Angels In America with Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson
Synopsis of the DVD Movie: Angels In America with Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson
The epic HBO miniseries Angels in America is directed by Mike Nichols and written by the play's author, Tony Kushner. This six-part drama is adapted from the two full-length award-winning plays (Part I: The Millennium Approaches and Part II: Perestroika) originally performed on Broadway in 1993. Set in New York City during the mid-'80s, the story follows the interconnected lives of several people affected by the AIDS crisis, intense spiritual experiences, and the Reagan Administration. Newcomer Justin Kirk plays Prior Walter, a young man dying of AIDS. Things are made worse when he's abandoned by his lover, Jewish court clerk Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman). Then he's visited by an Angel (Emma Thompson), who keeps crashing through his roof and insisting that he's a prophet.
Meanwhile, conservative power monger Roy Cohn (Al Pacino) is also dying of AIDS, but he's in serious denial about it. While in the hospital, he's continually visited by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg (Meryl Streep), a woman he had sent to the electric chair. Roy's protégé is Mormon lawyer Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), who also tries to deny his own homosexuality. Joe's estranged wife Harper (Mary-Louise Parker) suffers from a Valium addiction and has an acute sensitivity to the world around her. Joe leaves her to start up a relationship with Louis, who works in his building. Jeffrey Wright reprises his stage role of the trusty friend and nurse Belize. Angels in America first aired in two parts on HBO during December of 2003.
DVD Movie Rating for: Angels In America with Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson
Rating
Movie Plot of: Angels In America with Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson
Angels in America stars Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Mary-Louis Parker, Ben Shenkman, Justin Kirk, Patrick Wilson, Jeffrey Wright and James Cromwell. Angels in America is really two full-length plays. Part I: The Millennium Approaches won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This play explores "the state of the nation"--the sexual, racial, religious, political and social issues confronting the country during the Reagan years, as the AIDS epidemic spreads. The second play, Part II: Perestroika, winner of a Tony Award, continues the story, with the angel explaining to one of the main characters that God has abandoned his creation, and that he has been chosen to somehow stop progress and return the world to the "good old days. Two of the main characters have AIDS. One, Prior, is a sane, likeable man who wonders if he is crazy as he is visited by ghosts of his ancestors and selected by angels to be a prophet (but the audience sees the ghosts and angels too!). The other main character, Roy Cohn, based on the real political figure, is a hateful powerbroker who refuses the diagnosis of AIDS because of his belief that only powerless people get that sickness.
DVD Production Details of: Angels In America with Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson
Starring: Al Pacino, Meryl Streep
Director: Mike Nichols
Format: Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen
Aspect Ratio(s): 1.78:1
Audio Encoding: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Release Date: September 14, 2004
Run Time: 352
DVD Easter Eggs
None
Cast of the movie: Angels In America with Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson
- Al Pacino .... Roy Cohn
- Meryl Streep .... The Rabbi/Hannah Pitt/Ethel Rosenberg/The Angel Australia
- Emma Thompson .... The Angel of America/Nurse Emily/Homeless Woman
- Justin Kirk .... Prior Walter/The Man in the Park
- Ben Shenkman .... Louis Ironson/The Angel Europa
- Mary-Louise Parker .... Harper Pitt
- Jeffrey Wright .... Belize/Mr. Lies/The Angel Antarctica
- Patrick Wilson .... Joe Pitt
- James Cromwell .... Henry
- Michael Gambon .... Prior Walter Ancestor #1
- Simon Callow .... Prior Walter Ancestor #2
- Brian Markinson .... Martin Heller
- Robin Weigert .... Mormon Mother
- Kevin 'Flotilla DeBarge' Joseph .... Singer in Church (as Flotilla De Barge)
- Florence Kastriner .... Louis's Mother
- Howard Pinhasik .... Louis's Father
- David Zayas .... Super
- Sterling Brown .... Orderly
- Shawn Bartels .... Mennonite Choir Member
- Lisa LeGuillou .... Nurse
- Serafina Martino .... Mennonite Choir Member
- Melissa Wilder .... Louis's Sister
- Elizabeth Clancy .... Mennonite Choir Member
- Steven Edward Moore .... Mennonite Choir Member
- Brian Dougherty .... Mennonite Choir Member
- Christopher Schuman .... Mennonite Choir Member
- Mary Esbjornson .... Mennonite Choir Member
- Reldalee Wagner .... Mennonite Choir Member
- Barbara Fusco .... Mennonite Choir Member
- Matthew Yohn .... Mennonite Choir Member
- Fatima Da Silva .... Cousin Doris (as Fatima DaSilva)
- Jeff Aaron .... Park Patron
- Ames Adamson .... The Angel Asiatica
- James Babbin .... Plaza Hotel Waiter
- Francesca Barone .... Clerical angel
- Brayden Cahill .... The Angel Africanii
- Tony Kushner .... Rabbi on Bench #1
- Pete Macnamara .... Oak Room Patron
- Doug Olear .... Cousin
- Ted Rusoff .... Rabbi Angel
- Maurice Sendak .... Rabbi on Bench #2
- Akram Tillawi .... Rabbi Angel
- Paul Burton Wilson .... Bar Patron
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Reviews of the movie: Angels In America with Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson
Prior expectations can make or break a movie. Oh, how they broke this one!
I thought this movie was going to be about angels visiting America. I didn't like what I saw in the adverts, but Al Pacino and Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson were in it! By George, I had to see it! To not do so would be a sin, right?
Too bad they don't stress on the advertisements that this is arguably Al Pacino's worst performance since "Gigli" (wasn't that just last year?), and one of the worst of his entire career. Not only that, but the film barely even features Pacino, Streep and Thompson at all in its six-and-a-half-hour running time. I don't mind that, but when you advertise actors all over a film to draw mass markets, don't exaggerate. It's called false marketing.
Instead of the top-notch cast, we are treated to Ben Shenkman and some other various actors portraying gay man in Reagan-era America, circa 1985. Essentially their various stories intertwined through one main idea (AIDs and homosexuality in the 80s), the film quickly becomes strange and tiring thanks to a truly mind-shattering 6.5-hour running time.
This isn't badly made. I'm sure many people will enjoy it. But for me, it was too strange. I'm not a fan of "Brazil" for the same reason--I just don't always like very weird films. It's not that I have a closed mind--I often try. It's just a little trait inside me. I get turned off by them as soon as they start trying to twist and turn the world upside down. (There are rare exceptions where I like this, such as in "Adaptation," but more often than not I am disappointed.)
The movie is beautifully shot, for what it's worth, and that is why I give it a recommendation--and that alone. I can't commend the performances in this film because they're all borderline mediocre. In one of the earliest scenes--the introduction of Al Pacino's character--I had to wonder if this was the same great actor who brought Michael Corleone and Tony Montana to life in the past few decades.
Ray Cohn (Pacino) is a hot-shot "up yours" lawyer--you know, the kind who make fun of you behind your back and think they're "all that." (Not that I've ever met a lawyer like that before--I just see 'em in the movies portrayed this way. Big cliché, or small one? Grisham writes lawyers this way, so I guess it has to be true, right?)
The movie's primary focus, as I mentioned before, are its two leads: Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) and Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman), two gay lovers hiding in a semi-closed closet, only open to their close friends and family. Louis, a Jew, is shunned upon by his family at his grandmother's funeral. And when Prior reveals that he is infected with AIDS, everything goes wrong. Louis leaves Prior for a closeted homo, Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson). Joe's wife, Harper (Mary-Louise Parker), has no idea about his homosexuality--until he confesses and leaves her for Louis, who has now turned into a sort of carefree homosexual. When he's having sex with an anonymous guy in a park and their "protection" breaks, he doesn't care. "Go ahead, infect me," he says. This scene made me want to vomit, to be honest.
Meanwhile, Ray also becomes infected with AIDS, and tries to keep everything a secret between him and his intimidated doctor (James Cromwell in the best performance of the film). There are also a few angels who seem to visit these people in their hallucinatory dreams, but these entire sequences are extremely strange, and turned off myself and two other viewers from enjoying the film at all. They're beautifully filmed, but little else.
This is a six-and-a-half-hour film, so to divulge into the extended plot seems pointless. I've basically gone through the entire first half of the program, leaving the second half up to you in case you feel a need to watch it.
The film is directed by Mike Nichols ("Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"), which is surprising, because the film is essentially empty. Tony Kushner adapted the screenplay from his own stage play, and at a whopping six point five hours it still fails to (a) develop characters and (b) provide any interesting scenes. It just trudges on and on, really losing steam in the final act.
I liked this film, to a certain degree. I liked the beautiful cinematography. I liked most of the first half. I liked the way it felt more like a film than a miniseries, in most respects. I liked a visitation scene by Emma Thompson in which she has "holy sex" with a gay man. This was all fine.
I didn't like the film's emptiness, its lack of character and story progression, the false advertising of Al Pacino and Meryl Streep, the bizarre dream sequences, and I especially didn't like the preachy homosexual subtext of the entire motion picture. It's too long, too underdeveloped, too weird, and too darn politically correct.
But if I were to grade this film on its technical aspects, it would get a complete five-star rating. Excellent set design and lighting. Very eerie and bizarre--despite my personal dislike for such sequences.
For its cinematography, and that alone, "Angels in America" gets a recommendation. The reason it didn't get a full five-star rating should be pretty apparent to you by now if you've managed to read this far, which I somewhat doubt. It's pretty depressing to know you're in a minority--especially when it comes to stuff like this.
Angels in America is a beautifully written piece of stage drama and HBO manages to do it justice. The imagery and dialogue are retained in a way that is poetic and profound, if at times, only a very little bit too dramatic for your television.
When waspy Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) tells his Jewish, politically enthusiastic and cynical Louis (Ben Shenkman) that he has AIDS Louis spirals into panic mode, eventually leaving Prior. After this he takes up with Joe Pitt, who is, unknown to Louis and against almost all his morals, a married, Mormon, Republican lawyer. In Joe's life is the obnoxious but high powered Roy Cohn (Al Pacino), a real historical figure, who though gay himself, and dying of AIDS, is rampantly homophobic. Roy is haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg (Meryl Streep) whom he had a hand in putting to death in the 50s. Streep also plays a rabbi as well as Joe's mother who ends up comforting Prior through some rough times. Prior begins to have visions of the Angel of America (Emma Thompson) who looks startlingly like his cheeky nurse (Thompson also plays a 3rd role, that of an homeless woman). His only true friend after Louis leaves him is Belize (Jeffrey Wright) a black night nurse who attends to the racist Roy Cohn. Wright also plays an ethereal travel agent who guide's Joe's wife Harper (Mary-Louise Parker) on her Valium induced delusions.
Angels in Americas full of the most amazing combination of witty, poignant, and politically charismatic dialogue with imagery of the awe of heaven and the reality of the ground of earth. While not everyone may appreciate it, the irony of Streep and Thompson playing the role of several characters added a sort of neo-fantastic irony that kept me both amused and humble.
The DVD
In general the colors are beautiful and the DVD seems to maintain them very well. The lines are crisp, which I especially appreciated as I watched it directly after an cable television OnDemand program that was slaughtered with banding, pixelation, and lines across the screen. The filmmakers did a great job, originally, with juxtaposing the subtle light and color with the brash, so users on fancy systems and mediocre systems should both be able to enjoy the video element.
The Audio
Though the score was composed entirely by Thomas Newman, it is incredibly varied. From choirs to orchestras to electric stringed instruments it manages to be subtle and majestic all at once. That said, it is the dialogue and soliloquies that reign supreme in Angels in America. So, although it is offered both in 5.1 and 2.0 it doesn't seem particularly necessary to have both. Nevertheless one can't complain with more choices.
The Extras
Unfortunately, there aren't any real extras at all, except the scored menu and scene selectors but there's 6 hours of movie so how much do you want!
In conclusion
I was overwhelmed and inspired by Angels in America, finding it to be one of the most inspiring, clever and transcendent films I have ever seen. But, inevitably, people are bound argue about its degree of profundity and magnificence. What I think everyone will agree on is its amazing cast, the intensity of the script, and its incredible, laudable ambition. On all these accounts Angels in America excelled
