New TV movie boasts a flawless ensemble cast that includes Al Pacino and Meryl Streep.

New TV movie boasts a flawless ensemble cast that includes Al Pacino and Meryl Streep.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
"There are no angels in America. No spiritual past, no racial past, there's only the political." -- Tony Kushner
Kushner's "Angels in America" has finally been brought to cable TV more than a decade after winning the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony for best drama. Kushner adapted the play himself -- two plays actually, "Millennium Approaches" and "Perestroika."
The original work's one overriding flaw -- too many themes with too many characters -- is still apparent in this new, slightly condensed version.
The first part of Kushner's six-hour magnum opus remains more gripping, more powerful, and yes, more cohesive than the rambling, slightly unfocused second half. Just like onstage, the flaws in "Angels in America" (flights of fancy that fall splat and occasional speechifying) are part of its indisputable brilliance. The movie that veteran Hollywood and Broadway director Mike ("The Graduate," "Silkwood") Nichols has made of Kushner's masterpiece is not just great television or great filmmaking. It's great, period.
Pretentious theme
One new flaw that the intimacy of film exposes is the pretentiousness of Kushner's central theme. The Angel herself (played by Emma Thompson) is a bit of a pompous windbag with her nonstop metaphysical chatter. And since film (or television) is a more realistic venue than theater, the fantastical quality of angels literally bursting through floors and ceilings can't help but seem affected.
What's most remarkable about this new "Angels" is how vivid a microcosm it serves of a particular time and place -- mid-1980s Manhattan -- in recent American history. Almost a period piece now, "Angels in America" will prove most instructive to younger viewers who don't remember the very real terror of what it was like to live in Ronald Reagan's America, particularly if you were gay (or, worse yet, gay and suffering from AIDS).
Kushner's play has always had a certain chamber quality aspect to it. The story of two couples whose lives are splintering apart, "Angels" at heart remains a touching, even profound metaphor about relationships (gay, straight, or some unique, late 20th-century hybrid).
Interweaving plots
As the film begins, Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) announces to his lover of 41/2 years, Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman) that he has AIDS. Paralyzed by his conflicting feelings of love, fear, guilt and powerlessness, Louis moves out, leaving Prior to endure his "death sentence" alone.
In Brooklyn, Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), the chief clerk to an appeals-court judge, is facing a crisis of his own. Joe's wife, Harper (Mary-Louise Parker), is addicted to Valium and goes through life in a perpetual fog. Because Joe is a closeted, self-loathing homosexual -- something that Harper has long suspected and which might partially explain her chemical dependency -- his Mormon faith and conservative Republicanism are dual crosses to bear.
Looming large in Joe's life -- and the film itself thanks to Al Pacino's miraculous performance -- is his mentor, the notorious homophobe Roy Cohn. Cohn, most famous for being Senator Joseph McCarthy's attack dog during the HUAC hearings, was a key power player in political circles for decades. The fact that this "Saint of the Right" was himself a thinly veiled gay man only makes him more loathsome. When Cohn contracts AIDS -- divine retribution in the eyes of many liberals, gay and straight alike -- he's admitted into the hospital for "liver cancer." Even on his deathbed, Cohn lived a lie.
Strong points
How these various individuals intersect, overlap and sometimes collide through the course of one very eventful year was the stuff of great human drama onstage and remains so on film. Nichols' "Angels in America" is a rare stage-to-screen transfer that hardly ever betrays its theatrical origins.
Stephen Goldblatt's sweeping, eye-of-God cinematography and Thomas ("American Beauty," "Finding Nemo") Newman's full-bodied, orchestral score are so dazzling it's a shame most of us will never get to experience "Angels" outside of our living rooms.
One slightly coy theatrical gimmick that Nichols retains is multicasting. Meryl Streep plays several roles (including Joe's iron-willed mother and the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg), as do Jeffrey Wright (the only holdover from the original Broadway cast) and Thompson (Nichols' collaborator on "Wit," his memorable 2001 HBO movie based on Margaret Edson's play).
Flawless cast
With the possible exception of Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River," no movie this year boasts such a flawless, top-to-bottom ensemble cast. Pacino's definitive Cohn surpasses even Ron Leibman's; it deserves to rank with the actor's Michael Corleone as one of his signature roles. Wright, quite possibly the finest actor working in America today, is spectacularly, savagely funny as Belize, Cohn's nurse, and Harper's imaginary travel agent; Parker effortlessly brings out the delicate absurdity in Harper's predicament and makes it wrenching and laugh-out-loud funny; and rising star Wilson (soon to be seen as William Travis in Disney's "The Alamo" and Raoul in the long-gestating film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom") is a superb Joe.
"Angels in America" is easily the most ambitious Hollywood project of the year, even if it was made for HBO. (For the record, so were "American Splendor," "Elephant" and "Capturing the Friedmans," 2003's three best theatrical releases.) I guess it's no secret where the best movies are being made today.