Cinema
Shadowlands ('U', selected cinemas) Philadelphia ('12', selected cinemas)
No tingle, no knobs
Mark Steyn
Anericans don't understand inhibi- tions,' muses C. S. Lewis' brother in Shad- owlands. He wouldn't say that if he'd seen Philadelphia, one of the most inhibited movies ever made. Both are terminal ill- ness stories: it depends whether you prefer seeing Debra Winger die of bone cancer in Shadowlands or Tom Hanks of Aids in Philadelphia. You could argue it doesn't matter: Hanks and Winger look remark- ably similar — pert noses, goofy lopsides smiles, dark curls hugging the head (Winger's are slightly longer), the same gangly awkwardness when they're con- strained in business suits. But there is a dif- ference: 'You're the truest person I've ever known,' Anthony Hopkins (as Lewis) tells Winger, and you believe it because you see it for yourself; she's one of those actresses whose straightforward honesty dignifies even the silliest movie; Tom Hanks, on the other hand, is good at being Tom Hanks. When you drain his face of colour and cover him in lesions, you're covering up Hanks: there's nothing left. All you can see is a studio calculation: pick the most like- able, least gay leading man in motion pic- tures and give him Aids; wow!
As a commercial judgment, it's faultless. You can't make a movie 'about' Aids; it's a behavioural disease, difficult territory for mainstream pictures. And, as it happens, hedonistic Hollywood has accepted the gay, rather than the government, line on 'safe sex' for almost a decade: do what you want, just wear a condom. As a movie, Philadel- phia comes sheathed in its own metaphori- cal condom — so impenetrable it takes you a while to realise there's nothing under- neath at all. Jonathan Demme recognises
he can't change attitudes to Aids, but maybe he can change attitudes to a person with Aids. Yet, even in this modest aim, the film is a dud: the movie is about Hanks' character, but Hanks' character isn't about anything. The plot mechanics are absurd: he's a lawyer who is closeted with his sophisticated big-town workmates but out to his folksy family in the 'burbs; he's fired by the head of the firm, one of the coun- try's top lawyers supposedly but a man whose defence in court is to advise homo- sexuals to 'read your Bible — Old and New Testament'.
Hanks' best role was in Big, as the 12- year-old boy in a man's body who eventual- ly gets to go back to his childhood, and Philadelphia echoes its predecessor in its own finale, with a montage of home movies showing Hanks' character as a child. We leave with an image of innocence, which is what Hanks does best. How wise Sleepless in Seattle, standard boy-meets-girl fare, was to delay Hanks meeting the girl until the final scene. In Philadelphia, boy met boy ostensibly over a decade ago but you'd never know it. Hanks and Antonio Ban- deras are non-characters in a non-relation- ship. Never mind the lack of kissing or touching; there's no tingle, no nothing. The poor chump keeps banging on about how gay he is, but when you look at the screen all you see is Tom Hanks cuddling his sis- ter's baby.
There's not much kissing or touching, at least for the first hour, in Richard Atten- borough's Shadowlands either. 'Based on a true story' of C. S. Lewis and his love for an ex-Communist Jewish American divorcee, it adds a breath of life to the usual English movie cast of repressed dys- functional ninnies. Hopkins and Winger maintain a stiff formality: he doesn't know what to do; she does, but she finds pleasure in waiting for him. In the distance between them, passion pours from the screen. You long for him to take her hand, to kiss her, and the longer you wait, the more intense is the sheer romance. During the Encaenia at Oxford, in the middle of the national anthem, Hopkins stares across the massed ranks of college dignitaries and finds Winger, unfamiliar with the words of 'God Save The Queen' but nodding teasingly along. Later, at the garden party, she play- fully reaches up and brushes something from his face. Later still, when she comes home from hospital to find he's pushed together two single beds, she asks him to describe his bedtime routine. These may well be the three sexiest scenes Richard Attenborough has ever shot. Forget the theological generalities that have been grafted on: we're in TV weepie-of-the- week country — Love Story with knobs on. Which is better than Philadelphia — Love Story with not a knob in sight.
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