Philadelphia: A City of Freedom and Human Rights

                                           Philadelphia: A City of Freedom and Human Rights    

                  The movie, Philadelphia was released in 1994. The movie is a Hollywood drama that has an important subject of our lives on discrimination. The movie is a story of attorney Andrew Beckett, who works for a law firm and has won several cases for his company. Tom Hanks won a best actor of the year for this movie role. The movie also won several awards. Tom Hanks plays a gay man who has AIDS. Though, he becomes a victim of discrimination because of his sexual orientation and AIDS.  Andy gets a promotion for the good job that he did for the law firm, but one of the attorneys notices the telltale lesion of skin cancer that he has on his forehead. The attorney knows that this skin cancer is a sign of AIDS. However, Andy has no idea that he has AIDS but the attorney thinks that, Andy is hiding his diseases.

          Andy tells his boss how excited he is, “I sincerely appreciate your faith in my abilities” and his boss says, “Faith Andy is a belief in something for which we have no evidence of, it does not apply in this situation”. However, when Andy’s boss finds out that Andy has AIDS he start looking for a way to terminate him. One time, when Andy has friends over, he gets sick and heads to the hospital. The doctor tells him that he needs to check his blood. While, Andy checks his blood, he gets a page from his co-worker. Andy calls him back to find out why his co-worker needs him. His co-worker tells him that they are missing some documents, but Andy tells him that he left it at the desk, “I left it at the desk last night” but his co-worker could not find it. After a month Andy gets terminated because of missing documents.  They set him up by dislocating the documents. Therefore, they can terminate him from the company because they think they will contract his disease. Joe Miller is a lawyer who advertises on TV, promising to save your driving license and helps people who get injured in their work, plays by Denzel Washington. Andy wants to sue his company, so he can have peace with himself and to donate the money to charity, if he wins the trial. Andy asks a lot of lawyers to help him however, nobody wants to take his case because he has AIDS.

                At the beginning of the movie Joe Miller was homophobia. However, he finally feels sympathy for what Andy is going through in life, therefore he decides to be his lawyer. For example, at one time a man approaches Joe and tells him that he is doing a good job and ask him if he is gay, but Joe gets upset and calls him a, “fagot” but the next day in courtroom Joe Miller tells the courtroom, how unfairly people treat gay people.  Joe Miller becomes a totally different person in overnight also it is unrealistic. In the movie, Andy’s boss says a lot of abhorrent words about Andy, “He brought AIDS into our offices into our men’s room”. Andy’s boss treats Andy as a useless person because he had AIDS. However, a person does not intend to get sick or they do not choose to be gay. The Opera that is Andy’s favorite song makes the movie more dramatic especially, when he interprets the song it makes the movie dramatic. It makes a lot of people to feel sad and also puts us in deep thoughts. The song makes Andy like he is going to die the next day. The movie, Philadelphia is one of the best movies of Hollywood. People should never be discriminated against their sexual-orientation, well-being, race, gender, and social status. We should treat all people with dignity and care. In the movie lawyer Joe Miller says, “It does not say God created all STRAIGHT men equal, it says God created all men equal”. All human beings should enjoy freedom of speech, beliefs, and freedom because we all are created equal.