"Philadelphia"
                   A film review be
                 Linda Lopez McAlister
                 on "The Women's Show"
                WMNF-FM 88.5 Tampa, FL
                  January 29, 1994

  The textbook I used for the Introduction to Women's Studies
course I taught last semester contains an article on how AIDS
affects women of all ages throughout the world.  It not only
infects women, but affects them in other ways as well.  For
example, women are the primary care givers to those ill with the
disease, worldwide.  Older women find themselves--as happened to
a friend of mine just recently--at retirement age having to
assume the task of raising grandchildren orphaned by the disease.
Young girls are being forced in marriages earlier and earlier by
men who believe only with a virgin can they be sure they have a
woman who's safe from the disease.  These are aspects of AIDS
that are very real not only in other parts of the world, but
right here at home.  They are not, however, what the makers of
"Philadelphia" have chosen to focus on in the first mainstream
Hollywood film to deal with AIDS.

   This film, directed by Jonathan Demme from a screenplay by Ron
Nyswaner, is the story of a gay man, Andrew Barnes (Tom Hanks)
who has AIDS and who sues the law firm where he was an
up-and-coming associate until they sabotaged his work and fired
him, ostensibly on the grounds of incompetence, though in fact
because they discovered his illness and are repulsed by him.
Because he's up against the most powerful old established law
firm in Philadelphia, Andrew Barnes can find no one willing to
take his case except--and with great reluctance due to his own
rampant homophobia--Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), a sleazy
store-front ambulance chaser.  Once the situation is established
and the characters introduced, the film becomes essentially a
courtroom drama as the trial plays out.  One of my favorite
actors, Mary Steenburgen,  plays the savvy, saccharine (i.e.,
phonily sweet), but conflicted lawyer trying to defend Andrew's
lying former bosses, an arrogant elitist crew led by Charles
Wheeler (Jason Robards) and Walter Kenton (Robert Ridgely).
Rounding out the cast of characters are the people who love and
support Andrew, including his partner, Miguel Alvarez (Antonio
Banderas) and his large supportive family that includes Joanne
Woodward in the role of his mother.

   Because there are no surprises in the plot of the film, and
very little in the way of character development of any but the
main characters, Andrew and Joe, the film stands or falls on how
well the filmmakers bring these characters into focus.  Demme's
no fool; he has cast probably the two best younger American film
actors we have, Hanks and Washington, as Andrew and Joe.  Then he
has given them some incredibly powerful scenes in which to reveal
their characters' innermost feelings.  The result is, at least
when they're on the screen, enormously moving.  Unfortunately,
because all the other characters are written in such a
one-dimensional way, the effect is like two real people
surrounded by cardboard cutout figures.

   But when the film is focusing on Hanks and Washington, it
achieves emotional truth.  Especially moving is a long pivotal
sequence in which Andrew, near death but still on his feet,
pushing his IV stand around in a bizarre dance of life and death,
bares his soul to Joe by interpreting for him the text of an aria
sung passionately by Maria Callas, and Joe carries that aria and
experience home with him where he silently relects on it as we
looks on his own most beloved people, his sleeping infant
daughter and wife.   It's an extraordinary moment that lifts the
film to a different plane even as it helps Joe along in his
transition from homophobe to hero.

   This is a didactic film with a message that America needs to
hear.  And maybe, lured in by the stardom and artistry of Hanks
and Washington (Hanks has already won the Golden Globe award for
best actor for his performance over such competition as Anthony
Hopkins and Daniel Day Lewis), the people who need to deal with
their own fears and prejudices about gay men and AIDS will come
and hear.  Those who already share the filmmakers views about the
hatefulness of prejudice and bigotry will be heartened to see a
mainstream Hollywood film that reinforces their views, even as
you may wish that it had taken a more complex and wide-ranging
approach to the subject.

   For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on
Women and film.

   Copyright 1994 by Linda Lopez McAlister.  All rights reserved.
Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the
author.