Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bangkok Post - December 1, 2005
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America by Tony Kushner, and directed by Mike Nichols, the six-hour film stars Academy Award-winners Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson.
Angels in America first burst onto the scene in the early '80s. It heralded the arrival of a great new American writer: Tony Kushner. In 1988, the National Theatre in London listed it as one of the 10 best plays of the century. It went on to win numerous awards including innumerable Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize.
Kushner portrays a political epic about the Aids crisis during the mid-1980s around a group of separate but connected individuals. When the idea of making Angels in America into a movie was brought to film director Mike Nichols (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Regarding Henry, Postcards from the Edge,Closer), he admitted that he quickly saw that in some ways there were some things about the story that were more suited to a film than a play.
"I was just overwhelmed by the play. For a long time, I tried to figure out many things about it, about its power and its mystery and its familiarity. In hundreds of ways, it's remarkable. One of them I think when I saw the play was that it's very hard to think of anything else that is about such crucial central issues, at the same time so immensely entertaining all the time that it proceeds. I don't know anything else like that."
The movie brought Al Pacino and Meryl Streep to work together for the first time.
"I thought it was a great play," said Al Pacino, who appears in the film as Roy Cohn. "And, of course, I thought it was a great role that was played beautifully by the actors who played it. It was Ron Leibman originally and then F. Murry Abraham - I remember they were astounding.
"I loved it so much that I did it between things, which is one of those kinds of things, where you have another project before and another project after, and you say you only wish you had the time to really give to this piece. It's such a profound piece and so important for me that I did it anyway because I knew it's there, even if you're not at your best, the role will always be there."
Asked about what was the most challenging part of working with this character, Pacino said: "I guess it's the language, which is so wonderful. There's a language of film, which I guess has more to do with naturalism and it's easier to improvise in movies because hopefully if you improvise and it works, it will be on film. If it doesn't they can just discard it."
Meryl Streep, who plays Hannah Pitt in the film, talked about the film's many layers.
"There are some very surreal parts of this, which you'll know what I'm talking about when you see it. And so it sort of lives very much in the here and now and reality and the way that people talk to each other and react to each other. And then, there's another whole layer of - God, I don't want to say the word 'theatricality' but it's almost opera - it's on a bigger scale, is what I mean."
Since the film is six hours long, Streep has a suggestion for an ideal way to watch it.
"I think you should pack as much as you can into one. I think you should watch three hours, then watch three hours ... there is an ideal way because the characters do make a journey. Each discreet part is very interesting. I saw it all at once. I mean, I can't imagine waiting a week."
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