Philadelphia (1993) is a heartfelt and sobering courtroom drama that asks the audience to confront their own ideas on sexuality, bigotry, and justice.

Directed by Jonathan Demme and written by Ron Nyswaner, this drama is about a man who believes that his aids diagnosis was the basis for his dismissal from the prestigious law firm he loyally served.

Philadelphia is well directed and served by a script that is motivated to express an emotional truth about the aids epidemic and what it means to have lived through those times both as a homosexual trying to hide who they are while having to cope with an incurable disease, as well as a homophobe who sees the disease lurking in shadows and having to come to terms with their prejudice for the good of society.

Tom Hanks’ portrayal of Andrew Beckett is one of his strongest performances, bringing a human and relatable face to the aids epidemic. Hanks’ natural charisma allows him to really channel the character, helping audiences identify and form a connection with the characters and story.

Denzel Washington’s Joe Miller is the homophobic lawyer Hanks tasks with representing him, and the dynamic between the two characters results in a tug of war of identity exploration and soul-searching.

After I watched this film I did some research and I saw that some critics express their opinion that this film plays fast and loose with history, the law and medical accuracy, but I feel like the script is stronger for not bogging itself down in what some may term realism, as the point of any good drama is to make the audience feel and contemplate. The film is emotionally honest, which is what truly matters when dealing with such complex and harrowing subject matter.

4/5
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Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) is a sweeping and monumental science fiction dystopian drama that is at times mesmerising and profound. The special effects are some of the best ever put to film, using a mixture of matte painting techniques, modelling and keen set design this early motion picture has aged surprisingly well considering that it is almost 100 years old.

Lang’s direction is clever and the camera work is at times quite modern in its approach, evoking emotional reactions. Lang relies heavily on the quickness of the film to be in time with the constant orchestral score to help elevate important moments as there is no dialogue spoken to convey emotional beats.

Metropolis is a black and white picture and this stark contrast of light and shadow helps to convey the melodramatic story being told. A story which uses biblical ideas and tales as one of its core narrative devices, this movie itself can be interpreted as a religious film in some ways - a tale of wayward sons and imperious fathers, sinners and patricians and so on.

The acting is at times ham-fisted and at times superb, which might be expected as motion picture acting was relatively new at the time, with most ‘early’ film actors having extensive backgrounds in stage productions and theatre where acting sometimes needs to be dialled up a notch so as to convey the emotion of a scene to the whole audience instead of just the front row.

Lang’s emotional core is of course the score, composed by Gottfried Huppertz, which is dramatic and majestic but over the course of the 2 and a half hour long movie we can see how Huppertz uses the same musical techniques to represent different emotions and eventually the score begins to become dull through familiarity.

Enjoyable but also hard to recommend as the source material, being very old, has not survived intact and as such large portions of the film are greatly decayed and some of the film is entirely missing, being replaced with story cards, so that the ‘full’ Metropolis doesn’t really exist in a way that audiences can enjoy.

4/5.
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