PHILADELPHIA

Rip It Up, Issue 200, 1 April 1994, Page 28

PHILADELPHIA

Director: Jonathan Demme

Too late and not half as hard-hitting as it should have been, or so some AIDs activists would have us believe. Philadelphia certainly comes a decade later than it should have (during the 80s it was only independent films like Parting Glances and Longtime Companion that dealt with the AIDs epidemic and its implications). But Demme’s oblique approach to the crisis is a clever one: a successful young lawyer, showing the first signs of AIDs and sacked from his firm, takes on his employers in a civil rights case. But, alas, some of the often laboured courtroom scenes seem to have cast a heavyhanded spell on other moments, and there’s a distinct feeling of sanitization. Tom Hanks’ gayness is sketchily presented - even in flashbacks we see nothing but a chaste kiss so demure it would not have been amiss on Hayley Mills’ lips in Summer Magic. The two great moments in Philadelphia are both musical. In one, Hanks introduces Denzel Washington to opera by providing a running commentary on Maria Callas’s performance of ‘La Mama Morta’ from Andrea Chenier, a scene shot in an appropriately expressionist

style and a tour de force for the actor. The other is less theatrical. During a party sequence there’s a brief appearance from the gay acappella group the Flirtations, featuring Michael Callen, a long-time AIDs survivor and activist. Callen died shortly afterthe release of the film. His 1988 album Purple Heart is a classic that, like the disease that killed him, deserves attention beyond the gay community. Philadelphia is an important film historically, and will have an undoubted impact on a wide audience. Its message is one that cannot be repeated too often, and Tom Hanks proves, as Jack Lemmon has before him, that comedians can make powerful dramatic actors. WILLIAM DART