If there is one movie that could have possibly beaten THE RETURN OF THE KING as best movie of the YEAR. It would be ANGELS IN AMERICA. Hypnotic, frightening, political, and most of all HONEST. Angels in America is not just about the gay experience at the turn of the aids epidemic century. It deals with the issues of honesty, truth, loyalty and sacrifice in the coming of the great millennium.
The film begins in 1985, and the play, won the Pulitzer Prize in the late 80's early 90's. It preoccupies itself, not with the gay issue. Although that has some major part of it. But on the insanity that seemed to befall us --- as we plummeted into the 21st Century.
The play at its time looked Visionary, and fantastical. But now, two years into the millennium, the play looks prophetic. After the play opened on Broadway, so many of the issues that it dealt with came to pass, so that when Ethel Rosenberg says to Roy Cohn. "I think history is about to crack wide open" I'm paraphrasing of course; I could not help but think of The World Trade Center attacks. I remember trying to get a train back to New Jersey on that day, after walking all the way from down town to safety in midtown and thinking, in a haze, The MILLENNIUM IS HERE. To me, September 11th was the day the millennium dawned. And if we had looked back, if we had paid attention to this play when we were supposed to, then maybe instead of calling it prophetic, we could be calling it, history altering.
It is the power of the pen that has been proven mightier than the sword, because Angels in America will show history how we truly were at the end of the 20th Century, close-minded, full of fear, self-centered, and without a sense of history and our collective national sins. We the people are not the people we think ourselves to be. Angels in America shines its brightest most unflattering light on that, and still manages to awe in its celluloid beauty.
The film begins in 1985, and the play, won the Pulitzer Prize in the late 80's early 90's. It preoccupies itself, not with the gay issue. Although that has some major part of it. But on the insanity that seemed to befall us --- as we plummeted into the 21st Century.
The play at its time looked Visionary, and fantastical. But now, two years into the millennium, the play looks prophetic. After the play opened on Broadway, so many of the issues that it dealt with came to pass, so that when Ethel Rosenberg says to Roy Cohn. "I think history is about to crack wide open" I'm paraphrasing of course; I could not help but think of The World Trade Center attacks. I remember trying to get a train back to New Jersey on that day, after walking all the way from down town to safety in midtown and thinking, in a haze, The MILLENNIUM IS HERE. To me, September 11th was the day the millennium dawned. And if we had looked back, if we had paid attention to this play when we were supposed to, then maybe instead of calling it prophetic, we could be calling it, history altering.
It is the power of the pen that has been proven mightier than the sword, because Angels in America will show history how we truly were at the end of the 20th Century, close-minded, full of fear, self-centered, and without a sense of history and our collective national sins. We the people are not the people we think ourselves to be. Angels in America shines its brightest most unflattering light on that, and still manages to awe in its celluloid beauty.