Philadelphia is a 1993 American drama film and one of the first major Hollywood movies to recognize HIV/AIDS, homosexuality and homophobia. It was written by Ron Nyswaner, directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington.
Hanks won an Academy Award for Best Actor at the 66th Academy Awards for his role as Andrew Beckett in the film, while the song "Streets of Philadelphia" by Bruce Springsteen won an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Nyswaner was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, but lost to Jane Campion for The Piano .
Video Philadelphia (film)
Plot
Andrew Beckett is a senior associate at the largest corporate law firm in Philadelphia. He conceals his homosexuality and status as an AIDS patient from another member of the firm. A partner at the company saw a lesion on Beckett's forehead. Although Beckett associates lesions with badminton injuries, it shows Kaposi's sarcoma, an AIDS-defining condition.
Shortly after, Beckett stayed home from work for a few days trying to find a way to hide his wound. While at home, he completed a document for the case he had assigned to him and then took him to his office, leaving instructions for his assistant to file the document the next day, which marked the end of the law of limitations for the case. Later that morning, he received a call requesting the document, because the paper copy could not be found and there was no copy on the computer hard drive. The document was eventually found at an alternative location and brought to trial at the last minute. The next day, Beckett was dismissed by a corporate partner.
Beckett believes that someone deliberately hides his documents to give the company a reason to fire him, and that his dismissal is actually the result of his diagnosis with AIDS. He asked several lawyers to take his case, including Joe Miller's personal injury lawyer. The homophobic Miller seems worried that he could contract Beckett's disease. After refusing to take the case, Miller immediately visits the doctor to find out if he can catch the disease. The doctor explained that the route of HIV infection does not include regular contact.
Unable to find a lawyer willing to represent him, Beckett was forced to act as his own lawyer. As he surveyed a case in the law library, Miller saw Beckett at a nearby table. After a library clerk looked at Miller, maybe because Miller was black, a librarian approached Beckett and announced that he had found a book about AIDS discrimination for him. When others in the library start staring with tension, the librarian advises Beckett to go to a private room. Feeling despaired by the behavior of others and seeing parallels in the way he himself was treated unjustly, Miller approached Beckett, reviewed the material he had collected, and took the case.
When the case took place in front of the court, the company partners took a stand, each claiming that Beckett was incompetent and that he deliberately tried to hide his condition. The defense repeatedly suggests that Beckett brought AIDS upon himself by gay sex, and therefore not a victim. In the testimony process, it emerged that couples who had noticed Beckett's lesion, Walter Kenton, had previously worked with a woman with AIDS after blood transfusion and should have recognized the AIDS-related lesions. According to the couple, the woman is an innocent victim, unlike Beckett, and further testifies that she does not recognize Beckett's lesions. To prove that the lesions will be seen, Miller asks Beckett to unbutton his shirt while in the stands, revealing that the wound is indeed visible and recognizable as it is.
Beckett eventually fainted during the trial. After Beckett was admitted to hospital, another couple, Bob Seidman, who saw Beckett's lesion confess that he suspected Beckett had AIDS but never told anyone and never gave him a chance to explain himself, which is very regrettable. During hospitalization, jurors vote in favor of Beckett, giving him pay, damage to pain and suffering and punitive damages, totaling more than $ 5 million. Miller visits Beckett who appears to have failed at the hospital after the verdict and overcame his fear enough to touch Beckett's face. After Beckett's family left the room, he told his partner Miguel that he was ready to die. At Miller's house, Joe and his wife were awakened by a phone call from Miguel, who told them that Beckett had died. A memorial was held at Beckett's home after the funeral, where many mourners, including Miller, saw Beckett's home movie as a happy child.
Maps Philadelphia (film)
Cast
Inspiration
Events in the film are similar to events in the life of lawyers Geoffrey Bowers and Clarence B. Cain.
Bowers was a lawyer who in 1987 sued Baker McKenzie's law firm for the wrongful dismissal in one of the first cases of AIDS discrimination. Cain was a lawyer for Hyatt Legal Services who was dismissed after his employer learned that he had AIDS. He sued the Hyatt in 1990 and won before his death.
Controversy
The Bowers family sued writers and producers. A year after Bowers's death, producer Scott Rudin interviewed the Bowers family and their lawyers and, according to the family, promised compensation for the use of Bowers's story as the basis for the film. Family members insist that the 54 scenes in the movie are very similar to the events in Bowers's life that some of them can only come from their interviews. However, the defense said Rudin left the project after hiring a writer and did not share any family-given information. The lawsuit was settled after five days of testimony. Although the terms of the agreement were not released, the defendants did admit that the "movie" was partially inspired "by Bowers's story.
Release
The film is the first big-budget Hollywood movie star to handle the issue of AIDS in the US (following the film Dan Band Played On ) and hinted a shift in Hollywood movies in more directions. a realistic portrayal of gays and lesbians. According to Tom Hanks' interview for the 1995 documentary film The Celluloid Closet , the scene shows more affection between him and Banderas being cut, including one with him and Banderas in a shared bed. The DVD edition, produced by Automat Pictures, includes this scene.
The scenario was also republished in a novel by author Christopher Davis in 1994.
box office
Philadelphia was originally released on December 22, 1993, in a limited opening of only 4 theaters, and had a gross weekend of $ 143,433 with an average of $ 35,858 per theater. The film expanded its release on January 14, 1994, to 1,245 theaters and opened at # 1, the best-selling $ 13,817,010 during Martin Luther King's 4-day weekend, Jr., averaging $ 11,098 per theater. The movie remained at # 1 on the following weekend, earning $ 8,830,605 again.
On the weekend of the 14th, the weekend after the Oscar, the film expanded to 888 theaters, and saw a 70 percent gross increase, generating $ 1,941,168 and jumping from # 15 on the previous weekend (when it generated $ 1,141,408 from 673 theaters), to return to the top 10 in # 8 that weekend.
Philadelphia eventually grossed $ 77,446,440 in North America and $ 129,232,000 overseas for a total of $ 206,678,440 worldwide with a budget of just $ 26 million, making it a huge box office success, the 12th best-selling movie in the United States. 1993.
Critical response
Philadelphia earned most of the positive reviews from critics, with Hanks and Washington receiving widespread praise for their performances, and collecting a 78% approval rating on online movie critics Rotten Tomatoes site, based on 47 reviews, average 6.6/10. In a contemporary review for Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half out of four stars and said the film was "good enough, in its own way." And for movie fans with antipathy towards AIDS, but enthusiasm for stars like Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, this might help broaden the understanding of the disease, This is a breakthrough like Guess Who Came for Dinner (1967)) , the first big movie about romantic clumps; he uses the chemistry of popular stars in a genre that can be relied on to avoid what looks like controversy. "
Christopher Matthews of Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes "The long-awaited Jonathan Demme in Philadelphia is so skilled at acting, well-intentioned and courageous that you find yourself constantly attracting him to become the definitive AIDS film." James Berardinelli of ReelViews wrote, "The story is timely and powerful, and the shows of Hanks and Washington assure that the characters will not immediately vanish into obscurity." Rita Kempley of The Washington Post wrote: "It's less like a movie by Demme than the best of Frank Capra.It's not just shrewd, cliché and patriotic, but compassionate, exciting and emotionally destructive. "
Accolades
The protagonist of this film, Andrew Beckett, listed in the order of 49 among the heroes on the list of AFI of the Top 100 Heroes and Villains.
The film was ranked # 20 in AFI 100 Years... 100 Cheers.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack album was released in 1993 which contains the main music featured in the film.
Track list
The album was re-released in 2008 in France only as a CD and DVD package along with the movie itself, with the same playlist (catalog number 88697 322052 under both Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Sony Classical labels) Director deliberately asked Bruce Springsteen to make the main song for the film in an attempt to try to get more people who do not know much about AIDS to be more comfortable with watching movies, and to raise overall awareness. However, Springsteen's first contribution, "Tunnel of Love", was rejected by Demme.
See also
- List of American films in 1993
- Cultural depictions of Philadelphia
References
External links
- Philadelphia on IMDb
- Philadelphia in the TCM Movie Database
- Philadelphia at AllMovie
- Philadelphia in Box Office Mojo
- Philadelphia at Rotten Tomatoes
- Philadelphia in Metacritic
- Still movies
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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