....clearly one of the best television mini-series of the past few years.
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Anyone not familiar with "Angels in America" and expects it to be a serious drama about the scourge of AIDS and about death will be surprised to find a simple yet effective joke at the beginning of the film. Yes, the film does start with a funeral but Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz´s (played by Meryl Streep under very heavy makeup!) quip about the name Eric not being Jewish is not only amusing, it is also effective in setting a splendid tone for this fabulous HBO mini-series.
Ready and poised to become (dare I say?) one of this decade´s most compelling television mini-series, HBO´s much-praised award-winning series "Angels in America" is remarkable for its intimate yet wide-ranging scope of issues that it tackles. Unlike HBO´s other heavyweight mini-series "Band of Brothers", with the sheer size of its production and its historical importance, "Angels in America" is easily defined by its hardly subtle and unflinching indictment of the conservative politics propagated during the Reagan era. It is also a touching and sometimes-humorous examination of God, hypocrisy, faith, hope and death in mid-1980s America, which is just slowly coming to terms with the curse of HIV and the spread of AIDS among those in the gay community.
Before it was adapted into a screenplay for this mini-series, "Angels in America" was celebrated playwright Tony Kushner´s Pulitzer Prize-winning two-part Broadway production titled "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes". The Broadway production of both parts--the first was subtitled "Millennium Approaches and the second, "Perestroika"--won Tony Awards for Best Play in 1993 and 1994 respectively. Kushner also wrote the teleplay for this HBO effort, at once assuring purists and fans that the play´s translation to film will remain faithful to the original source material.
Seeing that both plays were written in the early 1990´s, it is therefore a real challenge for this mini-series to attract a contemporary audience in 2003 that might not respond favorably to a political and social atmosphere that may not be relevant anymore. However, with the recent approval of gay marriages in Massachusetts and the resulting storm of protests that it ignited, issues of gay rights in America are still, sadly, unresolved after all these years. "Angels in America" may be set in the mid-1980s but its message of tolerance and love still rings true today.
The year is 1985 and an America under the Ronald Reagan administration has embraced a conservative agenda by cutting taxes, eliminating social programs and much to the chagrin of health experts, not address the deadly issue of the AIDS epidemic from the onset. It is this political backdrop that sets the stage for "Angels in America", a difficult time when the AIDS epidemic is ravaging through the gay community without help or even an acknowledgement from the government of its existence. "Angels in America" follows the lives of two couples (one gay and one heterosexual), an influential lawyer who is also a Washington powerbroker and their friends and family as they struggle to come to terms with this deadly new disease and the true nature of their relationships. All the scenes are set in New York City.
Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman) and Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) are gay lovers who have been living together for many years. Louis has always had a hard time dealing with death and this is apparent in the opening scene, where he dutifully attends his grandmother´s funeral at a synagogue. Trying to exclude the irony of his timing, Prior drops a bombshell on Louis after the funeral by announcing that he has been diagnosed with AIDS. Conflicted and terrified of this sudden revelation, Louis callously abandons his longtime partner, proving himself to be a coward who is not able to face up to the stark realities of Prior´s deteriorating health. For all his physical suffering, Prior is also having weird dreams of his ancestors and visitations by an Angel (Emma Thompson) who declares him to be a prophet who will save mankind from God´s abandonment. After Louis´ departure, Prior finds comfort and solace in his friend and fellow drag queen, Belize (played with much spunk from the incomparable Jeffrey Wright).
The other couple, Harper and Joe Pitt (played by Mary-Louise Parker and Patrick Wilson respectively) is caught in a loveless marriage. Joe, who clerks for a judge (he is also the one penning all the judge´s decisions), is a repressed homosexual due to his strict Mormon upbringing. The pill-popping Harper, who is addicted to Valium, lives most of her life in a fantasy world where she is often visited by a travel agent named Mr. Lies (Jeffrey Wright), who is able to bring her anywhere she desires. In one of her delusional episodes, both Harper and Prior´s dream worlds seem to collide and merge, bringing these two strangers together to share each other´s intimate secrets. Prior informs Harper that Joe is actually a closet homosexual, which she quite obviously already suspects. You can clearly see the reasons why Harper and Joe are incompatible with one another. Quite by coincidence, a confused Joe runs into a distraught Louis, who happens to work in the same building, leading to a brief fling that is doomed from the start.
Then there is Roy Cohn (Al Pacino), a powerful lawyer with deep political connections who is also dying of AIDS. Cohn is Kushner´s critical symbol of the government´s conservative hypocrisy. Modeled after the real Roy Cohn, who was Senator Joseph McCarthey´s attack dog during the communist witch-hunts and was deeply influential in the famous espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Kushner cleverly weaves the duplicity of Cohn´s personal and public lives into his story. In keeping with his public life as a right-wing extremist, Cohn stayed steadfastly anti-gay and would not admit to contracting AIDS even up until his death in 1986. When told by his doctor (James Cromwell) that he has AIDS, Cohn would hear nothing of it, not even admitting that he is homosexual and even threatening to end the doctor´s career if the news of his illness ever gets out. To make things more interesting, the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg (Meryl Streep), whom Cohn had condemned to death, starts to visit him as he slowly succumbs to his disease. However, Cohn, the cold warrior that he is, is still a determined fighter till the very end, as colorfully examplified by the following tirade from Cohn, "What is this Ethel? Halloween? You´re trying to scare me? Well, you´re wasting your time! I´m scarier than you any day of the week! So beat it, Ethel! Boo!"
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