To call "Angels in America" overly theatrical, long and at times tedious would be a fair assessment. Yet to call it powerful, wickedly funny, inventive, charming and unusual would suit just as well. Mike Nichols' six-hour mini-series adaptation of Tony Kushner's Pullitzer prize-winning plays is such a strong piece of work that it's no wonder it swept many of the major awards shows soon after its release. The story, centering around a group of characters (mostly gay and/or Mormon), is a wild mix of combinations: The cast are some of the greatest film actors ever to grace the screen, intermixed with superbly strong new talent; the story is filled with emotionally draining rooted in life drama, but goes off on wild flights of hallucinatory fantasy; and it presents both painfully stark looks at what's wrong with life alongside blackly humoured biting moments of both audacity and hopeful outlooks at the future.
What drives the mini-series so well is the performances which are so uniformly strong it comes as a real surprise. Often you find with films it's easy to pick out the best one or two performances and forget the rest, here I can pick out one or two mediocre performances but the rest just soar. Shenkman and Wilson are the weak links in the chain as the cowardly boyfriend and the Mormon husband questioning his sexuality respectively, both admittedly are stuck with the weakest characters but they still manage to turn in decent jobs with Wilson especially overcoming some well trodden material. Mary Louise-Parker is given not much of a storyline, but she plays it to her strength throughout.
Al Pacino turns in one of the best parts he's done in years as Roy Cohn, making him an arrogant prick of a man in denial of the truth who refuses to be a victim right up until the end. Despite some major screaming scenes, he never makes it hammy as he's prone to do and his interactions with the likes of Wright and Streep make for great dramatic scenes. Streep outdoes herself in several roles, most notably as the moral but rocksteady Mormon mother of Wilson.
Her more over the top bit as the ghost of executed spy Ethel Rosenberg whilst looking impressive (it's scary how similar she looks to the real Ethel), sadly is a little bit of a letdown and drawn out too long. The radiantly beautiful Thompson as both a caring but professional nurse and the somewhat unstable 'The Angel America' is also great and whilst for her it does get over the top (and she plays up to it), she nevertheless makes both the roles distinctive and very much her own.
Still, there are two guys in this who are easily my faves. The chiseled beauty of Justin Kirk is a revelation - here is a character full of pain, bitterness and loneliness over the way his AIDS-ravaged body is destroying his life - and yet is filled with such inner-strength, good humour, and assertiveness you can't help but admire and fall for not only the character but the actor too - this is a supporting actor Oscar caliber role, it's just that good. Nearly matching him though is the brilliant Jeffrey Wright as the flamboyant nurse Belize. Wright took a character who could've been dangerously played to stereotype and ends up giving it flair, gravitas and depth. Far from being comic relief, Belize ends up becoming the person with the most scruples and down to earth logic of this messed up crazy bunch.
Nichols and his creative team behind the scenes should get a big shout out too. Armed with a big $60 million budget, this looks and feels far more like a fully fledged theatrical movie than any mini-series I've seen before without question. The editing is sharp and fast, the cinematography is stunning and crisp and the production design nicely vivid and varied. At times the theatrical roots of the play shine through with some scenes admittedly going on for a lot longer than they should, plus the angel scenes whilst interesting do look strange - Emma's hovering winged creature is pretty obviously her on a harness with glue-on wings that don't work (these wings don't look capable of flight) and yet the constant shifting of the air and her elaborate movements give it all a kind of ethereal beauty.
The script is great, easily capturing everything about the play but nicely placing it all in real world environments and expanding on the dream like elements a bigger budget can afford (yes this gets very David Lynch-esque at times). Yet the subject matter itself is where this mini-series has its hardest hurdle. Back at the time of the play in the very early 1990's, a play about AIDS, gays, Reganism and the 80's was still very much a topical and somewhat controversial event. In the early 21st century though when knowledge about these things has become mainstream and carries less of a stigma than it used to, the impact is admittedly lessened.
Those who aren't gay, aren't into theatre and/or aren't a fan of long emotional dramas (ie. arguably most people) will not get as much out of it as the rest of us. The characters go off on wild tangents and pointless monologues which can get frustrating, but that's balanced out with some very quotable dialogue of both humourous and profound nature mostly from Wright, Pacino and Kirk. For every one of Shenkman's pointless ramblings there's a awe-inspiring scene like Wright's chilling description of heaven to a dying Pacino.
Others will no doubt love/hate the wildly shifting tone - one scene will be a tour-de-force acting drama of serious everyday things, the next comes along a wild fantasy set in Antarctica or one of Kirk's delusions which include not only the likes of Michael Gambon & Simon Callow as ghosts making jibes about his erection but Thompson's angel who not only has sex in mid-air with Kirk (flames rushing all around them) but in one out of this world scene has a full french kissing make out bit with Streep in her 'granny' style old Mormon mother make-up. The tonal shifts I loved, as was the humour which was broad and sharp, and spread pretty well throughout the mini-series.
Pacing is strong, although admittedly the second half 'Perestroika' is far more suited to television than the 'Millennium Approaches' first half which can get tedious. 'Angels' is certainly not perfect, and could've maybe used some tighter editing to cut away some of the slow bits, but when that's about the only complaint one can make in this otherwise superbly produced, impeccably acted drama, it seems pithy. American television rarely gets this original, bold and powerful.
