Philadelphia's Bedtime Story

by Maureen Turner

Hollywood has been popping its red ribbons over Philadelphia, the Jonathan Demme film by now as well-known by its unofficial subtitle: The First Major American Movie About the AIDS Crisis.

The pre-release hype has focused on the supposition that Philadelphia is Demme's apology to the queer community for his homosexual serial killer in Silence of the Lambs. But if this is an apology, Demme has a lot more groveling to do.

Much of the charm of his previous movies (notably Something Wild, Stop Making Sense, and Silence of the Lambs) has come from their idiosyncrasies, and, more importantly, their daring. But here, his attempts to present a Clinton-liberal morality play that offends neither the gay community nor middle America result in a movie that insults all intelligent movie-goers, a simplistic, shallow TV-drama treatment that dares not tax the audiences' capacity for complexity. In striving to please - or appease - everyone, Demme serves no one.

Philadelphia is filled with heroic good guys and cartoon villains. Tom Hanks plays Andrew Beckett, a gay Yuppie lawyer with a trendy loft, a European boyfriend, and AIDS. Beckett is fired by his firm for "inept performance" around the same time that tell-tale lesions begin to appear on his face and decides to sue his former bosses for discrimination.

Hanks does a fine job early in the film portraying Beckett's panic as he attempts to hide his increasingly evident condition. But his performance eventually succumbs to the deadenly flat tone of the screenplay's characterization, which reduces him to a o ne-dimensional martyr.

Equally empty are the portrayals of Beckett's relationships. His lover stands by lovingly changing Beckett's IV bottles, stuck in the throw- away role of spunky, self-sacrificing spouse usually relegated to actresses of middling fame and soft-focus angelic faces. Neither Beckett's lover nor his upper-middle class family ever exhibit any fears, any anger or resentment about the cruelty of the situation thrust upon them -- in short, any believable human emotions.

Also missing is any sign of sexual passion between Beckett and his boyfriend, save one chaste kiss. Demme, it seems, wants to ensure winning his hero the sympathy of mainstream America without turning them off with any overt homosexuality. Apparently Peo ria can love a tragic dying queer, but not a fucking one.

Across the courtroom from Beckett, in the black hats, is the posse of paunchy, old white men lawyer/bad guys, headed up by a frighteningly decrepit Robards, a devil for the '90s with a cigar in one hand and a brandy snifter in the other. Again, there is no room for ambiguity here; lest we need reminding that these are our villains, menacing music and endless, nauseating zoom-ins distort the faces of the firms' partners as they deny unfairly firing Hanks while admitting to gay-bashing parties during their navy days.

Most absurd of all is the cackling Robards. "Andy brought AIDS into our office, into our men's room. He brought it to our annual cocktail family picnic," he croaks before ordering his henchmen, McCarthy- style, to find out if Beckett belongs to any "devia nt sexual organizations."

The only potential for characterization in the film is Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), the ambulance-chasing, homophobic lawyer who reluctantly takes on Hanks' case after nine others turn him down. Miller is the only character who expresses any ambiguity , agreeing to represent Beckett and later, dripping with machismo, admitting to his wife that he finds the idea of two men making love revolting. "I can't stand that shit!" he says through clenched teeth. Later, his plumped ego explodes into near-violent rage in a neighborhood drugstore when he realizes an admiring young law student who has been following the case assumes Miller is gay and tries to pick him up. Despite his revulsion, something moves Miller to accept Beckett's case, and eventually his fri endship. His transformation, however, is unsatisfying and largely unexplained. In one scene, he watches as a restless Beckett is carried away by a Maria Callas aria, and with tears streaming down his face, translates the song to Miller: "I bring sorrow to those who love me. . . . I am love!"

The scene is beautifully shot; for once, Demme's roller-coaster camera direction pays off as he weaves dizzyingly around a withering Beckett, bathed in red light, simultaneously grotesque and beautiful. But the scene's pay-off is unsatisfying; an embarra ssed Miller bolts from Beckett's apartment and rushes to his suburban home, where he cradles his sleeping wife and baby and his safe, heterosexual life.

What could have been an effective contrast between Miller and Beckett is wasted by the scene's flatness. Miller's metamorphosis from an insensitive homophobe to compassionate sympathetic shows us only the motions of transformation.

Hanks, America's latest sweetheart, is sure to be nominated for an Oscar, simply for hopping off the romantic comedy highway to play an AIDS patient and (gasp) a homosexual. Granted, Hanks isn't really to blame for the screenplay's disregard for characterization. He is left with a role that requires him to do little more than lose a lot of weight and thin his hair to look sickly. Apparently, this is acting.

Philadelphia puts a potentially hot story in the hands of one of America's best directors and comes up with just another trite melodrama. It appears as if Demme, afraid of insulting anyone this time around, has resolved to not leave anything to ch ance, clearly labeling for us the evil homophobes, the martyred homosexuals, and the misguided but ultimately good-hearted Everyman who comes around in the end, just in time for the weepy deathbed scene.

With a wink behind middle America's back, Demme does throw in some queer trivia. Quentin Crisp (who, after his role as Queen Elizabeth in Orlando appears to be designated Hollywood's gay mascot) shows up in a cameo as a party guest. The New York g ay men's a cappella group The Flirtations performs at the same party, while lesbian performance artist and NEA nightmare Karen Finley is cast in a small role as Hanks' doctor.

These cute attempts at achieving queer authenticity, however, fail to carry any meaning. What would be clever touches in a well-done movie here are just insulting tokenisms.

If this is the best mainstream Hollywood can offer more than a decade into the age of AIDS, the wait has been in vain. Perhaps they would do best to leave movies about the gay community to smaller film companies - who, in recent years, have produced such acclaimed works as Longtime Companion, Desert Hearts and Edward II - and stick to the familiar terrain of lawyer thrillers and million-dollar mechanical dinosaurs.

Go to the next article: Local Comics - by Bob Boster.

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