rgcustomer
With 250+ reviews already, I'm probably not adding much to the conversation, yet I need a place to say it, so here it is.I've seen the stage version, and I've seen the film three times. And I really do not see what the fuss is about. I've tried, but I don't see it.It's not a bad film, and earned its 7/10 from me. It has good music, good acting, and acceptable effects.But I have a big problem with the writing. I found it to be overlong, without delivering a clear message, and too much directed like a filmed play, rather than a serious film.The angels in particular were among the most idiotic things I've seen in a long time. In a way, I guess that's appropriate, but just didn't fit with the rest of the film. If you edit all that out, I think you could get a better film. Of course, the title would have to go...I also found that the use of Roy Cohn and Ethel Rosenberg didn't fit. Why put a real man as a lead in a fictional film? It's not responsible. There was no Joe Pitt, and he never worked for a 2nd Circuit justice. It all unravels from there. If you're in fiction, it's best to stay there. If you're in docudrama, try to stick to the truth.Themes in this film are gay men and: AIDS, 1980s USA, Republicans, Mormons, the closet.While I have seen better films on gay men and AIDS (In the Gloaming, And the Band Played On) and closeted gay Republicans (Outrage) I haven't yet seen a film that covers as much ground as this one, or that covers the 80s as well. On the other hand, I know there are many significant ones I haven't seen, and I do expect I'll find one better than this.Anyway, I do admire the attempt, and the result is worth watching, although not great.
jcduffy
As I suspect is true of most of the people who assigned this film ten stars, I am a huge fan—yea, verily, a devotee—of the *play* "Angels in America." When I heard that HBO was turning it into a miniseries, I was duly thrilled, and that excitement carried me through my first viewing of the broadcast with only a minor sense of letdown. I recently re-watched the film over several evenings, and with the added distance of several years, my disappointment in the film is stronger. The play deserved a better screen adaptation than this.The acting, I'm pleased to say, isn't one of the major problems. With one exception, the cast do a fantastic job. I don't have the space to single out every actor for the praise they deserve, but I do have to make special mention of Jeffrey Wright's Belize (Ma cherie bichette!) and Meryl Streep's Ethel Rosenberg. The one weak link in this cast is Emma Thompson. She's reasonably believable as the Angel, though hardly an obvious choice. But she's too British to pull off Emily, the Italian American nurse (she doesn't even remember to keep up the accent), and she's too posh to play the psychotic homeless woman (again, accent). If you're going to do the actors-playing-multiple-roles thing, then Thompson needs to work in all three roles.The film's biggest problems lie in the directing and possibly the editing. The pacing is spotty, especially in Part 1. Some scenes play out too slowly: for example, Roy Cohn's first scene, with the phone, which isn't as frenetic as it's supposed to be; or the "quartet" scene, where we watch the two couples—Harper and Joe, Prior and Louis—in overlapping crisis. Other scenes play out too fast: the first meeting of Joe and Louis in the washroom, for instance, which moves too quickly to build up much sexual tension between them.There are missteps in tone right from the beginning of the film. The rabbi's opening monologue is too light, too feel-good, too Hallmark channel or Steven Spielberg. And the confessional scene between Louis and the rabbi shortly afterward, which works on a stage with minimal scenery, becomes unbelievable when it's placed at the cemetery entrance, with people passing behind and a whole row of rabbis listening in—and the coffin, the central presence in this scene as originally written because it symbolizes Prior's mortality and reminds us that Louis is a person who abandons people who have claims on his love, nowhere to be seen.But the biggest problems with tone surround the Angel's appearances. Kushner warns in his playwright's notes that unless "the director and designers invent great, full-blooded stage magic," the results will be "disappointing" and "ineffectual." Now, on a stage, in a live theater, the special effects used in this film would have more than fit the bill for "great, full-blooded stage magic." But on screen, in the age of CGI, the special effects didn't come across as that spectacular. A major failing here—paradoxically—is Nichols's insistence on using wide shot to show us the scale of what they created. Again, I'm sure that live, on set, the staging of the Angel's appearances looked amazing. But on screen, it just looks like Emma Thompson hanging from a cable way up in the air (and wriggling around in a funny way) in a room with abnormally tall ceilings. Sci-fi has spoiled us, Nichols. Unless you have the budget to compete with the scale of a CGI blockbuster, don't try. I'm willing to bet money that designing special effects on a smaller scale, relying more heavily on close-ups to fill our vision with wonder, would have produced more spectacular results. This would have been especially important in the wrestling scene, which is supposed to be deathly serious but was so over-the-top that it actually ended up coming across as slapstick.I have a similar complaint regarding the use of sex in the Angel's appearances. The Angel wasn't a convincing erotic presence because we were shown too much. Wide shots of the Angel and Prior copulating in mid-air wreathed in fire, or the Angel and Hannah locking lips and thrashing around amid fireworks, weren't as impressive as I'm sure they sounded on paper. It just looked, to borrow a line from the script, ungainly. Again, close-ups—glimpses of naked flesh, eyes and mouths in ecstasy—would have been more effective. The close-in shot of Hannah falling back onto the bed in post-coital bliss was more emotionally powerful, and a more striking piece of stage magic, than the wide shot that preceded it.Some final remarks about Kushner's rewrites for the screenplay: I regret the loss of the magic realist scene in the Mormon Visitors Center, between Harper and Prior—but I'm prepared to sigh and say, "Well, you can't preserve everything, that's why the movie's never as good as the original." The additional scene between Hannah and Joe near the end of the movie, at the entrance to the subway, was a worthy addition, an excellent way to provide more closure for Joe's storyline. Throughout the movie, religion was more prominent than it had been in the play: Hare Krishnas chanting in the street, the gospel choir at Belize's friend's funeral, the apparently Amish choir outside the subway. That added a nice dimension to the work. I am baffled, though, by the unhelpful additions to the scene between Hannah and Joe at the Visitors Center, and that trite line about "Hold to what you believe" is...an embarrassing stain.I'm probably coming across as a perfectionist. But "Angels in America" is an outstanding work that deserves perfection. I've seen films so good I'm prepared to hail them as perfect. I would really have liked this to be one of them, but it wasn't.
PansLabyrinth101
Tony Kushner's play, Angels in America was on Broadway in the 90's and won the Tony for Best Play twice. One for Perestorika and one for Mellenium Approaches. These 2 parts is what this wonderfully moving and touching film is adapted from.Mike Nichols directs one of his best films with one of the best casts in the past 20 years. The whole cast cared about there roles so much and you could tell they worked incredibly hard with Nichols to try and get as much emotion out of their roles as possible.Justin Kirk really carries this movie with his incredibly beautiful and vulnerable performance. Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Patrick Wilson, Ben Shenkman, Emma Thompson and the wonderfully effective Mary Louise Parker all deliver what are some of their best performances.This gorgeous film has a fantastic look that keeps your eyes glued to the screen. It was an absolutely beautiful experience. The last scene moved me in ways that I didn't know a movie could. It wonderful, tragic, philosophical and absolutely lovely to watch. 6 hours was not enough.
