Mike Nichols
Angels in America

HBO Miniseries and a work justly recognized by American critics as an immense masterpiece of directorial technique, style, and performance, Angels in America is the most significant adaptation of a theatrical work ever brought to a screen, based on one of the most significant works of contemporary theater, that eponymous theatrical diptych which earned its author, Tony Kushner, a Pulitzer Prize and 2 Tony Awards. At the helm of an operation of this magnitude, we find Mike Nichols, known for having given us a certain “The Graduate." With an unprecedented budget for a television production backing him, Nichols spares no effort and offers us another magnificent display, a symphony of images that literally makes you dream, suffer, and enchant.

It's 1985... America is in the hands of Reagan's conservatives, and AIDS has made its powerful entrance, continuing to claim victims within the gay community and among drug addicts. There seems to be no solution to the scourge of the disease and bigotry... there are no messiahs or saviors... not even a God to look at us with mercy, as He abandoned the earth a long time ago (specifically in 1906!!) leaving even the angels without guidance and in complete disarray... Such a situation is absolutely intolerable for the celestial messengers, and since they have identified the human desire to discover and progress, to evolve, as the reason that shakes the heavens they inhabit, they decide to force human beings to halt this search, hoping that God will return to reign and protect them. Thus, among many, a prophet is identified...

This prophet is Prior, a thirty-year-old gay man living in New York with his partner Louis... and on whose body the cold and lethal touch of AIDS is already evident...

Upon informing Louis of his illness, Prior is almost immediately abandoned by his partner, too cowardly to face such a problematic and painful situation. Left alone, Prior remains completely at the mercy of celestial visions, unexpected visits from old ancestors, and third-kind divine encounters with the angel Emma Thompson....

Meanwhile, Louis meets Joe, a very young Mormon lawyer, bigoted and conservative, married to a young woman suffering from mental disorders, Harper. Joe leads a sad and problematic marriage, having never even had sexual relations with his wife, as he hides deep within himself an attraction to men that has slowly eaten away at him due to the sense of guilt brought on by the principles of his church and his political inclinations. While continuing his struggle against the demon of his own homosexuality, Joe will confront a ruthless attorney and a skillful puppeteer behind some grand power plays at the White House, Roy Cohn (a real-life character played by a Al Pacino in a state of grace) who, despite enjoying prestigious positions and great power, will also find himself reckoning with AIDS, opting to hide the unfortunate fact by declaring himself as having liver cancer after blackmailing his doctor into silence. Last but not least is the character of Joe's mother, played by an always exceptional Meryl Streep, who will rush to help her daughter-in-law when her son finally decides to live out his true desires...

Angels in America is divided into two parts: the first (Millennium Approaches) focuses on the dramas that strike the various characters and lead them to the collapse of all those certainties upon which their daily lives were built... we are confronted with the disease, the precariousness of relationships, the hypocrisy born of Reagan-era America's sick system, both good and corrupt, perfectly embodied by Cohn, secretly gay but a fierce enemy of civil rights for homosexuals. The second part (Perestroika) brings us a light of hope... the same light that will become the brick upon which the foundations of the protagonists' new worlds are built... worlds that lead to the formation of families connected not by blood, but solely by feelings and an openness to the unknown, which will lead to a fusion of initially opposing visions... the message of beauty in each of us (straight, gay, Mormon, Jewish, or black...) is deep and communicated with great serenity... but there will be no hope for those who had already doomed themselves....

As for the way this is conveyed to us, it is undeniably true that the staging is absolutely impeccable... the play's originally theatrical nature is glaringly evident, feeding the viewer long scenes of dialogue, ranging from soap opera-like conversations (let's be clear, absolutely intentionally) to monologues or situations worthy of the best playwrights (memorable is Cohn's dialogue with his doctor... in which he asserts that if you have power, you cannot be labeled homosexual... you are homosexual and thus discriminated against only when at the mercy of the community... a perfectly logical discourse despite its cruelty). Even the dreamlike scenes feature brilliant dialogues, although at times the sense of kitsch becomes overwhelming... the grotesque imprint of the series is one of its protagonists... primarily surrounding the character of the angel messenger... deliberately ridiculous in character and appearance, incredibly full of itself... Scenes like the fiery sexual encounter between the angel and Prior are intentionally absurd, as is absurd the fact that the young man understands the messenger's arrival by the astounding and enduring erection of his penis... But it is this very mixture of styles and ideas that makes the work a rare case of brilliance, this ability to blend drama with incredible irony and excess. An excess that is noticeably prevalent in some scenic choices, such as the place where Prior and Harper meet within their dreams and unveil each other's dramas....

At the end of the viewing, however the plot is staged, Kushner's message hits us forcefully, and the resulting slap leaves souls flushed... thanks to the audacity and impudence that exude from the dialogues, often politically charged and absolutely progressive and anti-conservative, and to a mercy shown even toward the most ignoble people, upending the positions of power....or through the true meaning of duty to the entire community, which political parties claim to champion, yet betray once in power, brought to us by a black gay nurse who, despite being disgusted by yet another disgustingly corrupt man of power, assumes the role of an angel, caring for him to the point of even offering him a prayer... well aware of how his power is proportionate to the loneliness that surrounded him.....