God Bless Jonathan Demme. Philadelphia is not your typical courtroom drama. It's an AIDS crisis, early 90's epic. Take whatever conventional wisdom you have about courtroom dramas and throw them out the window, because Demme wasn't interested in them here. It is above and beyond what it ever needed to be for it to work. It's an intimate portrait of so many things. A beloved American city, a man's desperate final journey for justice, a young swashbuckling lawyer's first high-stakes case, a misunderstood community of people and the elite powers that try to crush them. All interwoven to tell a classic American story as only Demme could tell it. For filmgoers who carefully examine cinematic technique, Philadelphia is an entire encyclopedia of the Jonathan Demme style of filmmaking. His style brings this film alive. Close-ups, whip-cuts, flashbacks, POVs as well as tricks with lighting and editing. Demme puts on a clinic in how traditional stories can be enhanced in a gratifying cinematic way. The Opera scene sticks in my mind as the most beautiful and haunting moments of the entire film. For just a few minutes, Andrew Beckett's love of opera sends him into bliss, and so does our film. Everything else good about Philadelphia is just the gravy on top. It's Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington in their prime, and that goes without saying.
Review of Philadelphia
