Angels in America
Jan. 19th, 2005 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakNever having seen either part on stage, I just saw the tv version of Kushner's Angels in America and by and large loved and admired it. Filming plays always includes the danger of not being cinematic if one clings too tightly to the stage production - theatre and film are different mediums. But Mike Nichols, an old pro in that department, came through splendidly.
What I admire most is that none of the characters are caricatures, which in a story with a lot of anger in it could have easily happened. But all of them are profoundly human, no matter where they are on the political scale. Louis, the leftist with the Toucqueville quotes at hand, walks out of his AIDS-infected lover because he's too scared by the reality of the sickness. Conservative Mormon Hanna Pitt might not have handled her son's coming out well, but her practical compassion, whether dealing with her daughter-in-law or a stranger breaking down in front of her, is a wonderful thing. (And you've got to love her terse reply to Prior's Blanche DuBois "I've always relied on the kindness of strangers" quote.)
And then there is Roy Cohn, the one non-fictional character. (Well, him and Ethel Rosenberg's ghost.) Louis calls him the "polar star of evil", which about sums up Cohn's reputation. I remember a review of the play comparing this role with Shakespeare's version of Richard III., and not surprisingly, Al Pacino sinks his teeth into it. But never in an overacting manner. I've seen James Woods, a superb actor, as Roy Cohn in a tv movie called Citizen Cohn, which showcases Cohn-as-Richard as well, and still Pacino does it better. Again, here the key to greatness is that Cohn still remains believable as a human being, not just some Machivellian supervillain brought down by time. It's hard to single out a scene, but my two favourites were probaly the one where Cohn receives his diagnosis and intimidates his doctor into not saying the world "homosexual" out loud, which is a ruthless powerplay by a pro, and the final confrontation between Cohn and the ghostly Ethel Rosenberg.
Kushner cleverly does not make Ethel Rosenberg into a saint, and Meryl Streep doesn't play her this way, either. She comes to see Cohn "dying a more painful death than I did". But as Richard in Shakespeare's play manages to get Anne from hating him for his misdeeds to accepting his wedding proposal in a single scene, Roy Cohn manipulates Ethel Rosenberg from declaring he deserves his death into singing a Yiddish children's song for him, and the way Pacino plays it you're taken in as well until he flings her pity into her face.
The question of forgiveness is an ongoing one in the play. It's not something you deserve, or don't, to misquote Giles in BtVS. Louis' first attempt at reconciliation is rejected because he demands forgiveness too easily. Cohn doesn't demand forgiveness at all and does not repent, but when he's dead, he still receives it, in a way, through the kaddish spoken by his mirror image in ideological rigidity, Louis, and by the late Ethel Rosenberg.
In a review that ultimately condemms the play but which I found more interesting to read than the praise I agree with, a critic complains that there is one character excluded from the final acceptance and forgiveness, and finds that Kushner treats Joe unfairly, starting with the equation of Joe walking out of his wife with Louis walking out of Prior. Surely, he asks, leaving your wife because you finally accepted the truth about yourself (i.e. about your sexual inclination) can't be compared with being afraid and selfish and leaving your sick lover?
On this point, I disagree, because Kushner has loaded the stakes against Joe somewhat more to achieve a true parallel. Joe doesn't just walk out on his wife because he has admitted his homosexuality to himself at last. His wife is at this point hallucinating, sick and definitely in danger of harm without supervision, which makes his desertion absolutely the equivalent of Louis' act. Within the play, it seems just then that neither Joe nor Louis actually get taken back by their respective significant others once they want to, and we don't doubt that both Parker (the wife) and Prior make the right decision in this regard. Yet I agree that Joe's exclusion from the epilogue (whereas Louis appears, accepted as a friend) lends itself to charges of unfairness.
Otoh, Kushner gives Joe one of the most moving scenes in the play/film, and the actor, Patrick Wilson (I know I've seen him somewhere before, and I can't remember where, which is maddening!) performs this superbly - the anguished nightly phonecall to his mother where he at least breaks down and comes out. It reminded me of a passage in Corin Redgrave's memoir about his father, Michael Redgrave, which together with Tarquin Olivier's book about the late Laurence Olivier is the best in that strange subgenre, children writing about their famous parents, which I've read:
I cannot remember how he introduced the subject when, after an interminably long pause during which each of us, it seemed, had become absorbed into his own thoughts, he spoke again. Probably there was no introduction. I remember that his breathing seemed strained and difficult.
"I think I ought to tell you", he said, "that I am, to say the least of it, bisexual."
I recall every syllable of that sentence, with its strange qualification "to say the least of it", because it took him an age to say it and the pauses, which were more or less as I have punctuated them, were painful. In each pause he breathed more deeply, to the bottom of his lungs, letting the air out with a punctured sigh, his shoulders sagging forward. When he had finished he stared at me, angrily, as if I had forced him to speak, as if I had taken advantage of his too trusting nature, and then came three huge, heaving sobs, "Aaaagh.... aaagh... aaagh", and then the dam brust and his grief and his rage came out in a great, terrrible, heaving cascade.
I had often seen my father cry. He cried freely, without any attempt at restraint, and I was always grateful to have larned from him that there is nothing wrong with crying; quite the contrary. But I had never seen him cry like this. I twas beyond anything I had experienced, a grief so awful that it seemed to undo him.
I sat on the arm of his armchair, folded my arms around his neck, and when eventually he quietened a little I said, "I know". He said, "Do you?". And that was all. The end of the conversation.
In Wilson's performance, there is that same difficult breathing, long, punctured pauses, and the final outburst into tears. It's an extremely powerful moment, and I can understand why the critic, moved as I was, wanted Joe to become the tragic hero of the play because of it, instead of ultimately remaining in statis whereas everyone else moves forward. And yet as opposed to him I'm not sure whether I can fault Kushner's artistic choice here, because I thought one of the plays larger points wasn't so much self-realisation but the ability to be there for another, to reach out, and to remain loyal (which isn't the same as being faithful). Both Joe and Louis are being disloyal to the people who love them, but Louis, the second time, tries to come back not just for his own sake but for Prior's. Joe returning to Parker had nothing to do with wanting to be there for her and everything with the fact her (previous) adoration and love made him feeel good. (Plus he's obyeying his late mentor's last advice.) Which is still quintessentially selfish. So my sympathies were with her leaving, credit card and all.
Another thing I remember from the (positive) reviews back when this was broadcast in the US was that HBO's willingness to show it was contrasted with CBS (I think?)' caving in to pressure and withdrawing the miniseries about Reagan. But actually, Reagan himself gets of pretty lightly in Angels in America. The one remark Louis makes is nothing you can't find in the authorized biography, or remember from the 80s when it seemed each and every Reagan offspring was publishing their "it sucks to be Reagan's kid" memoirs. To wit, that there was a great emotional distance between the President and his children. (Which eventually got bridged via Alzheimer, it seems, but that's not relevant in a play set in 1985.) "What must it be like to be the son of the zeitgeist, the child of the great American animus?", Louis asks and declares he's sorry for the lot of them. And that's it.
Of course, by having Roy Cohn repeatedly point out how tight he is with both the President and the First Lady, and displaying the photos showing him and Reagan, the play creates an ideological connection which isn't flattering. But it's not like Kushner made it up. Reading Seymour Hersh's recent article in the New Yorker where someone actually brings up the El Salvador squadrons as a wished for precedent for how Iran should be handled, and being reminded of Iran-Contra and the general corruption of the Administration, I think he could have been mush harsher. But then there would have been the danger of caricature again. And we're back on why Angels in America is a great play.
What I admire most is that none of the characters are caricatures, which in a story with a lot of anger in it could have easily happened. But all of them are profoundly human, no matter where they are on the political scale. Louis, the leftist with the Toucqueville quotes at hand, walks out of his AIDS-infected lover because he's too scared by the reality of the sickness. Conservative Mormon Hanna Pitt might not have handled her son's coming out well, but her practical compassion, whether dealing with her daughter-in-law or a stranger breaking down in front of her, is a wonderful thing. (And you've got to love her terse reply to Prior's Blanche DuBois "I've always relied on the kindness of strangers" quote.)
And then there is Roy Cohn, the one non-fictional character. (Well, him and Ethel Rosenberg's ghost.) Louis calls him the "polar star of evil", which about sums up Cohn's reputation. I remember a review of the play comparing this role with Shakespeare's version of Richard III., and not surprisingly, Al Pacino sinks his teeth into it. But never in an overacting manner. I've seen James Woods, a superb actor, as Roy Cohn in a tv movie called Citizen Cohn, which showcases Cohn-as-Richard as well, and still Pacino does it better. Again, here the key to greatness is that Cohn still remains believable as a human being, not just some Machivellian supervillain brought down by time. It's hard to single out a scene, but my two favourites were probaly the one where Cohn receives his diagnosis and intimidates his doctor into not saying the world "homosexual" out loud, which is a ruthless powerplay by a pro, and the final confrontation between Cohn and the ghostly Ethel Rosenberg.
Kushner cleverly does not make Ethel Rosenberg into a saint, and Meryl Streep doesn't play her this way, either. She comes to see Cohn "dying a more painful death than I did". But as Richard in Shakespeare's play manages to get Anne from hating him for his misdeeds to accepting his wedding proposal in a single scene, Roy Cohn manipulates Ethel Rosenberg from declaring he deserves his death into singing a Yiddish children's song for him, and the way Pacino plays it you're taken in as well until he flings her pity into her face.
The question of forgiveness is an ongoing one in the play. It's not something you deserve, or don't, to misquote Giles in BtVS. Louis' first attempt at reconciliation is rejected because he demands forgiveness too easily. Cohn doesn't demand forgiveness at all and does not repent, but when he's dead, he still receives it, in a way, through the kaddish spoken by his mirror image in ideological rigidity, Louis, and by the late Ethel Rosenberg.
In a review that ultimately condemms the play but which I found more interesting to read than the praise I agree with, a critic complains that there is one character excluded from the final acceptance and forgiveness, and finds that Kushner treats Joe unfairly, starting with the equation of Joe walking out of his wife with Louis walking out of Prior. Surely, he asks, leaving your wife because you finally accepted the truth about yourself (i.e. about your sexual inclination) can't be compared with being afraid and selfish and leaving your sick lover?
On this point, I disagree, because Kushner has loaded the stakes against Joe somewhat more to achieve a true parallel. Joe doesn't just walk out on his wife because he has admitted his homosexuality to himself at last. His wife is at this point hallucinating, sick and definitely in danger of harm without supervision, which makes his desertion absolutely the equivalent of Louis' act. Within the play, it seems just then that neither Joe nor Louis actually get taken back by their respective significant others once they want to, and we don't doubt that both Parker (the wife) and Prior make the right decision in this regard. Yet I agree that Joe's exclusion from the epilogue (whereas Louis appears, accepted as a friend) lends itself to charges of unfairness.
Otoh, Kushner gives Joe one of the most moving scenes in the play/film, and the actor, Patrick Wilson (I know I've seen him somewhere before, and I can't remember where, which is maddening!) performs this superbly - the anguished nightly phonecall to his mother where he at least breaks down and comes out. It reminded me of a passage in Corin Redgrave's memoir about his father, Michael Redgrave, which together with Tarquin Olivier's book about the late Laurence Olivier is the best in that strange subgenre, children writing about their famous parents, which I've read:
I cannot remember how he introduced the subject when, after an interminably long pause during which each of us, it seemed, had become absorbed into his own thoughts, he spoke again. Probably there was no introduction. I remember that his breathing seemed strained and difficult.
"I think I ought to tell you", he said, "that I am, to say the least of it, bisexual."
I recall every syllable of that sentence, with its strange qualification "to say the least of it", because it took him an age to say it and the pauses, which were more or less as I have punctuated them, were painful. In each pause he breathed more deeply, to the bottom of his lungs, letting the air out with a punctured sigh, his shoulders sagging forward. When he had finished he stared at me, angrily, as if I had forced him to speak, as if I had taken advantage of his too trusting nature, and then came three huge, heaving sobs, "Aaaagh.... aaagh... aaagh", and then the dam brust and his grief and his rage came out in a great, terrrible, heaving cascade.
I had often seen my father cry. He cried freely, without any attempt at restraint, and I was always grateful to have larned from him that there is nothing wrong with crying; quite the contrary. But I had never seen him cry like this. I twas beyond anything I had experienced, a grief so awful that it seemed to undo him.
I sat on the arm of his armchair, folded my arms around his neck, and when eventually he quietened a little I said, "I know". He said, "Do you?". And that was all. The end of the conversation.
In Wilson's performance, there is that same difficult breathing, long, punctured pauses, and the final outburst into tears. It's an extremely powerful moment, and I can understand why the critic, moved as I was, wanted Joe to become the tragic hero of the play because of it, instead of ultimately remaining in statis whereas everyone else moves forward. And yet as opposed to him I'm not sure whether I can fault Kushner's artistic choice here, because I thought one of the plays larger points wasn't so much self-realisation but the ability to be there for another, to reach out, and to remain loyal (which isn't the same as being faithful). Both Joe and Louis are being disloyal to the people who love them, but Louis, the second time, tries to come back not just for his own sake but for Prior's. Joe returning to Parker had nothing to do with wanting to be there for her and everything with the fact her (previous) adoration and love made him feeel good. (Plus he's obyeying his late mentor's last advice.) Which is still quintessentially selfish. So my sympathies were with her leaving, credit card and all.
Another thing I remember from the (positive) reviews back when this was broadcast in the US was that HBO's willingness to show it was contrasted with CBS (I think?)' caving in to pressure and withdrawing the miniseries about Reagan. But actually, Reagan himself gets of pretty lightly in Angels in America. The one remark Louis makes is nothing you can't find in the authorized biography, or remember from the 80s when it seemed each and every Reagan offspring was publishing their "it sucks to be Reagan's kid" memoirs. To wit, that there was a great emotional distance between the President and his children. (Which eventually got bridged via Alzheimer, it seems, but that's not relevant in a play set in 1985.) "What must it be like to be the son of the zeitgeist, the child of the great American animus?", Louis asks and declares he's sorry for the lot of them. And that's it.
Of course, by having Roy Cohn repeatedly point out how tight he is with both the President and the First Lady, and displaying the photos showing him and Reagan, the play creates an ideological connection which isn't flattering. But it's not like Kushner made it up. Reading Seymour Hersh's recent article in the New Yorker where someone actually brings up the El Salvador squadrons as a wished for precedent for how Iran should be handled, and being reminded of Iran-Contra and the general corruption of the Administration, I think he could have been mush harsher. But then there would have been the danger of caricature again. And we're back on why Angels in America is a great play.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 01:14 pm (UTC)At your service.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 01:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 02:39 pm (UTC)I liked the article you linked to, as well. I thought the most effective crit of the HBO production as dramatic work was
the difference between the stage, with its self-conscious acknowledgment of itself as illusion, and TV and movies, which if anything try to seduce us into forgetting that what we are seeing isn't, in fact, real
That's the aesthetic crit -- that yes, the play was "opened out" well (I particularly like that one long shot through Central Park, IIRC) and Nichols is a great film director, but OTOH the play really loses something from not happening right in front of us -- I've heard people say the last moment of the second play, in a theatre, was a moment of profound intimacy, a blessing. It's really sort of impossible to get that over a television screen -- the medium's too separate from the audience. The audience is part of the play, and that's a big part of Angels, in the way that a film or TV audience just isn't.
The other crit I thought was really good was the difference between stage and screen than with the difference between 1993 and 2003. The AIDS crisis is certainly far from over, but no one can deny that it's a much different kind of crisis now from the kind it was ten years ago. (A friend remarked to me recently that if Kushner were writing his play today, he'd have to call it Angels in Africa.
Not that AIDS is no longer a crisis in the US -- far from it -- but we do, somewhat involuntarily, see the play differently now, just because it's a different time and the play is so thoroughly, almost insistently, rooted in its own time (I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, let me point out). I think the biggest danger of filming it now is that it could be seen as essentially a period piece -- and the HBO version just skirted that.
Did you see the NYorker profile on Kushner? (unfortunately not online)
Thanks!
Date: 2005-01-19 03:40 pm (UTC)The last moment: I can imagine, though I never saw it on stage. It's similar to the last moment of Shaw's St.Joan, when she asks God when the earth will be ready to let its Saints live (after her rethorical question of whether, as a saint, she should come back to life has driven each and everyone of those who praised her to flee) and whether there must be a Jesus dying for every generation. It's a theatre moment, and can't be reproduced on film.
Re: Thanks!
Date: 2005-01-19 04:03 pm (UTC)It sort of interestingly tiptoed all around the fact that nothing he's done before or since has been that successful....or even v successful, really.
And yes, it's definitely a story of a certain time. We're just close enough to the Reagan years that it's not period yet, but I wonder how it will come across 20 years from now?
I think there's this certain stage works that specific go through -- up-to-the-minute -- slightly nostalgic -- dated -- irrelevant -- oddly relevant yet again -- something like that. As the current event parts of it get washed away by time (I think a lot of the Reaganesque bits already are at this point) I guess we'll see if it speaks to future generations. Well, the long-lived of us will, anyway.
she asks God when the earth will be ready to let its Saints live (after her rethorical question of whether, as a saint, she should come back to life has driven each and everyone of those who praised her to flee) and whether there must be a Jesus dying for every generation
Wow, that sounds neat (haven't read that play). At such points the audience really seems not only necessary but sort of written into the text -- like you have to have an audience for moments like that (which I think is one reason Hamlet always flops so badly for me when it's filmed -- Hamlet takes us all, the whole audience, into his confidence).
Re: Thanks!
Date: 2005-01-19 04:11 pm (UTC)Kushner: did you read the scene from his unfinished new play where Laura Bush explains Dostojewski to dead Iraqui children? It's a superb set piece, and she's not a caricature at all, but I'm not sure whether he could keep the premise up for a play...
Re: Thanks!
Date: 2005-01-19 04:17 pm (UTC)You've sold me. ((grin))
did you read the scene from his unfinished new play
No, but that was mentioned in the article (as well as the famous actresses who've leaped to play the part). I agree with you -- that sounds more like a scene from one of the Angels plays, rather than a whole play in itself -- or maybe a short play.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 07:13 pm (UTC)Have you read A Bright Room Called Day? He's harsher to Regan in that one.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 08:36 pm (UTC)Excellent review!
Date: 2005-01-19 04:27 pm (UTC)The peformances were all brilliant. Meryl Streep was so amazing as the old rabbi in the opening scene that I didn't even realize he wasn't a man, let alone her of all people, until the end credits. My favorite scene in the film, though, was the one between Cohn and her as Ethel Rosenberg. Patrick Wilson, also brilliant. I actually saw him on Broadway a few years ago in his career-making and Tony-nominated lead role in The Full Monty. Since then, he's been in The Alamo and played Raoul in the Phantom film. Maybe that's where you know him from?
Just another thought on why Joe was missing from the final scene, an issue that I believe was brought up in the Modern American Drama class I first studied this play in. Louis and Joe are, of course, being paralleled, as you say. Louis is welcomed back into the circle of friends at the end, though, because, by trying to return to Prior, he may be rejected, but he was being true to himself. In attempting to return to Harper, Joe, on the other hand, was ignoring and repressing his sexuality because it was the easy was out. Joe has made enormous strides throughout the play but ends it by acting as if he has learned nothing, so Kushner leaves it up to the viewer to decide whether Joe will finally embrace who he truly is or not. I believe he actually made some concession in the film, due to some people's dissatisfaction with Joe's disappearance in the play. Joe's last scene in the play is the one where Harper rejects him. We don't see him again after that. In the film, however, I seem to recall him having at least one more scene afterwards. Is that right?
Re: Excellent review!
Date: 2005-01-19 05:55 pm (UTC)I don't recall another scene for Joe after Harper's rejection, though. Must check. Otoh, I completly agree, because, see above. Joe's motivation in trying to return to Harper was trying to return to the old closet, and hence Harper was right in rejecting this.
The Rabbi: I totally didn't realize it was Meryl Streep until the credits, either! Amazing.
I see we have a winner by mutual consent for the Roy Cohn versus Ethel Rosenberg scene.*g*
no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 06:58 pm (UTC)The one interesting critique I did read was buried in the Slate movie club, by A.O. Scott of the NYT. Here's the whole article (http://slate.msn.com/id/2093274/entry/2093508/); Scott's critique of Angels is about three-quarters down the page, in the middle of his letter, starting with "Which brings me, in a roundabout way. . ." His sentiments there pretty much match mine to a tee, as far as where the narrative fails. . . I think Kushner's ability to empathize, or even sympathize, with characters he doesn't agree with is limited, and this very much has to do with the way he shuffles Joe offstage. (IIRC, the last shot of Joe shoes him going down into the subway, as Harpers "ascends to heaven" in the plane -- an unfortunate evocation for me of the last scene of "Angel" season 3, with Angel sinking as Cordy ascends). Kushner makes a lot of gestures that LOOK like empathy, but I think that, for the most part, they're hollow. Cohn is a fascinating monster (I agree about the genius of the scene with the doctor, and Pacino plays it to perfection), but I never get any real sense from Kushner of what it's like to BE Cohn . . . not in the way that Shakespeare shows us what it's like to be Richard or Edmund or even Iago. With Hannah, it seems like he is showing how a Mormon housewife isn't what you'd expect, except that I don't ever really believe Hannah is a Mormon housewife. And as for Joe, I couldn't get away from the feeling that the whole Joe/Louis romance was a setup to show "see what happens when you try to sleep with a right-winger? they never change!" There's no attempt to see inside Joe's worldview.
Arrgh, see, I knew I'd go on forever! This play just pushes a lot of personal buttons for me (raised Mormon, still know a lot of them, grew up thinking Reagan was a good idea; I've done a serious political and reversal since then, but when I watch Angels I can't quite get past the fact that if I had tried to approach it in 1993, I would have felt shut out.)
Christ, and I haven't even touched on how Brechtian theater fits into all this. *headdesk*
oh, and reading this post reminded me I've been meaning to make this screencap of Ben Shenkman as Louis into an icon, but could never think of the right text. still don't have text, but maybe those eyes speak for themselves.
Excellent icon!
Date: 2005-01-19 07:27 pm (UTC)Though I'd say Joe's two coming out scenes - the one with his mother, and the one with Roy Cohn in the hospital - are both written with much writerly empathy, I think you're right with "limited". It's not that the sympathy is not there, but that it does not reach the same extend as with the other characters.
To make a Jossverse comparison: take the Mayor, or Warren. Definitely two characters with whom neither Joss nor the other writers agreed with (and the Mayor, among other things, is pretty much a satire on a Reaganite politician), but you can also tell that they were written with much writerly affection.
Cohn is a fascinating monster (I agree about the genius of the scene with the doctor, and Pacino plays it to perfection), but I never get any real sense from Kushner of what it's like to BE Cohn . . . not in the way that Shakespeare shows us what it's like to be Richard or Edmund or even Iago.
Well, Cohn can't solliloquize and tell us he's determined to be a villain, and hate the idle pleasures of these days.*g* But I know what you mean. He's closely observed, but from the outside. Actually, though, I thought Kushner was putting us somewhere between the Joe and the Belize position on Cohn - we're appalled and fascinated and feel some pity.
And as for Joe, I couldn't get away from the feeling that the whole Joe/Louis romance was a setup to show "see what happens when you try to sleep with a right-winger? they never change!"
Now that's a feeling I didn't get, because their problems would have been the same if Joe had sung the Internationale each morning, because Louis was still in love with Prior. If Belize hadn't told him about Joe's connection to Cohn, he still would have broken up with Joe. Also, the one time they actually talked about their political positions, Louis came across as way more fanatic and intolerant than Joe.
This being said: I don't think it's a coincidence that of all the characters, Joe the Republican was the only one who wants to retreat instead of go forward at the end. (Well, him and Roy Cohn, but Cohn changing at the last minute would have been unbelievable.) Kushner can't quite manage what Alan Ball does manage with David Fisher in the first season of Six Feet Under, which is presenting a conservative homosexual in a painful but successful coming-out process.
Brechtian theatre? Good old BB would have accused Kushner of shameless emotional pandering to the audience. It's epic theatre, certainly, but more in the Thornton Wilder than in the Brecht sense.
Re: Excellent icon!
Date: 2005-01-19 10:41 pm (UTC)I think you're the one who made that point re: The Incredibles, too, and when I was watching that movie the other day, I agreed. The fanboy character in TI wasn't interesting the way Warren was interesting, because he was just a bug for the good guys to squash.
Now that's a feeling I didn't get, because their problems would have been the same if Joe had sung the Internationale each morning, because Louis was still in love with Prior. If Belize hadn't told him about Joe's connection to Cohn, he still would have broken up with Joe. Also, the one time they actually talked about their political positions, Louis came across as way more fanatic and intolerant than Joe.
Now I'm going to have to reread and rewatch this, which I haven't done since it was new. I agree about the way Louis came off versus Joe, but I had the feeling that Kushner didn't intend it that way -- at least the way Nichols filmed it, I felt like I was supposed to be cheering for Louis finally having the nerve & sense to tell the bigoted right-winger off. And then Joe responded by becoming physically abusive, which seemed out of character up to that point. So I just felt like the mechanism of the play had to turn him into a monster. . .but maybe I'm making too many assumptions about what the playwright wanted us to see.
Re: Brecht -- yes, that damned identification and sympathy thing, can't have that going on (per uncle Bertolt, not me; by the way my favorite "I checked these 2 things out of the library at the same time" ever was a book of commentaries on Brecht and a Young Adult BtVS novel); I guess what perplexes me about Kushner is that he seems to have the impulses of a melodramatist -- and the rich character interactions are what work so well for me. The "epic theater" conceits and the magical realism or whatever you call it seem imposed, like somehow he thinks he's not making great art if it's just a meaty story about characters and relationships. I've never read Wilder's plays, so I don't know how they would compare, but perhaps something similar going on. I don't know if Americans are capable of pure Brechtian drama (or at least, of having American audiences respond to it). Caryl Churchill is somebody I would say actually pulls off the combination well; with Kushner, I kind of wish he'd just tell the story and leave out the pseudo-allegorical stuff. And of course, my Mormon background gives me a whole different level to look at the whole "angel" motif; but for the record, I'd say the Mormon-themed episodes of South Park do a much better job of understanding that faith than Kushner does.
Six Feet Under is an excellent contrast to Angels; I was once at a Baptist church service in Oklahoma and people were racing out of there early to go home and see the Six Feet finale. I know people who have never (knowingly) had a gay person in their home who were completely wrapped up in David's story.
Re: Excellent icon!
Date: 2005-01-20 06:15 am (UTC)We're thinking of two different scenes here. I was talking about the one in the park where Louis is all "you're nice, how can you be a Republican" and makes his remarks about Reagan's kids, and Joe points out the left's need to demonize Reagan. In that case, I think it was deliberate that Joe came better off. (Also think of Belize versus Louis not soon before or after, I'm not sure - the scene where he punctures Louis' patronizing talk and Louis accuses him of antisemitism, which we're clearly meant to see as a dumb thing to do, and Louis as out of his arguments.)
In the later scene, the one in Louis' apartment, I thought we're supposed to cheering not for Louis telling Joe off but for Louis confronting Joe with the stuff Joe has been wilfully ignoring - emblyfied by the "have you no decency" line which he doesn't recognize. Joe, of course, at that point is at the end of his tether because of his confrontation with his mother, and earlier with Roy Cohn in the hospital where he got blood all over himself, and not exactly in the shape for an argument of this kind which mixes the personal and the political, plus the news about Roy having AIDS and the implications had to shake him. I thought him resorting to physical violence was the result of those earlier two confrontations, but agree that as opposed to the earlier argument in the park, here Kushner clearly wanted us to side with Louis.
Kushner and Thornton Wilder: definitely similarities. Our Town and By the Skin of Our Teeth has that same mixture of epic theatre, sentiment, even melodrama, and metaphysics. Those New Yorkers, I tell you...
Re: Excellent icon!
Date: 2005-01-20 06:21 pm (UTC)oh right. . .definitely been too long since I saw this. In that scene, I'm on Louis's side, of course, but I did feel like Kushner stacked the deck a little. Joe not having *heard* of the Welch-McCarthy hearings took me out of the moment, because that didn't seem the least bit plausible to me. I mean it's not exactly an obscure incident in 20th century history -- I've heard the "no decency" speech excerpted in pop songs -- and even if Joe-average-on-the-street might not recognize it (I'm not making any outrageous claims for my nation's overall grasp on recent history), this Joe works for and idolizes Roy Cohn, and you'd think he would have done his homework. Plus, Louis seemed naive in his own way by being so shocked that Joe, who had worked for a conservative judge, had written conservative decisions. I know I'm picking on small points, but those moments sort of jarred me with the sense that Kushner was more interested in scoring points with his audience than in having the characters do things that made sense.
on the other hand, I love the earlier scene you mentioned where Belize calls Louis on his hypocrisy (love all of Louis & Belize's scenes); and my favorite moment in the movie is Louis's impression in the hospital room of how his parents would react to his "saying shiva for Roy Cohn." (I know that tied in somehow when I thought of it, though I'm not sure at the moment).