Review: Philadelphia

       Winning an Oscar for best actor/actress in a leading role is the greatest achievement an actor can attain. To win an Oscar two years in a row is a very rare occurrence, and it illustrates the superiority of an actor at that time in his or her career. In the Oscars 84 year history only 3 actors have won Academy Awards two years in a row. Spencer Tracy did it in '37 and '38, Katherine Hepburn did it in '67 and '68, and most recently Tom Hanks did it in '93 and '94 for the films Forrest Gump and Philadelphia. Hanks' performance in Philadelphia is astounding. He demonstrates, the sadness and lust for life of his character Andrew Beckett, a lawyer dying of AIDS, but he also maintains the characters human qualities like his humor that keeps Beckett from being a melancholy one note character. Philadelphia is Hollywood's first big budget take on the weighty subject of HIV/AIDS. It's a powerful movie, but because it was such a groundbreaking film it plays things very safe in order to not to alienate audiences who might be uncomfortable with such a controversial subject.

       Philadelphia is the story of Andrew Beckett, a successful lawyer at one of Philadelphia's most powerful law firms. Beckett has AIDS, but he hides it from his employers in fear of what might happen if they found out about his disease. Beckett gets promoted in the law firm and things are going well, but soon afterwards, an important brief goes missing and as a result Beckett is fired. Beckett doesn't believe it, he suspects that his employers purposefully lost the brief in order to sabotage him because they knew about his disease and wanted him out of their offices, and he wants to sue them for wrongful termination. Beckett takes his case to lawyers all over town, but none are willing to take the case because either they are afraid of going against the most powerful law firm in town, or they are uncomfortable being around a person with AIDS. Beckett eventually goes to the office of Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), one of those lawyers you see on TV. At first Miller refuses the case because of his prejudice against homosexuals, but after seeing that Beckett actually has a case, and realizing the amount of exposure such a high profile, controversial case would get him, he decides to take the case. The rest of the movie is a courtroom procedural that develops pretty much as you would expect, meanwhile Beckett's condition worsens.

        Like I said earlier, Tom Hanks is fantastic in the leading role. There is a scene where Beckett is describing his favorite aria to Miller as it plays over his sound system. I have seen few scenes in cinema that match the brilliance of this scene. It's also an important scene in relation to the plot because it helps to change Miller's mind about homosexuals. Philadelphia is an important movie much like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was an important movie as the first to deal with interracial relationships. Because Philadelphia was the first major film do deal with this topic, it falls back on easy tropes in order to comfort what might be an otherwise uneasy audience. Beckett has boyfriend is stereotypically hispanic, played by Antonio Banderas. The comfort of the familiar setting of a courtroom drama also made this film unnecessarily safe; however, it does also lend a certain amount of uncertainty to a plot that would otherwise only have one outcome. The film also uses big name actors that audiences are familiar with to help them through this challenging film, which isn't a bad thing as the actors do very well, but this is ground that television and broadway have already covered years in advance. In the end though, Tom Hanks performance alone is worth the price of admission.