Tom Hanks really shouldn’t have won for Philadelphia. It’s a pretty mediocore and surface-level film that doesn’t explore the issue half as well as subsequent movies have. Hanks, himself, is playing a different character to usual, but I don’t find any of his acting all that spectacular.
This shows how the passage of time, totally changing the context, alters the critical & social reception of the arts (not to mention broader social norms and behaviours).
When Philadelphia came out in 93-94, we hadn’t seen anything like it. It was really gut wrenching, massively controversial and tackled a topic and a relationship never seen on screen before for a mass audience. I was 14 years old and more aware of HIV/AIDS than the average kid my age, but my parents wouldn’t let me see it until much later, even though I was mature, and we’d watched Big and Splash on repeat in my house growing up. There was something about this role which was being rewarded and Hanks was also being rewarded for – yes – the bravery in playing a gay man in a mainstream movie. To say it was pivotal in changing people’s perceptions of gay male relationships, and the impact of AIDS, is an understatement. It helped make it personal, with a character we had grown to connect with through the course of the film. Forgive me if I’m preaching, but coming so soon after Freddie Mercury’s death, which I think shocked a lot of people, plus the growing awareness of the crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, people were ready at that moment to begin waking up and throwing off their homophobia.
Say what you will now, with the benefit of “subsequent movies”. We didn’t know subsequent movies at the time.
A similar comment was made recently on here about Kramer vs Kramer. While it is legitimate to criticise how movies don’t hold up over time (e.g. American Beauty), sometimes hindsight is harmful when looking back on groundbreaking material.
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