Jan Herman for ArtsJournal and Jeremy McCarter for the New York Sun are likewise unimpressed by the translation of Angels from stage to screen. Nancy Franklin writes for The New Yorker:

Nichols's version hasn't watered down the message, but watching it on TV alone in your living room reduces the work to the sum of its parts. What's missing the the sense of community that you experience in a theatre. To get the most out of the film, watch it with friends; Angels in America calls for celebration.

posted: 9:09:05 PM  

I caught up with my time-shift of Part II of Angels in America. (Notes from Part I are here.) Full marks for Meryl Streep and Al Pacino for their work. Jeffrey Wright as Belize has a wonderful, moody monologue about the afterlife.

The scenes with the Angel just don't work on film. At the same time, there's too much going on and not enough going on. Effects that would look great in a theater look slightly cheesy on screen, and then when the text undercuts the drama (after wrestling with Prior, the Angel says, "I have torn a muscle in my thigh"), the comedy is a little embarrassed.

Harper's final, beautiful monologue about her plane flight to San Francisco and repairing the ozone layer is also undone by film's literality. In the national touring company production, she's whisked onstage, seated atop a rolling staircase. It's an effect that fits Kushner's note for the stage that

it's OK if the wires show, and maybe it's good that they do, but the magic should at the same time be thoroughly amazing.

In a few places (fortunately only a few), the material is softened for middle-of-the-road sensibilities. Prior has a riff on slang terms for semen that is attenuated on TV. I was disgruntled by the double standard applied to nudity. In Harper's final confrontation with Joe, we see Harper's altogethers for several seconds, and the nakedness isn't necessarily implied by the stage text. But when Joe tries to convince Louis to stay with him, and he strips on the beach to make his point, we see Joe only from behind, and only briefly. Perhaps Kushner and Nichols were convinced that Joe's tactic is unmotivated, and they chose to downplay it. (The beat doesn't work onstage either.)

But on the whole, the movie is a faithful likeness of the original material, and I hope that it has touched new hearts.

posted: 8:58:29 PM