Reflections on ‘Philadelphia’: a Pioneering AIDS Film

Dan Frampton marks the beginning of LGBTQ+ history month with a reflection on the pioneering film, 'Philadelphia, 30 years after the film's initial release. 

Please note: this reflection contains spoilers. 

Philadelphia (1993), starring Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks, was the first major Hollywood studio film to grapple with the subject of the AIDS epidemic. It tells the story of a successful young lawyer, Andrew Becker, played by Hanks, who takes his firm to court for what he claims is unjust dismissal due to his AIDS diagnosis. Denzel Washington, playing Joe Miller, acts as his legal counsel. 

Now over 30 years old, it is interesting to reflect on the film, both how it was ground-breaking at the time but, also, how it might be made differently now. 

Firstly, the title, just Philadelphia, is a bold choice. Opening with a montage of scenes from the city of Brotherly Love, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, it bravely and explicitly challenges the viewer to see the prejudicial treatment of people with AIDS as un-American. Over the top of this, Bruce Springsteen sings, 'The night has fallen. I'm lyin' awake/I can feel myself fading away. So receive me brother with your faithless kiss/Or will we leave each other alone like this. On the streets of Philadelphia?' Later on in the film, we are told emphatically how the Founding Fathers did not decree that only 'all straight men are created equal'.

The film is certainly ground-breaking in having a sympathetic gay character as the lead, a portrayal that earned Tom Hanks an Academy Award. Washington's character, Joe Miller, however is not uncontroversial. Perhaps, to ensure its acceptability at the time, much of the focus of the film is on the homophobic Miller as saviour and how he is moved to take on the case, not because he believes in homosexual equality - he says that he can't stand to be around gay people - but simply to uphold the law. As the film progresses, Miller is gradually exposed to a somewhat tame version of gay life - Andrew Beckett and his partner, for instance, are not shown as particularly intimate, even in private - and, grudgingly, comes to accept Beckett. Frustrating as this might be to modern viewers, it is perhaps unsurprising and surely part of the point of the film, depicting an imperfect journey that many people at the time, and since, have been on. 

Still, it is not true to say that we are given a completely sanitised view of gay life during the AIDS crisis. There is, for instance, a particularly powerful, if slightly unbelievable scene, where Hanks bares his Kaposi Sarcoma lesions to the court. However, I do think the film would have been written differently were it made today. Perhaps it would be less cautious about showing gay, lesbian and trans life and intimacy on the screen, and perhaps too, more airtime would have been given to AIDS activists who fought hard for the rights and fair treatment of those with the disease. There is also an interesting angle to consider as to why Joe Miller, a black man, would be so moved to take on a gay man's case. It is a missed opportunity. I think, for the film to not explore the similarities in discrimination faced, and still faced, by gay and African Americans. 

Still, by the end of the film we are left in no doubt where our sympathies should lie. I was particularly moved by a scene with a lady who contracts AIDS through infected blood transfusion, today a sometimes overlooked element of the crisis. The focus on Beckett's family, too, is a very heartfelt and welcome contrast to lots of modern AIDS narratives where there is usually family rejection in favour of a chosen LGBTQ family. Yet here, in a powerful statement, Beckett's biological family do not turn their back on him. Perhaps, most radical of all, there are over 50 people with AIDS acting in the film, a remarkable feat considering widespread prejudice at the time. 

In short, the film Philadelphia succeeds, despite, and sometimes arguably because of, its faults. Its caution has, I'm sure, led to many more conversations about AIDS that would otherwise not have happened. That we might change elements of the film now is a reminder that some things have changed for the better.