Philadelphia

365 Films

Entry #25

Philadelphia (1993)

Directed by: Jonathan Demme

Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia is another one to add in the devastating childhood trauma bin of my early cinephile memories.  I remember openly weeping in my bedroom at the end of the tape.  To prove what an unadventurous moviegoer I was at that age, Philadelphia (like Schindler’s List) only came to my attention when Tom Hanks won the Best Actor Oscar in 1994 ‘s Forrest Gump.  I had an additional vague interest in the film because it was named after a city I was familiar with on a proximity basis and because I remember folking out to the Bruce Springsteen song, Streets of Philadelphia.  The funny thing about that is the Neil Young song Philadelphia is actually more of a punch to gut than the Springsteen song.  When it rains, it pours, I guess.  All of this contributed to a completely devastated ten-year-old psyche.  A wound that was incredibly painful due to the fact that I had just sat through the slow and agonizing death of that incredibly nice man from Big.  Tom Hanks was not Tom Hanks yet to me so all I had to associate him with was the fun-loving hijinks of the aforementioned Josh Baskin.  I was already quite smitten with Denzel Washington from Malcolm X so I had absolutely no problem with watching him play the heroic lawyer.  The point I’m trying to make here is that when you’re young, you are burdened and gifted with an inability to care about or acknowledge the real life personalities of your favorite actors.  All you had to go on was their films.  Granted, Mr. Washington and Mr. Hanks were never two to seek out the tabloid spotlight, but even if they had, I wouldn’t have known about it.  Therefore it becomes difficult to separate them from the characters they play.  You, the viewer, bring the off-screen baggage of associating them with past roles and that can either work to their advantage or disadvantage.  In this case, it was an advantage, but it also inhibits you from seeing them stray too far from their established personas.  Philadelphia was where I learned I had to separate an actor from his or her previous characters in order to truly appreciate their craft.  As painful as it was, it had to be done.  This could also be known as the “Macauly-Culkin-Dies-At-The-End-Of-My Girl” phenomenon.  Maybe that’s why movies have such a powerful hold on us.  They reduce us to blubbering children, utterly baffled as to why the person they thought was our friend betrayed us by dying or acting like a villain at the end.  That probably doesn’t make any sense, but it seemed like a good way to close out this particular entry.  If anyone wants to re-visit Philadelphia and let me know if it is as devastating as I remember it to be, I’m game.