The 1993 movie "Philadelphia," directed by Jonathan Demme is more a cultural phenomenon than an entertainment. A lawyer fighting wrongful termination suits told me that the movie made it easier to prevail in them. The tearjerker movie also seems to have increased compassion for people with AIDS, since that all-American icon Tom Hanks played a gay man, and was rewarded with an Oscar for his efforts, and made one of the most memorable Oscar acceptance speeches that also increased tolerance or acceptance. Plus the movie inspired a good song by Bruce Springsteen.

Within two and a half years, new drugs made HIV-infection considerably more manageable than at the time, so the movie became something of a historical curiosity. It made lots of straight people feel good about themselves for sympathizing with Tom Hanks's character -- as if sympathizing with Tom Hanks has ever been much of a stretch. He's Hollywood's Mr. Likable -- even when trying to play a hit man.

Like all the tv movies with gay characters before it (until Glen Close played Col. Cammemeyer in “Serving in Silence”) and many feature films,"Philadelphia"  is predominantly about straight characters agonizing over accepting them (here, Denzel Washington is the one coming round). Although Tom Hanks’ movie  family is too good to be true, I take it as a model of what families should be like (providing unqualified support). The waste of Antonio Banderas bothers me more: he mostly hovers and looks concerned). He and Tom Hanks barely touch). The audience has  no idea what he does and very little of what he feels or what Tom Hanks' martyr feels for him.

As usual, what broke me up wasn’t the suffering of the gay character or characters, but the pain of someone being left behind: a brother, who breaks down instead of making keep up the brave front remarks).

I was not impressed by Hanks’ mini-lecture about Maria Callas singing Puccini. For me the highlight was Denzel Washington overcoming his repugnance and coming to Hanks’ defense in the law library when he sees the social death being enacted  there -- specifically by a clerk strongly suggesting Hanks be secluded. 

As antiseptic as the gay representation is, I think that the film gives straight audiences some sense of the virulence of homophobia and AIDS-phobia (not much abated since then as the supposed "defenses of marriages" exclude rather than defend and deny loving relationships between persons of the same sex.)

"Philadelpia"  is a worthy and sometimes  gripping film with some fine performances,and Bruce Springsteen’s haunting title song over the  opening credits that also was rewarded with an Oscar.

Recommended:
Yes