Angels In America

In December 2003 a Movie broken up into a mini-series of 6 parts aired on the American TV Network HBO.  It was called 'Angels in America' and it was based on a play of the same name.  I only saw this series about a year ago, long after it had first aired.  I fell in love with it.  This isn't the first Movie broken up into parts that I have loved.  'The 10th Kingdom' to this day remains one of my all-time favourite Movies, broken up into 5 parts when it aired in the UK it was almost 8 hours long.  Angels in America ran to 6 hours long and managed to touch on quite a few contemporary issues which despite being made 12 years ago, are still relevant today.

With a cast including Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, and Ben Shenkman, I went into this series with high hopes and I wasn't disappointed.  The main storyline follows the character of Prior Walter played by Justin Kirk who is living with AIDS.  The series is set in 1985 and captures the struggles of many during a time when homophobia and intolerance was rife.  Al Pacino is spectacular in his depiction of Roy Cohn epitomises the height of homophobia.  The historical Cohn, who died in 1986 of AIDS, denied being gay and was responsible for countless gay men losing their jobs, despite rumours and assertions still widely held true today that he was in fact gay; in the series Al Pacino perfectly embodies the vitriol of self-hating gay men who reject the label, his character quoted as saying he is a straight man who sleeps with men.  While there may never be conclusive proof that the historical figure was indeed gay, I have met a fair few homophobic homosexuals in my time.  Whatever his sexuality Cohn in life was a man of hatred and bile.

The series throws up many questions for the audience, some of which are never answered and we are left to ponder.  The religious theme and story arc within the series are fascinating, although somewhat "soft" in their presentation.  Much of what is portrayed in relation to religion is done in a way that never quite asserts what you see as universal truth, instead leaving open the possible interpretation of these sequences as dream-like, or as the delirium stirred within a man struggling to hold on to his sanity. 

The most fascinating actor in this entire series for me is actually an actress, the roles played by Meryl Streep are the key to the whole series.  She plays four characters, the two of which I find most intriguing are Hannah Pitt, and Ethel Rosenberg.  Hannah is the Mormon mother of a character named Joe Pitt who briefly leaves his wife to pursue a relationship with Prior's boyfriend who deserted him when he could not handle Prior's illness.  The significance of Hannah is that in many ways I see her as an Angel unaware, more-so than those that actually claim to be Angels within the series.  While Hannah may not have wings, she does play a pivotal role in guiding Prior and administering spiritual counsel.  The role of Ethel Rosenberg who is dead and haunting Roy Cohn is even more intriguing.  While you can dismiss her as a delusion belonging to Cohn, she does interact at one key moment during the series, shortly after Cohn dies, his nurse Belize calls Louis, Prior's boyfriend, to say Kaddish for Roy Cohn as he's the only Jewish person he knew who he could trust.  During the scene Louis stumbles and cannot remember the words, with Ethel's spiritual guidance Louis is possessed of will and speaks the prayer.  This is the only scene where Ethel's presence cannot simply be dismissed as delusion.  She is one of the few supernatural characters in the series whose "existence" is hard to question.

Angels in America represents a lot of things for me, not just within a religious context, cultural, political, and epistemological but it also represents something more.  The show is something I never saw when it first aired, mainly because I live in the UK and we didn't have HBO back then.  It represents the jewels and gems that exist out there waiting to be discovered.  The show is something that many people will have seen, but your society and your culture and in this case your geography will be the determining factors in the likelihood that you have.  The Internet opens up a whole world to us, far beyond what we were once confined to, which is easy to forget.  It's easy to use the Internet and get trapped in a bubble where you don't discover much beyond what you already know and routinely explore.

My question for today is quite simply, what's the most profound Movie or TV show that you have seen?