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"When you're educated like I was and like most people in this country, I assure you that no one comes to talk to you about homosexuality or, as you call it, an alternative lifestyle. As a child, you're taught that gays are weird, gays are funny, gays dress like their mother, they're afraid to fight, they're... they're a danger to children, and they only want to get into your pants. This more or less summarizes the general thought, if you really want to know the truth." Joe Miller
Jonathan Demme in '93 creates the follow-up to his famous and great "The Silence of the Lambs", this time completely changing genre and focusing not on the visual adaptation of a Thriller novel, but on 2 social themes among the most serious and tragic of the 90s and in general of the century: AIDS and homosexuality and all that follows, amidst prejudices, ghettoization, and discrimination of all kinds. Setting the story in Philadelphia.
"Philadelphia, city of brotherly love. Brotherly love..." to use the words of the beautiful song by Neil Young written specifically for the occasion and which represents (along with the nearly homonymous piece by the Boss) the apex of the wonderful film soundtrack.
So, Philadelphia, the Philadelphia of the continuous search for integration and coexistence among different races and ethnicities, as the opening images of this film depict. But the Philadelphia that represents, symbolically, in this case, an entire nation and a culture: that of hypocritical and bigoted America, with its contradictions and prejudices.
Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) is a young lawyer in full professional ascent, at the peak of his career. At a certain point, more and more numerous and obvious bruises start appearing on his face and his health deteriorates. An unexpected event - the sudden and mysterious disappearance of an important legal appeal for which he had just been appointed responsible as a lawyer - causes his superiors to abandon him, using as an excuse alleged work negligence. From the beginning, however, the real reasons are clear and attributable not to the alleged fact but to the onset of his disease (AIDS indeed). Although he never explicitly spoke to anyone about it, those marks on his face had left an impact (sorry for the repetition) even on his superiors, due to past experiences. And the subsequent discovery of his homosexuality completed the picture for them.
The anxious and futile search for a lawyer to help him sue his former employers will be rewarded, after 9 rejections by as many lawyers, by Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), a colleague with whom he had also collaborated, as evidenced at the beginning of the film. However, Miller is not at all impermeable to the prejudices of everyone, both regarding the disease and homosexuality, so much so that initially, he too refuses.
The director immediately focuses on the gazes of people: the gazes of prejudice. The gazes of fear and the gazes of solitude - that of the protagonist. The suspicious gazes of people first and prejudiced afterward. Gazes (and attitudes) that will make attorney Miller change his mind, realizing, after a chance encounter, the external treatment towards the newly-infected individual. Prejudices as stupid as they are real and normal for that period in particular - which he himself was, as mentioned, a victim of. The scene in which the lawyer asks the doctor if the AIDS virus is even airborne is entirely illustrative in this regard.
Throughout the first part - where scenes follow one another after different time shifts: 9 days, 1 month, 1 week, 2 weeks, 6 weeks, until 7 months, the end of which will mark the beginning of the trial, which will also become an important media event - the focus is not on the development and progression of the disease, but rather precisely on the culture of prejudice and prevention. Those prejudices that "demand the social death that precedes and sometimes accelerates the physical one". Certainly, the changes on the protagonist's face and physique are evident, but the screenplay and directing do not harp on the dramatic event. Until the end, when, unfortunately, it becomes inevitable.
Memorable and heartbreaking is what is, in all probability, the film's standout scene: when Andrew, increasingly depleted and destroyed, instead of preparing answers for the next day's hearing with attorney Miller, lets himself go in a moving self-identification performance of the aria "La Mamma Morta" by Callas. Perhaps excessively spectacular and tear-jerking, yet extremely dramatic and involving. As well as for the more dramatic phases of the trial with Andrew testifying on his deathbed; a trial that truly celebrates "people's hatred, our repugnance, our fear of homosexuals"
As predictable and scripted as it might be, the finale will remain extremely and genuinely moving and poignant, following the conclusion of the case. When, beyond the legal aspect, the human side is narrated and revealed above all. When those gazes I previously mentioned become the final gazes, of family members and Andy.
Tom Hanks establishes himself as one of the greatest actors of the last two decades with a gigantic performance, his most significant without a doubt, or alongside that contemporary in "Forrest Gump". Not coincidentally, he will win his first - well-deserved - statue. Denzel Washington, an actor for whom I've always held great esteem, on his part proves himself absolutely equal to his role also with an excellent performance, although undoubtedly in comparison to Hanks he remains overshadowed. Also noteworthy is the more than excellent Banderas, in the role of Andy's partner.
A work that perhaps ends up bordering on rhetoric at times, particularly regarding the courtroom discussion on homosexuals and a slight, albeit inevitable, final romanticization. Yet it holds steadfast to a side of exceptional realism in the very bigoted and hypocritical States and succeeds in its aim to reflect and raise awareness on tragically important and vital themes at the fore more than ever in the '90s.
A film that - by constructing this deliberate and sought-after parallel between two colleagues of different colors, precisely to accentuate the cultural aspect of the story - has become a '90s cult, managing also to reconcile critical, public, and Academy success - as much as these three factors may be important and relevant in the judgment of a film. Also thanks to the endorsement of a fantastic and fitting soundtrack, dominated, as already mentioned, by the beautiful and famous "Streets Of Philadelphia" by Springsteen (a piece also awarded with an Oscar) and concluded with the even more wonderful "Philadelphia" by Neil Young, a film probably among the most celebrated of the '90s.
Personal opinion and advice: an absolute must-watch film alone.
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