Heaven on Earth

In the dazzling HBO mini-series Angels in America, the politics and crises of the '80s feel close to home

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It's impossible to overlook Angels' star power (Pacino and Streep's first onscreen pairing has been promoted like Godzilla vs. King Kong), and the celebrities do not disappoint. In multiple roles, Streep morphs effortlessly from ancient Orthodox rabbi to radical Jewish mom Rosenberg to Joe Pitt's mother Hannah. Only occasionally does Pacino slip into his scenery-chewing hooah mode with the eloquently cynical Cohn. And Thompson's angel is no cherub but a winged Old Testament monster of sexual heat and arrogance who proclaims, "My wrath is as fearsome as my countenance is splendid!"

Really, though, Angels belongs to its less well-known stars. Kirk (see sidebar) is heartbreaking but fierce as he rages against the dying of the light, the fecklessness of his lover and the implacability of the angel's demands. And Jeffrey Wright--re-creating his Tony-winning roles as Belize, a Hispanic African-American transvestite, and Mr. Lies, a phantasm of Harper's drug reveries--is a model of nuance in parts that could have been mere sounding boards for Angels' agonized white folks.

Ironically, Angels managed to stay off the culture warriors' radar, even though, unlike The Reagans, it had been publicly performed and published. It is unabashedly progressive (the kind of progressive that considers even "liberal" an insult), it takes sides, and it names names. Reagan comes in for frequent insults, and when Kushner has a corrupt, disease-ravaged Cohn say, "If you want to look at the heart of modern conservatism, you look at me," he is not trying to be fair and balanced. Kushner called the stage version of Angels "a gay fantasia on national themes," and its ACT UP--era gay militancy (tolerance is nice, but equal treatment is a must) goes far beyond the multiculti makeovers of Queer Eye.

But Angels is not a newscast. It is art, and it achieves something more difficult than balance: empathy. Gay and straight, radical and reactionary, sinning and sinned against, its characters make surprising connections. And it grants all of them--even, in his way, Cohn--complexity and dignity. When Prior meets Hannah, he says he can only imagine what she, a Mormon from Utah, must think of him. She answers, hard and acrid as a salt flat, "No, you can't imagine the things in my head."

Angels asks a lot of big questions: What is the law--literal, moral and spiritual? What unites a country with no common ancient history? But perhaps the most timely is, In a mongrel, divided country, how can you stand your ground and yet make peace? When Cohn dies (oh, it's not a spoiler--look it up in the encyclopedia), Belize says, "Maybe a queen can forgive a vanquished foe. It isn't easy. It doesn't count if it's easy. It's the hardest thing, forgiveness. Maybe that's where love and justice finally meet."

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