Philadelphia: Anniversary Edition

As Hollywood's first film to directly address AIDS as a serious crisis, Philadelphia will always be a significant pop-cultural milestone. Not only was it a box-office success and multiple-Oscar nominee (including Tom Hanks' victory in the Best Actor category), but its warmth and humanism turned risky subject matter into a mainstream drama that tackled real issues (related to gay relationships, AIDS, discrimination, and civil rights) without scaring off homophobes and conservative filmgoers. Hanks plays a passionate, successful lawyer who's wrongly fired because he's gay and has AIDS, while Denzel Washington stars opposite as the homophobic attorney who defends him in court. Director Jonathan Demme deliberately made Philadelphia--which is both an engrossing courtroom drama and a sensitive appreciation of a good man victimized by ignorance and intolerance--for a popular audience, and while that may strike some viewers as a compromise, the film itself remains potent, effective, and deeply involving (and for those looking for a good tearjerker, well, it works on that level, too). Columbia TriStar's double-disc "anniversary edition" does a fine job, over a decade later, of placing Philadelphia into sociopolitical and historical context. Demme's commentary with screenwriter Ron Nyswaner is insightful and eloquent in expressing the creative process and the challenges of shaping this material, while bonus documentaries offer substantial, often heartbreaking perspectives on the ongoing AIDS crisis and how Philadelphia helped to humanize and broaden the public's perception and awareness of the disease. In addition, the set includes six deleted scenes and the music video for Bruce Springsteen's Oscar-winning song "Streets of Philadelphia." Highly recommended. (J. Shannon)