Tue, December 9, 2003

In the interest of full disclosure, I knew very well that I had no business watching Angels in America, HBO's new six-hour miniseries which adapts the acclaimed stage play about people dealing with AIDS in the 1980s. It's not that I have a problem with AIDS stories or am unsympathetic to the AIDS patient. I thought And the Band Played On was fine, and I thoroughly enjoyed Philadelphia. I'm not even particularly anti-stage play. There are plenty that I've liked. But when you put a theatrical adaptation together with those ever-so-quippy homosexual banter moments and heavily symbolic metaphorical hallucinations, then give it six hours of breathing room and air it on today's HBO – we're talking perfect storm. Strap a handful of air sickness bags to the TiVo.

But I went in anyway. (God, I'm a slave to the Dolby Digital content. Fool me once – Carnivàle – shame on you; fool me twice...) "Entertainment Weekly" did a cover story! I'm not made of stone! I really like Mike Nichols, and while I missed the adaptation of W;t that he and Emma Thompson did on HBO a few years back, I found it compelling on the stage (see?!) with Judith "Tony, no!" Light, so he gets credit. Certain movies and such are "events" that I feel compelled to experience, just so that I can serve as your guide. So, really, I have only you people to blame. Thanks a lot!

I've just finished watching the first half of Angels in America – it airs in three-hour hunks over two consecutive Sunday nights – and I still have that awful taste in my mouth. There should really be a course that playwrights have to take before being permitted to adapt their own work for the screen. And that course should be taught by Aaron Sorkin. And it should consist of Sorkin in a basement with a length of lead pipe, whacking the skull of the playwright in question. (Seriously; I just watched A Few Good Men on DVD a week ago. I defy you to find a play-y moment in that film.) Tony Kushner's self-adaptation frequently sounds exactly like the worst part of every self-important play you've ever seen. Now I admit that sometimes there's a hyper-real style that is adopted for a movie, and that it will feel a little off-kilter as a result. But this isn't one of those times; it's just written...badishly. It probably begins with the fact that in theatre there's very little dialogue overlap. Somehow, that was not addressed in the adaptation, so every line is delivered as though it could not begin until the last one finished. There's a rhythm to it, and I'm not talking about the engaging, organic rhythm of The West Wing or Manhattan Murder Mystery. It's halting and syncopated, and it results in each line delivery feeling stilted and "written." (Plus, the conversations among the story's archetypically lanky and sibilant homosexuals are jam-packed with bons mots so incisive that they only result from hours behind a keyboard... not exactly underscoring the realism.) One of the first things they tell you is that all of your characters can't sound exactly like you. Even my moronic attempts at fiction writing manage to have my voice without every character literally talking like me. (And – by the way – You can't handle the truth!)

Aside from the dialogue springing principally from the Important Dramatic Dialogue Generator, the story is meandering and purposeless in a way that manages – by contrast – to elevate the construction of The Thin Red Line. Whole scenes go by in which nothing happens, and I read where Kushner – discussing previous attempts to condense Angels into a film project – said that there was just no way it could be accomplished in under six hours. Odd, I could've done with one scene in which the main AIDS victim expresses his fear, instead of four. It's not like he's more scared in the fourth one, or anything. I checked! But it's the dream/hallucination sequences that let me know that HBO was making its influence known. Whoever is in charge these days has issued a simple mandate: sweeping, gigantic visuals which are utterly unique on television and entirely meaningless. This practice is the foundation of Carnivàle, and it rears its ugly head in the dream sequences which feature all sorts of unsubtle metaphor, but do absolutely nothing to advance the story. Or really do anything. They don't contribute to a shift in mood, as far as I can tell. And they give us no new information. Is he lonely? Frightened? Yeah! We. Knew. That.

Pretty much the only reason to watch Angels in America is performance. The unknowns in the cast demonstrate exactly the kind of acting that one does in order to become and remain an unknown. Jeffrey Wright does the sort of thing that gets an actor from the stage version hired to do the movie. He's a little on the nose as the gay guy, but he's great as the travel agent in Mary-Louise Parker's hallucinations. (Angels has a number of actors play multiple parts. I'm not sure if this is a direct holdover from the casting of the stage play, or if it's meant to make a deeper point, but it's among the few fun things, so I'm fine with it.) I always had plenty of respect for Mary-Louise Parker, until the last six months or so on The West Wing, where she's been sinking into a sort of whiny, obstinate funk. Here, she's engaging because she's tormented and whimsical, rather than authoritative and snippy. Ladies and gentlemen, your supporting cast.

Al Pacino headlines as Roy Cohn. I don't know enough about Roy Cohn, because I was paying more attention to the Man in the Yellow Hat than Ed Meese and Caspar Weinberger in those years, so I can't really comment on whether this character or this performance have anything to do with the man. Kushner says it's a portrait in broad strokes. I find the Cohn character to be unnecessarily unidimensional – an angry bully, frustrated by the waning of what used to be great power – but Pacino is rather compelling nonetheless. It's not a particularly new part for him, hollering and stomping around, but maybe it will be in part two. (Not a spoiler: he'll be in a hospital bed.) I used to basically lump Pacino in with DeNiro as wildly overrated, but lately I've been convinced by his recent work and some of the older stuff that I forgot to pay attention to at the time. He's pretty awesome.

Rounding out the powerhouses are Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep, in what would probably be considered supporting roles, but they each play many parts, so it's hard to say how it would be classified. All I can say is, thank goodness they're in supporting parts. I think those parts manage to escape the multiple coats with the Heavy Meaningful Dialogue brush, so these tremendous actresses get the unfettered freedom to pour themselves into their multiple roles with their characteristically chameleonic abandon. Actually, they manage to wildly exceed their own impressive track records with new levels of disappearing into their characters. It's a wonder to behold, and it's the only reason I'm watching the second half. In this half, Streep is an ancient male rabbi, a mom, and Ethel Rosenberg. As in One True Thing, her momness just cuts right through me. There's nothing to it. It's like a soft breath. You can't capture it or describe it, but it's there – and you just know all the way to your core that it's absolutely perfect. The other two parts offer opportunity for caricature, which Streep wisely sidesteps by being a professional. Thompson's main screen time in the first half is as a nurse to the principal AIDS patient. She nails the butch New York accent with such clarity that I almost didn't recognize her at first. But then, she fixed that gaze on him. Every time she does that with her eyes, it just reminds me of a moment in In the Name of the Father when she was standing at a reference desk at a library, and had a moment of introspection before deciding to lie and get access to sealed records she shouldn't have... I'm off the subject, the point is, it's a powerful look. It's the way I recognized her in her homeless woman garb, because otherwise, you can't see her under all the makeup. She's also the angel, and so she does have her brush with the Insipid Dialogue Chamber. If you look closely, you can kind of see in her eyes how sorry she is, as a professional, not to have more to work with in such an elaborate scene. But maybe it's just the flying harness squeezing her.

Both performers are at the peak of their form, and breathtakingly riveting. It's really a shame that somebody decided to do the thing with the end credits where they show everybody in character while the name is on the screen. I kind of think people should've had to work to see Meryl Streep under that rabbi beard or Emma Thompson as the homeless hag. And if they didn't catch it, no biggie, the cast just seemed that much bigger and more talented for them. Shame.

(Oh, also, set in 1985, the film contains a scene in which Mary-Louise Parker's gay (gasp!) husband drinks out of a modern-day Coke can. I'm just saying.)

After the third hour wraps up, HBO airs a little promo for next week, which contains some of the customary orgasmic quotes from the press about how wonderful Angels is. Maybe they really think so, that's fine. But it seems like these days, people just sort of assume that if it comes out of HBO Originals, it's Important. Why doesn't Curb Your Enthusiasm get this kind of praise? (Are people taking its title that literally?) It's the best thing HBO's got going. Watching the Angels in America promo, I'm reminded of the SNL parody that aired back when everyone was falling all over themselves to gush about The Sopranos. (Right before that got brushed aside so that everyone could fall all over themselves to gush about Six Feet Under.) To wit:

Compared to the guy who thought up The Sopranos, Michelangelo was a douche bag.

In the future, The Sopranos will replace oxygen as the thing we breathe to stay alive.

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