GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICHT

SECHON B

JANUARY 14, 1994

Evenings Out

Philadelphia: necessary medicine

Attorney Joe Miller (Denzel Washington, r.) represents lawyer Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks), who is suing his former employers for wrongfully firing him in Philadelphia, a TriStar Pictures release.

by Charlton Harper

Well, the years of imagining and wondering how differently things might look if Hollywood came up with an AIDS movie are over. The long-awaited "Hollywood Response To AIDS" is here. Unfortunately it's a bland hetero response built on caution and little imagination.

Before I launch into a Philly-slam, I do want to acknowledge the important role this film might play in changing hetero-public taste and opinion. For anyone who's been living under a rock since at least 1986, if not earlier, Philadelphia will certainly be an eye-opener. It's a respectable package stamped with deluxe names like Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington and Jason Robards. The rough, "distasteful" aspects of gay life have been smoothed away and polished into something more palatable, more like straight middle-America. Even the most AIDS-phobic, anti-gay moviegoer will find little that annnoys or challenges. There are no drag shows or distorted-out-of-context footage of San Francisco's Pride parade. No scene with Hanks in a sling in a backroom sex-club. (Remember Cruising?) It's obvious that great care has been taken to show gays as chummy, productive, necessary parts of the social fabric. But to anyone who has lived with AIDS on the frontline, the movie seems a disappointing throwback to the 1980's instead of the up-to-the-minute 1990's.

What's the best way to endear the subject of AIDS and gays with the general moviegoing public? The answer: wrap it up in current public taste. So, in line with current trends in movies and pop-literature, we get an AIDS movie that centers on the courtroom. Andrew Beckett (Hanks) is a rising star in a top Philadelphia law firm. He is gay and has AIDS, facts he has withheld from the senior partners. Though he is fired for mishandling an important case, he knows better. Beckett hires Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), a homophobic ambulance chaser, to represent him in a suit against the firm.

The problem with this film is its refusal to dig beneath the surface and produce real insight and detail. The bulk of the film takes place in one of the most boring courtroom scenes in film, relieved only by one moment of sensationalism: Miller has Beckett remove his shirt to show the jury his KS lesion-riddled torso. In line with the rest of the movie, the scene is not played for outrage or shock, but as an unflinching glimpse at reality. For that I'm grateful. But if it's legal thrills you're after, stick to Perry Mason. The win for Beckett is a foregone conclusion from the start.

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Unfortunately, blandness seeps from the courtroom and into most of the rest of the film. In an effort to not scare straight audiences with too many queers, Philadelphia is whitewashed of anything too radical. For instance, we're never really sure of the full status of Beckett's relationship with his lover Miguel (Antonio Banderas). Do they even live together? I'm not sure. Do we ever see them sleeping together, having sex, or showing the remotest signs of physical affection? Not in this Philadelphia. You'll have to go to Scranton for that. Yet at least twice we are given little scenes where Miller is asleep in bed with his wife. The most we get is a cloying tender moment of slow touch-dancing between Hanks and Banderas.

Another glossy, superficial touch that still nags me is the very title itself, Philadelphia. What's in a name? It's not far off to suppose that maybe the city plays a significant role, that the specificity of name indicates that there is something unique about the film's setting. The film opens with a montage of city life and an overly obvious camera sweep of the Liberty Bell. The freedom and justice metaphor is as loud as a ringing bell and as clunky as a cracked one. Beyond these brief moments, Philadelphia could just as easily be Cleveland or Pittsburgh or Detroit.

However, gay audiences are thrown one tired scrap of queer sensibility. Picture yourself as a straight film director or writer. You've got one big emotional moment and you need just the right gay context to place it in. Hmmmm. Tossing aside your initial idea of Beckett reminiscing about the first time he saw Judy Garland, you opt for the next wellknown gay pastime: opera! Add opera's most revered dead icon, Maria Callas, and your scene is set.

So, we're treated to a melodramatic moment where Beckett and Miller are strategizing for their next day in court. Beckett, hooked to an I.V., eyes glazed over, is playing a recording of Maria Callas. While Miller sits transfixed, Beckett paraphrases the aria's lyrics. The opera's heroine sings of the French Revolution and how it destroyed her family and her home. Amidst the ruin she finds hope and love. At the aria's climax, awash in red lighting, a tear rolls down Beckett's cheek. Pathos deteriorates to bathos.

Being an opera fan myself, (I have owned and enjoyed for some time the very Callas recording used in the film), I possess a love for the art and an understanding of the role it has played in developing queer conciousness. But I am also aware it's a diminishing pleasure among gays. Many

gay friends have even surprised me with 'who is Maria Callas?' If the motive for this scene was to show the gay aspect of Beckett's personality, then we could have used a little more physical contact, or maybe Beckett volunteering at an AIDS organization, or maybe doing AIDS activism, or maybe working with gay youths, or maybe playing in a gay softball league, or maybe...It's annoying to see a complex part of our culture reduced to a cliché and exploited as an easy illustration of gay life.

Though the film says nothing new or valuable about AIDS, it does say all the right things. Beckett's pictureperfect "normal" suburban family is the right antidote for those who think queers are not us, but them. I admire the risks Hanks has taken by accepting the role. Though many are already calling for an Oscar, his involvement seems phoned-in. Washington proves that his current hot property status is well-earned. He believably travels from phobic, unwilling participant to caring friend. Mary Steenburgen is a failure as Miller's opposing counsel, but Jason Robards plays Beckett's hateful, crass senior partner for all it's worth. It's a pity there isn't more of him in the film.

Should you see Philadelphia? There have been other effective, non-Hollywood AIDS movies. Gregg Araki's The Living End, while somewhat juvenile and terribly lowbudget, packed an angry punch that still bothers me a year after seeing the film. Though Philadelphia has a secure place in Hollywood history as the first mainstream AIDS film, I doubt that much else will linger in the mind a year from now.

What is most disturbing is the way the film tip-toes around Beckett's sexuality. Why has anyone bothered with a film about a gay man when the subject seems taboo? What is so scary? Harry Hamlin's career survived his gay role in Making Love. Michael York survived his role in Something for Everyone. Is this 1973 or 1993? Instead, why not make a film about a woman who contracts AIDS? The outcry from the gay community that would have surely followed such a decision can be the only reason that kept this first Hollywood AIDS film in a gay context, among the people who have lost most to this disease.

But it is morally imperative that all queers see and support this film. For there to be a second or third or fiftieth Hollywood response, the first one must make money. On those terms alone, Philadelphia is a must, make that a necessary, see.

KEN REGAN