I present to you another in that list of "classic" movies that I'd never seen, and I'm pleased to keep crossing these movies off the list. There are a few more in the hopper already, and who knows, maybe this is the year I finally watch Titanic.
Probably not, but maybe!
Philadelphia (released in 1993) is an interesting movie about a very emotionally charged topic, especially at the time it came out. Tom Hanks plays Andrew Beckett, a gay man who contracts HIV and eventually develops AIDS, and who believes he was fired from his job because of it. Denzel Washington plays Joe Miller, an attorney who initially refuses the case, but comes to take on the lawsuit and represent Hanks as the plaintiff as he sues his former company for discriminatory conduct.
The core of the movie is powerful and realistic, and Denzel absolutely nails his role. He plays out exactly the point of view that so many of my "enlightened" peers (and if I'm being honest, myself as well) would hold, where it's fine if people are gay, but "I don't want to see it." In at least four different scenes, Washington illustrates the ways in which those of us who like to think of ourselves as supporting queer folks come up woefully short; so often we think of queer people as an "other" group.
One scene that struck me vividly took place in a pharmacy, where Miller gets asked out for a drink by a man he didn't initially realize was gay. Miller reacts with anger and disgust, using the sorts of words we don't use in polite company anymore, thank goodness. What's just as noteworthy in the scene, however, is how the rest of the folks in the store react. They seem to share Miller's disgust, and don't intervene when he gets aggressive, and then find the other man offensive when he simply responds by calling Miller an asshole, which, in fairness, is exactly what Miller is acting like in this scene.
He does evolve over the course of the movie, and though his evolution might seem a bit faster than you would expect in a real world scenario, it's slow and indirect enough that I think it's pretty powerful. Pushed into the position of seeing these scenes as an outside observer, a viewer in 1993 (and even plenty of viewers today) ought to consider their own emotional reactions to similar situations, and realize some of their own hypocrisy. There's a difference between "putting up with" queer people and actually accepting and embracing queer people as human beings, with every right to exist and be themselves as anybody else. Philadelphia points at some of the moments in a person's everyday life where they might fall short of being truly accepting.
I do wish the show had a little more courtroom time, but part of that is just me being a courtroom drama kind of guy. I love rules, I love talking about rules, I love solving puzzles and answering questions. That's really the second priority of this movie though, and it's understandable that we didn't get quite as much court time as I would've liked.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie, though I think I enjoyed the grounded performance of Washington more than the sometimes overly dramatic performance by Hanks. Still, I found it emotionally powerful, realistic, and the sort of movie that gets you to think about your own place in the world, about your responsibility to your fellow human beings.
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