7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 4.2 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
When a man with AIDS is fired by a conservative law firm because of his condition, he hires a homophobic small time lawyer as the only willing advocate for a wrongful dismissal suit.
Starring: Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Jason Robards, Mary Steenburgen, Antonio BanderasDrama | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Music: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
My eldest sister was a public health official at the dawn of the AIDS era and one of her job duties was to provide AIDS awareness and education to the residents of several rural communities in Eastern Oregon. It’s perhaps hard to imagine such a thing now, but people were seriously concerned about things like AIDS being transmitted through the air or casual touches, and in hardscrabble farming communities like the ones my sister was working in there was a none too subtle whiff of homophobia running rampant just beneath that misplaced if understandable anxiety. It may seem a bit easier to “accept” supposedly unsophisticated folks’ reactions to what seemed like a modern plague, but how does one come to terms with ostensibly more upscale and highly educated professionals’ very similar reactions? That’s one of the underlying issues in Philadelphia, the film that kind of broke the strange silence surrounding AIDS in mass media other than often hysterical news reports. Philadelphia was a ground breaking film in its day, but even when it was originally released some at least pointed out how formulaic the film was, even if it was dealing with a then unusual subject matter. That element of the film hasn’t aged particularly well, and in fact the blatantly manipulative aspects of Ron Nyswaner’s screenplay are even easier to spot now, given the luxury of hindsight. But Philadelphia still remains a largely riveting experience, due in no small measure to the outstanding work of co-stars Tom Hanks (who won a Best Actor Academy Award for his efforts) and Denzel Washington.
Philadelphia is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Twilight Time with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. A lot of this film takes place in dark interior spaces, and this high definition presentation can only do so much with elements that don't intrinsically offer much shadow detail to begin with. Similarly, much of the film is bathed in brown tones, which means there aren't a lot of bright primary colors which allow the transfer to really pop in a traditional "wow" manner. With that understanding, this presentation looks quite good, with admirable fine object detail, and a nicely saturated, if usually quite muted, palette. When the film ventures out of doors or we get brightly lit daytime scenes, things improve markedly. There's a very fine layer of grain evident throughout this presentation. There are a couple of strange anomalies that I frankly had never noticed before in previous home video incarnations, which may simply be due to the increased resolution of the Blu-ray. The most noticeable of these is a kind of weird reflection that takes place in the library scene when the camera pans to the library worker asking Beckett to move. It almost looks like the camera was shooting through a Plexiglas window for some reason. It's not traditional lens flare (at least like any lens flare I've ever seen).
Philadelphia's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 springs mostly to life in its two beautiful bookending songs as well as in some of the busy Philadelphia cityscape sequences. Otherwise, dialogue tends to be anchored in the front channels, though occasionally there are some smart uses of the surrounds to indicate Beckett's declining health (and perhaps mental) state, including neatly muffled noises that surround him in the trial's climactic moment. Fidelity is very good, but dynamic range is fairly limited.
Philadelphia may strike some as overly mawkish and simple minded, but one has to place the film in its proper historical context to really appreciate what a valiant effort it was. While some aspects of the film have not aged particularly well, the two lead performances still have awesome power and visceral intensity. The supporting cast is also wonderful, even if Robards is forced to chew the scenery with abandon (at least he's balanced by a touchingly understated turn by Joanne Woodward as Beckett's anguished mother). This Blu-ray offers very good video and audio and has some decent supplements. Recommended.
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