Remembering Jonathan Demme: Philadelphia

Jonathan Demme’s passing has already been noted – by writers far more qualified than me. But I want to offer a few words on his films, particularly Philadelphia, which I just recently watched. Encountering Demme’s work in the way I have, in a random and unpredictable fashion (more on that later) reminds me how much of my film knowledge has been accumulated in haphazard, almost nonsensical ways, devoid of historical context. I saw Demme’s slick, terrifying thriller Silence of the Lambs (1991) years before I saw his wacky, clever comedies Married to the Mob (1988) and Something Wild (1986). I haven’t seen Melvin and Howard (1980), the film which put Jonathan Demme on the map, or Stop Making Sense (1984), the Talking Heads concert movie that remains one of the most critically acclaimed concert movies ever. And this week, for the first time, I sat down and watched Philadelphia (1993). I knew enough about Philadelphia to feel as though I’d seen it. My parents used to watch it frequently, or at least my vague memories suggest that Philadelphia was on the rotation cycle. They like Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. My family is conservative and Evangelical Christian. We were raised to believe that homosexuality is a sin. We were probably taught that AIDS was something bad people got (although I don’t remember my own parents saying this, thankfully) because they had it coming.

I sat down to watch Philadelphia partly because it was mentioned on the Slate Culture Gabfest’s recent episode about Demme. But more importantly, I needed to watch something depressing. I was in the throes of an unbearable depression, and I thought maybe if I watched enough sad movies, I could just let the pain bleed out. Is anything sadder than watching Tom Hanks, the Everyman of the 90s, die of AIDS? Is there anything more gratifying than watching Denzel Washington, the other Everyman of the 90s, defend him in court?

I wept. But I don’t think Philadelphia is a great movie. I used Philadelphia because I knew it would milk the tears out of me, and the movie did its job. But I don’t feel the same affection for it that I feel for other sad movies that I love, like Manchester by the Sea and You Can Count on Me, or Moonlight, or Ordinary People. Philadelphia exists on some other plain for me. It’s a very well-made and socially conscious movie with two great actors, and as much as this movie makes me feel its pain, it’s hard not to feel its intentions, which are admittedly very good intentions, announcing their presence.

Philadelphia exists to show homophobic people that gay people are human beings. It’s not the most complex depiction of gay people, and it’s certainly dated nearly 25 years later, but there’s an undeniable power in its grim slick Hollywood texture, in the choice of Tom Hanks, a comedy star, to play this lawyer who’s fired by his firm for being gay (and afflicted with AIDS). The homophobic man (or woman) is asked to identify with the Denzel Washington character. Washington plays Hanks’s lawyer, a local TV celebrity who despises gay people even as he defends one. Washington’s performance reminded me of his character in Fences, a character I really found insufferable. But, unlike so many lofty yet hollow message movies, Philadelphia has a real, beating heart, and that is the heart that Jonathan Demme infused into all of his movies. Even in something as unsuccessful as Ricki and the Flash, Demme’s final film, he could make us care about the characters. We move beyond congratulating him for having lofty social intentions, and just feeling like we’ve spent two hours getting to know a few people exceptionally well. So even when Demme doesn’t succeed, or partly succeeds, his work is always worth watching. As so many people have already mentioned, Demme cared deeply about human beings, and this is the thread that runs through his diverse body of work.

In fact, the most moving part of Philadelphia may be the opening credits, where we see a montage of different locations in the city, all of them populated by people: walking to work, cooking dinner, playing in the streets, cajoling and carrying on, hobbling with grim seriousness: the sequence is a moving portrait of all the varied pulsating little threads of human life that make up a city, punctuated by Bruce Springsteen’s moving, hymn-like pop ballad, “Streets of Philadelphia.” Where much of Philadelphia feels weighed down with grim importance, this opening sequence feels vulnerably light and almost sacred. What a gifted filmmaker we have lost, who could put so much thought and feeling into so many different kinds of movies.

As Peter, Tom Hanks gives a moving performance. (And of his two Oscar-winning performances, I'll take this one over Forrest Gump any day.) I think I admire him more for making the choice to play an openly gay man (whether it was a calculated choice or not), than I like the performance, as good as it is. (And trust me, I wept like a baby at the end of the movie.) But there are other performances that I savored more, like Mary Steenburgen as the opposing attorney, who tries to discredit him for being "reckless," or Jason Robards, playing his boss at the law firm, the typical old Philadelphia fogey who bristles at the thought of allowing a gay man into his fold, or darling Joanne Woodward, who doesn't have enough screen time, as Peter's mother.

But we must bear in mind that just because a movie has a walloping emotional effect on us, that doesn't make it a great movie. Philadelphia is a pretty good movie, with some great parts. In less capable hands, Philadelphia would have been a real mess, too content in its own liberal-mindedness to actually reach people. As it is, I think Philadelphia is the kind of movie that actually might change some people's minds, and more importantly, their hearts. Even if it's not a great movie, that's good enough for me.

They Might Be Giants

George C. Scott plays a modern-day Don Quixote: he's a former judge, named Justin Playfair, who thinks he's Sherlock Holmes. Justin's conniving brother (Lester Rawlins) wants him committed to a mental institution so he can take over Justin's estate. Joanne Woodward plays Dr. (Mildred) Watson, the psychiatrist who takes his case, and becomes ensconced in Justin's fanciful search for his nemesis, Moriarty.

Fans of either Sherlock Holmes or the two leads, both of whom are better than their material, will be disappointed by this junky, meandering movie. It has a lot of energy, but no structure to channel it, and if it's supposed to be a comedy, it isn't a very funny one. There aren't any good set-ups, and the only real joke in the whole production--Justin's madness and the world he's created as a result of it--isn't enough to sustain this mess of a movie. Scott seems miscast as Sherlock Holmes. He might have been more appropriate if this had been about the judge. Woodward is a believable headshrinker who's married to her work and has no life outside of it (she would later play the psychiatrist in Sybil), but there's something unappealing about seeing her play such a drab, pathetic role. Maybe it's too easy for her. She and Scott have some chemistry together, but their relationship is a failed attempt to bring back a kind of screwball comedy vibe.

And let's not forget the ugliness of the 1970's New York that's portrayed in this movie. Lots of grungy buildings and gloomy skies and dirtiness. Presumably, director Anthony Harvey was trying to recreate that industrial England feel of the Victorian era. He doesn't have the cleverness of Arthur Conan Doyle to transcend the setting and make it interesting, a place full of mystery. Doyle's London was a breeding ground for imminent possibilities. New York is too, but not the way it's seen in this misfired comic mystery. The only real mystery here is how they couldn't have come up with a better script.

With Jack Gilford, Al Lewis, and Rue McClanahan. Goldman adapted the screenplay from his own theatrical version, which ran in London in the early 60s. It should have stayed there. 1971.

The Long Hot Summer

You'd be surprised to discover that a movie as commercial as The Long Hot Summer (1958) came from a few stories by William Faulkner, culled from his three-part novel The Hamlet and another short story called "Barn Burning." It may contain the seeds of Faulkner, but it's been filtered through the MGM mill and turned into a glossy-looking soap opera about a Mississippi patriarch named Will Varner (Orson Welles) who wants to marry off his 23-year-old daughter Clara (Joanne Woodward) to a slick stranger named Ben Quick (Paul Newman), whose reputation as a barn burner precedes him. Will sees in Ben Quick a youthful version of himself: someone bold and sly and opportunistic, and with enough charm and charisma to con anybody.

The screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., is full of movie lines that could never be mistaken for realistic dialogue. That's part of the fun, because the actors are so skilled and so much fun to watch as they turn the bad poetic lines into intentional self-parody. You always feel that the cast is winking at you, that they aren't taking The Long Hot Summer too seriously, and neither should you. But the movie has a certain pull to it, too. Director Martin Ritt knows how to keep a movie from going dull. His chief appeal is the cast, which is full of fresh-faced young actors, most of them trained at the Actors' Studio (a fact which is said to have caused a certain degree of conflict with Orson Welles, who didn't have a background in the Method, and who may have looked down on it as an inferior acting technique.) Ritt keeps the cameras on the faces of his mostly attractive cast. Welles has been made-up to look older, and his weight, which had accumulated in the last few years, has turned him into something unintentionally comical. He looks the part, a bloated Southern tycoon who refuses to be contradicted by anyone. Welles turns his dialogue into food: he's gobbling the lines so ferociously that it's difficult to understand what he's saying half the time. (Many of his lines had to be re-recorded later because they weren't intelligible).

Everyone in this movie is in heat. (This is, first and foremost, a movie about sex: who's getting it and who isn't getting it and who's contented with it and who isn't.) Joanne Woodward's character, for one, isn't getting it, and moreover she's feeling pulled in too many directions: her domineering father wants grandsons to carry on his family name (a concern for which he exhibits a certain dogged obsession). Her longtime gentleman caller, Allan (Richard Anderson), is content to maintain the status quo. Allan treats her like a respectable eternal virgin, and she responds to this with a certain degree of graciousness because it seems like the right way to be treated. Ben Quick riles her, because he treats her like a woman with full of passions. It's the fact that he can sense her desires without her acknowledging them that steams her, and attracts her, to him. But she can't let herself like him too easily, because that's what her father wants. It's all delightfully uncomplicated complication, and only the ending, where too many dramatic points are wrapped up too easily, feels clumsy. The rest of the movie is breezy and energetic.
With Anthony Franciosa as Will Varner's simpering son Jody, who can't compete with the new rival, Ben, for his daddy's respect; and Lee Remick as Jody's trophy wife, a giddy young thing who spends most of the picture being chased around playfully by her amorous husband. Also with Angela Lansbury, as Will's longtime companion, a no-nonsense innkeeper named Minnie Littlejohn.