Philadelphia.

Produced by Edward Saxon and Jonathan Demme; directed by Jonathan Demme; screenplay by Ron Nyswaner; cinematography by Tak Fujimoto; edited by Craig McKay, production design by Kristi Zea; music composed and conducted by Howard Shore; starring Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Jason Robards, Mary Steenburgen, Antonio Banderas, and Joanne Woodward. Color, 119 mins. A TriStar Pictures release.

Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks), a successful gay lawyer, is fired from a prestigious Philly law firm even though he's recently been promoted to junior partner. His bosses, a bunch of cigar-smoking members of the old boy's club, claim it's due to his incompetence and poor work performance. Beckett claims it's because they've discovered he has AIDS and files a discrimination suit against his employers. He secures the counsel of Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), a well-dressed, ambulance-chasing attorney who finds himself confronted not only with Beckett's bigoted bosses but also with his own fear of AIDS and homosexuality. Most readers who have followed the uproar in the wake of Philadelphia's release know that this synopsis is hardly a sufficient description of the film. What, then, is the film really about?

This courtroom melodrama is a predictable attempt in the liberal tradition of films such as Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and Stanley Kramer's Home of the Brave (1949) to present personal narratives of prejudice and civil rights discrimination in clearly-defined moral terms. Yet, Philadelphia is different from the others because it cannot wholeheartedly denounce the social bigotry and prejudice it seeks to expose. In the end, the film is unable to make up its mind about the communities it feels obliged to champion because homophobia (and the fear of AIDS, for that matter) is still a socially pervasive and popular attitude. In the past, Jonathan Demme's films have displayed a sensibility for the complexities of American society. Films such as Citizen's Band (1977), Melvin and Howard (1980), Married to the Mob (1988), and especially the seductive The Silence of the Lambs (1991), are intriguing because they offer a detailed, ambiguous, and, at times, ironic portrait of social, economic, medico-scientific, and military systems. Weaned on Hawks, Ford, and Capra, Demme has always expressed sympathy with an individual protagonist who moves within and, at times, against these systems. While Demme's films encourage us to identify with the individual, they never completely abandon their faith in the system depicted.

In Philadelphia this tension catches up with Demme and accounts for the film's major flaws. It ambitiously attempts to dramatize the complex, often contradictory political and psychological positions in this country regarding AIDS and homosexuality, yet ends up dividing its world into simplistic categories of homophile, homophobe, and not-so-homophobe. At one end of the spectrum is Beckett's unconditionally supportive family, including a baby nephew he gets to rock in his arms; at the other are his colleagues, ensconced in a Caligari-style conference room, into which Beckett is summoned to be fired.

Small wonder that neither the good homophiles nor the bad homophobes occupy center stage in Philadelphia. This position is inhabited instead by Miller, whose 'moderate' homophobia makes him the movie's dramatic linchpin for audience identification. Miller's mere eight-degree- transformation from mental gay basher to bashful gay rights advocate is meant to speak to 'the silent majority' challenged to uphold legal and moral justice in the face of its own fears.

Significantly, while Miller's pity for Beckett and his acceptance of Beckett's lover, Miguel (Antonio Banderas), are psychological byproducts along the way to court victory, his metamorphosis never translates into open and explicit support for the gay community. Therefore, the fact that he acknowledges his homophobia and yet does not have to part with it conveniently lets spectators off the hook. It's a patronizing cop-out not to give audiences more credit. Miller functions as a ploy for the audience to safety consume and dispose of the real problems that AIDS and homophobia pose. Philadelphia thereby succeeds in severing a legal agenda from its moral foundation. The film makes a case for legal equality for both homosexuals and PWAs (although in the film the distinction between the two is not always clear), yet it refuses to follow suit by morally condemning homophobia. It's like watching a Fifties film in which a white lawyer fights for the right of blacks to move up from the back of the bus but would really prefer not to sit next to them.

With Philadelphia, Hollywood reveals its own conservative perceptions of the social reality in this country. Miller's fear of 'the love that dare not speak its name' indicates the film's general tenor which condemns homophobia and yet compulsively manifests it. This neurosis results from what Michel Foucault terms "the pressures of the unspeakable"--something that is close to us, yet unacceptable and which, therefore, needs to be kept at a safe distance. Hollywood is a fascinating barometer of this neurosis in that it consistently wavers between two extremes: the 'happens-to-be-gay' and the flaming queen character. The latter indicates the broad strokes by which mainstream cinema paints gays, while the former reflects the total annihilation of gay identity.

In its treatment of Beckett, Philadelphia uniquely combines both stereotypes and reveals Hollywood as a most eligible patient for a visit to Freud's couch. The film is afraid to psychologically portray Beckett as a sexual being and attempts to get around this fear by depicting him as being perfectly content in his closet. By rationalizing Beckett's happens- o-be-gay status, Philadelphia keeps audiences from defining him solely in terms of his sexuality. If the film did otherwise, so the conventional fallacy goes, the threat posed by gay sex would create a disconcerting (not to mention unprofitable) conflict whereby the audience would be repulsed by Beckett in the process of identifying with him.

Sick patient that it is, the film still needs to make sure that audiences don't mistake Beckett for straight, so it burdens him with stereotypical signifiers of gay culture. He becomes an all-show-no-tell character since the compulsive attempt to incorporate all signs into Beckett's characterization is blocked by the film's fear of acknowledging their sources. Therefore, Beckett is allowed to adore Maria Callas, entertain Quentin Crisp, make a total of two trips to a gay porn theatre, and slow dance with Miguel who, we are supposed to believe, is his boyfriend. What the film offers as an in-depth psychological portrait of a gay man is merely a depiction of a character suffering from a deadly disease.

The result is a superficial vision of a multicultural society in which any representation of marginalized identities is reduced to empty signs. Philadelphia reduces Beckett's relationship with Miguel to the description of one man nursing another. While providing medical care has become an important part of many gay relationships since AIDS, it still is only one part. Miguel (whose last name the film never mentions) is further deprived of any substance as he is allowed only to handle Beckett's I.V., prepare injections, and criticize doctors. It's Beckett's mother (Joanne Woodward) who does all the worrying, thereby reaping the audience's sympathies and commiseration.

Minimizing Miguel's role is just one of the ways in which the film's red ribbon mentality severs gayness from AIDS--thereby doing exactly the opposite of what the gay community needs these days, which is an insistence on this connection as part of its history, cultural identity, and political/medical plight. This is important with respect to the funding of research projects, medical care, and social benefits for gay lovers. While gays therefore need to insist on their specific position in relation to AIDS, we must not allow dominant culture to condemn sexual practices associated with AIDS, but should enlist the political and cultural system to fight the disease itself.

Ironically, Demme has stated repeatedly that he didn't want to make a film that sidestepped the gay community. The tension, however, between his willingness to depict gayness and his fear of psychologically engaging with it inevitably results in an ethnographic perspective of gay life (which the film conceives of only as white, upper-middle class). Philadelphia presents gays as a tribe of noble savages. Beckett's 'Baedeckerization' is epitomized in the now infamous 'opera scene' in which he and Miller meet to discuss their strategy for the next day in court. Beckett drifts out of the conversation, suddenly overwhelmed by an aria from Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chenier which has been playing in the background. Rapturously dancing (with his I.V. stand in tow) to the overdetermined strains of Callas, Beckett attempts to relate the meaning of the aria to an increasingly uncomfortable Miller.

Expressionistic and objectifying at the same time, this scene puts Beckett's identity up for grabs by simultaneously depicting him as an ascending angel and a demon in the underworld. With his recitation of "I am love, I am transcendence," the film gives Beckett himself an opportunity to explain the significance of the 'tribal ritual.' He speaks of his own experience in his own voice, an act which potentially liberates him from the conventional position as the object of ethnographic study.

But Demme refuses to let this happen: the literally condescending view of Beckett in the high angle shot reaffirms his position as the object of the camera's gaze. Although the visual and aural excess which marks Beckett could be interpreted a number of ways, the stunned reaction shots of Miller intercut in this scene make clear that the film expects most viewers to react to Beckett as the Phantom of the Opera. The strong color demarcation which codes both men in this scene--Beckett's face suffused in saturated red and Miller's increasingly darkening face lit by the dying embers in the fireplace--further reinforces difference instead of negotiating it. Although the music of Giordano's opera haunts Miller into his connubial bed (where he tries to reassure himself of his straight identity), it can't counterbalance the visual divide of the preceding scene.

Philadelphia's misguided artistry is rather troubling. It attempts to depict social controversy through diverse voices but, more often than not, Demme puts the voices of the groups he wants to champion into the wrong mouths with the wrong words. Take, for example, the defense's open insinuation that Beckett may have contracted the virus during his visits to a porn theatre. This explicit connection of AIDS and gay sex is something that, ten years ago, AIDS activists were begging for when neither Bush nor Reagan even knew how to spell A-I-D-S. The film presents this connection in a negative way, however, by putting it in the mouth of the defense. This leads audiences to believe that the connection between AIDS and gay sex is unwarranted (and represents yet another way in which the film severs gayness from AIDS). If anything, such a scene demonstrates how the dominant ideology is able to absorb the screaming criticism from an oppressed marginal group and present it as its own.

This frightening appropriation continues in several later court scenes in which Miller screams at the attorneys responsible for firing Beckett, "Are you gay? Are you a faggot? Do you do it from behind? Do you do the flip-flop?" Attempting both to defend Beckett and to exorcise his own dark demons, Miller tries to confront homophobia by using its own language. His hysterical inquiries, however, are met with stunned silence by everyone in the courtroom. It's like a cruelly conceived poker game in which everyone gets their cards dealt face down except for Beckett whose cards are dealt face up for all to see. The most terrified of all is Beckett because, since he is the sole marker of homosexuality in the courtroom, these epithets fall back on him. While some people defend Philadelphia for importing gay images into the heartland of America, such scenes don't exactly encourage gay viewers to come out of the closet.

The film's rampant misappropriation of gay culture comes to a climax in the trial scene in which Beckett takes the stand. This scene reveals the trial for what it really is: a drama of outing. While the defense cross-examines Beckett, images of the dark, seedy porn theatre are intercut with shots of a startled and embarrassed Beckett on the witness stand. The defense's attempt to put Beckett on the spot by exposing his visits to the porn theatre function in two ways: first, it bespeaks the film's liberal, anti-outing consciousness by presenting the defense's strategy as objectionable; second, it stereotypes the subculture of bathhouses and porn theatres in a conventional, mainstream manner. The spectacle continues when Miller requests an opportunity to readdress Beckett after the defense's cross-examination. He asks Beckett to unbutton his shirt and display his lesions as evidence of his illness. But since the lesions carry the stigma of AIDS, Miller's strategy brings out Beckett's no-win situation--in order to to put his antagonists on the spot, he needs to put himself on the spot. The drama of outing gayness becomes replayed as the drama of outing AIDS. Not only does the film cunningly condemn outing by enacting it on the victim 'for his own good,' it also rips it out of the hands of the gay community. Is this some kind of sick joke?

Philadelphia's liberal but fatally ill-conceived project also extends to the director's and screenwriter's public defense, the film's promotion, and the way in which it has been received by the mainstream press. The film is really a child with many Fathers and can thus be conceptualized as a play within the larger drama of the way our culture understands and processes its trials and tribulations--in this case, AIDS and homosexuality. In this sense, looking at the film is only half the picture. What about the dramatis personae of that larger drama?

Jonathan Demme, in making this film, not only reveals himself as a player inscribed in the social and cultural systems he depicts, but also becomes a prime example of these systems' limitations. The good liberal that he is, Demme unconditionally invites all criticism of the film (even that of playwright and AIDS activist Larry Kramer) because it supposedly encourages Hollywood to make more such films, furthers the discourse on AIDS, and increases tolerance. Not coincidentally, it also gives the film a great deal of publicity. Demme can then consolidate his own position by recruiting everyone into his effort--most notably his gay friend Juan Botas, who died after advising him on the screenplay, as well as gay screenwriter Ron Nyswaner, and Nyswaner's AIDS-stricken nephew. They serve as an alibi for Demme's own conception of Philadelphia as a collaborative, democratic project, unhindered by unilateral auteurism, corporate mentalities, or reactionary attitudes. His position as a liberal artist can seemingly absorb the harshest assaults and the most virulent critiques while allowing him to acknowledge humbly his own shortcomings. As a martyr, the more beating he takes, the better.

Another major player in this AIDS-gesamtkunstwerk is Denzel Washington, whose position as one of America's most popular leading men has both benefited from and gone well beyond Sidney Poitier's Guess-Who's- Coming-to-Dinner status. Yet in Philadelphia his blackness must be denied, as it might force audiences to recognize a connection between the oppression of blacks and gays. Some might argue that the film's library scene does draw a parallel between racism and homophobia via AIDS. In this scene, Miller seems to be motivated to take on Beckett's case when he observes a librarian asking the visibly sick Beckett to leave the public reading room. In addition, Washington's recently portrayal of Malcolm X may invite some viewers to draw a subtextual parallel between both issues. But Philadelphia never overtly deals with racial identity. Indeed, Demme further avoids drawing this parallel by presenting Miller's wife as a smart but acquiescent woman who, instead of using the parallel between blacks and gays to confront her husband's homophobia, merely smiles ever so ironically for the sake of keeping peace in their household.

Denzel Washington himself reveals the neurosis that determines the film's contradictions. In preparing for the role of the homophobic attorney, the allegedly unprejudiced Washington was in desperate need of advice from his straight friends on how to "act" like a homophobe. Did Washington also consult these friends before advising fellow actor Will Smith not to kiss another man in Six Degrees of Separation? As Smith explained in a recent issue of Premiere, Washington reminded him that, unlike white movie stars, black actors are role models. If that were really the case, then one wonders why the role of Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia was carefully given to one of America's most white-bred actors.

Enter Tom Hanks, whose innocuous, straight-boy-next-door image enables him to make Beckett palatable to middle America. Demme certainly has learned from the panic surrounding activists' attempts to out Jodie Foster following the release of The Silence of the Lambs. Hanks's stable identity assures audiences that, underneath it all, Beckett's gayness does not extend beyond the limits of the film's world. Hanks also confirms the notion that someone who embodies the norm can safely explore fictional identity with artistic merit. In the post-Philadelphia imagination of the Screen Actors Guild, straight-identified actors will consider such characters as Beckett a prestigious opportunity to explore their histrionic expertise. But God forbid an openly gay actor and actress play Harry and Sally types. Then again, openly gay men and women are rare commodities in Hollywood.

One of them is Ron Nyswaner, the homosexual screenwriter who is called upon to authenticate the film's depiction of the gay community, but who conspires with a process that literally sets gay sexuality straight. Nyswaner, therefore, more than anyone else, embodies Philadelphia's neurosis. His role approximates Beckett's as the film condenses the diversity of the gay community into one character whose only function is to supply a label emptied of all substance. As if this were not bad enough, Nyswaner, in a trantrum of sadly misguided sarcasm, joyfully fulfills his role as a puppet, claiming in The New York Times that, "In Hollywood, success gives you the right to deflect all questions and criticism, directing your energy toward perfecting the art of gloating." Only someone who has been completely assimilated within the power structure of Hollywood could believe in the truth of the statement.

The film industry persistently acts on its own conservative projections of what middle America can bear to see. If Philadelphia reflects this mentality by downplaying its allegedly central concerns of AIDS and homophobia, the film's advertising campaign keeps both these themes firmly locked in the closet. One need only look at Philadelphia's poster, which features a healthy (!) Hanks and a wary Washington in opposite corners safely separated by a gavel in the center. Although Philadelphia conceives of itself as a critique of homophobia, the poster's design and ad copy--"No one would take on his case...Until one man was willing to take on the system"--indicate how the film is desperately trying to pass for straight.

Yet Larry Kramer points out that middle America has long been accustomed to representations of both gays and PWAs on TV. Philadelphia's novelty may therefore lie in being the first product that charges middle America $7.50 for the sight of Karposi lesions on a gay body. The fact that the film had already grossed $60 million by mid-March, however, doesn't mean that a different treatment of the subject couldn't have proven as financially successful. Enter the press, which has played a key role in the film's performance at the box office. Most critics have dutifully listed the film's limitations only to subscribe to its agenda in the end. Philadelphia is a welcome object for the straight critic because the paths by which he or she can explore the issues of AIDS and homophobia are already mapped out by the film. But since some of his or her best friends are gay, the straight critic is willing to acknowledge their complaints without having to assume their point of view. This leaves gay critics in an impossible position, as our political responsibility compels us to comment on a film from which we would rather avert our eyes.