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.

Every now and then, when I'm in the mood to watch a sweet little gay romance, I dig out my VHS copy of "Beautiful Thing." The film has its flaws. Exchanges of dialog that aren't quite believable. (They perhaps worked better on stage than on screen since we expect less realism on stage.) Ben Daniels was miscast as Tony, or at least needed better make-up and wardrobe: he doesn't look young enough or privileged enough for that character. And then there's that annoying closing dance in the courtyard...

...But before I launch into that pet critique, let's talk about what works well in this film. Excellent use of actual locations in Thamesmead: the film gives you the feeling of settling into the real-world geography. Great music--and I have in mind not only the Mamas and the Papas but also the very clever selection from "The Sound of Music" and the sweet, understated John Altman instrumental that recurs through the movie. Superb acting of the kind you expect from the British: even the small parts feel like three-dimensional, fully thought-out characters. The two male leads aren't especially attractive (as would have been required if this had been an American production), but they make the romance so endearing that they somehow seem to get cuter as the film progresses.

My great regret about this film--the thing that keeps me from enjoying it as un-self-consciously as I would like, and as the filmmakers presumably hope I would--is that closing scene where Ste and Jamie dance in the courtyard, ignoring the crowd around them. My understanding (someone correct me if I'm mistaken) is that in the play, that final dance occurred in the relatively more private space of Jamie's balcony, which makes so much more sense. I can understand why Jonathan Harvey and Hettie Macdonald would be tempted to provide a more dramatic, defiant, celebratory coming out for the end of the movie. And I have tried so hard over the years to justify that decision in my head as a believable event in the world of this movie: Ste and Jamie are both accustomed to being victims of violence, so the decision to live openly is a knowing, calculated risk. Ste is presumably leaving the estate to move into the new pub with Jamie and Sandra, so he's no longer in danger from his father and brother, as everyone had been so afraid earlier. Jamie's making foolish decisions in the reckless euphoria of coming out, but Sandra's there watching out for him, glaring at the crowd like a mother velociraptor, daring anyone to threaten her child.

I've tried to explain the closing scene in all those ways. But the fact remains that after all the work this film went through to make itself believable--the locations, the superb acting--it lapses inexplicably at the final, crucial moment into a fairy tale ending. That was an unfortunate decision, and tagging the film "An urban fairytale" doesn't suffice to make the decision palatable. This film simply has the wrong ending. I've seen Harvey say that he wanted to provide a positive image of hope for gay working-class youth. Those young people would have been better served, and the story would have been sweeter, had the film stayed more believable up through the end.

Still, the film's worth digging out from time to time for another viewing.