u­lar­ly gay writ­ers, weren’t con­vinced of its aes­thet­ic val­ue. Peo­ple and Per­son­als report­ed the film gen­tly prods the nation’s con­scious­ness,” a well-inten­tioned com­pli­ment and a with­er­ing insult. LA Times review­er Ken­neth Turan wrote Philadel­phia over­does things” and has an air of do-goodism”.

Under­state­ment was nev­er Demme’s style. The famous opera scene, in which Han­ks wails and Wash­ing­ton aches and light­ning and thun­der seem to fill Beckett’s apart­ment, was screen­writer Nyswaner’s own embrace of a cer­tain gay stereo­type. It’s time we re-embraced this flawed, for­mu­la­ic mas­ter­piece of social­ly-con­scious cin­e­ma, too.

Philadel­phia is screen­ing at select Odeon cin­e­mas across the UK on 2 March.

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