4/4 stars

About fifteen years ago I had a conversation with a woman who told me she couldn’t understand why I supported gay rights if I was not gay myself. Her ignorance was profoundly telling. About seventy or so Alabaman whites marched at Selma in 1965. Had she been there at the time I knew now where she would have been. She’d have stayed at home. For far too many justice for others is not their problem.

In Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia, attorney Joe Miller (Denzel Washington) is faced with a similar dilemma. After agreeing to take Andrew Beckett’s (Tom Hanks) case against AIDS discrimination he is propositioned by a homosexual in a drugstore. To this guy it seemed that only another homosexual would take any interest defending a gay man’s rights. But, Miller, an unapologetic homophobe, vehemently and violently denies the assumption. For him the issue is a matter of justice and the law, not social acceptance of the LGBTQ community. Like Oskar Schindler, Miller’s reasons for protecting the disenfranchised are not the same as the disenfranchised’s for seeking his help. When Miller comes around it is not a dramatic scene of recognition of his errors, but a slow process of developing compassion. As their relationship grows Beckett becomes more than just a client. He becomes a fellow human being.

Andrew Beckett is a lawyer working for a prominent law firm who gets fired after receiving an AIDS diagnosis. To him his termination is a cut and dry case of discrimination. But his boss Charles Wheeler (Jason Robards) and his team of lawyers have orchestrated things so that things are not so simple. They sabotage one of his cases by hiding a much needed file so they can accuse him of incompetence. And it is this argument of incompetence they bring to the courtroom, leaving him to have to prove that his homosexuality and illness were the real reasons.
Miller is reluctant, at first, to take Beckett’s case. The fact that he was Beckett’s tenth choice to represent him doesn’t help either. Miller doesn’t think he has a case and he rejects him initially.
The moment of change comes months later when Miller is at the library. As he quietly pores over a stack of books a complete stranger passes him by and stares him down with an angry unprovoked glare. As a 39 year old black man in 1993, Miller remembers a time when racism was legal and institutionalized and the cause of the stranger’s unspoken hostility is obvious. When the moment passes he sees Beckett, his physical deterioration now clearly visible, looking over some law books at another table. The library’s curator and other visitors are uncomfortable with his presence and drop hints that they want him to go study out of sight. The ignorant prejudice that makes them think AIDS is communicable by proximity is fully on display. The scene makes minimal use of dialogue, letting visual language and editing do the talking.

Philadelphia is a film that lets the camera subtly speak for the characters. Emotion is conveyed most strongly in the movie’s shots. Values and thoughts flash by unspoken through glances, gestures, and body language. The film often speaks volumes in scenes where not a word is spoken.

In the court room the defendants exert all their efforts into damaging Beckett’s credibility. They push forward a narrative that Beckett was a mediocre lawyer and the situation with the missing file was the last straw. Their arguments and the facts they present are erudite and convincing enough to leave things seemingly stacked against him. His own defense relies more on circumstantial evidence and it is a very subtle point about his former bosses’ behavior that gives him any chance for success.
Beckett when he is on the stand makes a profound statement about justice. He claims that his favorite part of being a lawyer were those rare moments when he felt he played some role in seeing justice done for other people. It’s a turning point in the proceedings where the looks of shame on the defendants’ faces and the judge’s observation of them silently clarifies everything. They were not the good guys in this story and they knew it.
Being the good guy may seem naive to some, especially to lawyers, but the simple morality of Sesame Street values is where the buck stops at the end of the day. And that is a truth that stands whether we grown-up civilized people want to admit it or not.

Philadelphia is not so much a film about acceptance of the LGBTQ community – despite the subject matter – but rather the universality of human rights and the justice that all people deserve as human beings. What the film states is that we shouldn’t have to approve of someone’s life style and personal identity to afford them rights and give them justice. The fact remains that a man was wrongfully terminated and the act was against the law. A homophobic lawyer’s opinion of his client’s sexuality is irrelevant and Miller understood this when he took Beckett’s case. He finds himself having to remind a journalist in one scene that the Declaration of Independence said that all men are created equal, not all straight men are created equal.

Justice and rights are, as a principle, universal and when we only give them to some we ultimately give them to none. Tides can turn in how the social zeitgeist views certain groups and our salvation and progress lie in the precedent we set today. If we don’t stand up and defend outcasts who are socially safe to discriminate against, who will, when the tides turn again, stand up and defend us?

Director: Jonathan Demme
Writer: Ron Nyswaner
Producers: Jonathan Demme, Edward Saxon, Ron Bozman, Gary Goetzman, Kenneth Utt, Kristi Zea
Cast: Tom Hanks (Andrew Beckett), Denzel Washington (Joe Miller), Joanne Woodward (Sarah Beckett), Jason Robards (Charles Wheeler), Antonio Banderas (Miguel Alvarez), Mary Steenburgen (Belinda Conine), Charles Napier (Judge Garnett)
Composer: Howard Shore
Cinematographer: Tak Fujimoto
Editor: Craig McKay