(2 of 3)
-- In the Name of the Father. Daniel Day Lewis stars as Gerry Conlon, the Belfast man who, while on a London spree in 1975, was unjustly arrested, convicted and jailed as an I.R.A. terrorist. The British police in charge of the case were no Miss Marples; they tortured the four major suspects to extract bogus confessions. In director Jim Sheridan's tense retelling of this shameful chapter in British jurisimprudence, the lads are smacked, threatened and humiliated. And Gerry's saintly father (Pete Postlethwaite), jailed with him, is allowed to die slowly, with little medical attention. By the end of the movie, whether or not you're a member of Sinn Fein, the Brits' brutality toward the Conlons will get your Irish up.
-- Philadelphia. Andy Beckett (Tom Hanks), a lawyer who is quietly gay and controllably HIV-positive, learns he now has AIDS. The partners in his firm find out too. When they confect a phony excuse to fire him, Andy sues for wrongful dismissal and hires a skeptical, cut-rate attorney (Denzel Washington) to defend him. Can the case against these powerful solons be won? And if so, will Andy be alive to savor the victory? Philadelphia's agony lies less in these questions than in Andy's drastic deterioration. Hanks so scrupulously, heroically mimes the wasting wrought by the disease, from chest lesions to a 30-lb. weight loss, that Jonathan Demme's film ultimately becomes a documentary on the ravages of AIDS -- and on the masochistic machismo of Method acting.
In theory, all these pictures should be cheered. Films, even American films, needn't be only a baby sitter or a roller coaster. They can aspire to edify, to pry minds open to moral indignities around the world and in our own cranky hearts. Why can't directors aim high -- not just for an Oscar but, hey, maybe a Nobel Peace Prize? And why shouldn't moviegoers, like everyone else during the holidays, be subject to compassion overload? Or be confronted by purposeful screen suffering until they shout, like Wayne and Garth, "We're not worthy"?
No reason at all. But often, when smart directors tackle a "controversial" issue like Vietnam or the Irish question or AIDS, they forget some of their art. Instead of building scenes deftly, allusively, they accumulate horrific detail to make sure you get the point. The films get longer, more ponderous; they sit on your chest until you finally surrender to their good intentions. In the process, they may become sentimental, cautionary fables of mistaken identity, compiling atrocities and piling them on photogenic victims. Suffering sanctifies Le Ly and Gerry's dad and Andy, makes them objects of veneration to the faithful; everyone wants to kiss the hem of their torment.
In the '30s and '40s, Hollywood made "controversial" films about lynching. But the victim was always innocent; no one dared say that even a guilty man deserved due process. In 1947, when Elia Kazan was making Gentleman's Agreement, about a writer who discovers anti-Semitism while pretending to be Jewish, a crew member told Kazan he got the moral: We should be nice to Jews because they might turn out to be Gentiles.