[AGL] the second half of Angels in America

[Michael Eisenstadt]

after a hiatus we saw the second half of Angels in
America.

Al Pacino as sleazy lawyer Roy Cohen.
Meryl Streep as a cold buttoned up Mormon
matron who moves to NY. she also does a cameo
part made up as the ghost of Ethyl Rosenberg,
the executed Soviet spy, complete with period 
hat and whiny NY jewish accent.

Mary-Louise Parker as the Mormon lawyer's 
disaffected wife (he's actually gay) with a
crazy willfillness of steel.

Emma Thompson as a winged angel like no
other angel you've never seen. (also plays
a nurse)

Jeffrey Wright as the over the top gay Negro
nurse, Miss Thing. 

The movie, actually a TV miniseries based on
a play by Tony Kushner, is in great part an 
attack on the Mormon religion.

the holy temple garment Mormons wear, a kind
of underpants which reach almost to the knee,
is seen as the Mormon lawyer recognizes his
inner gayness and gets it on with Louis (Lou
the Jew). Louis' abandonned partner who is
dying of AIDS, Pryor Walter by name, is seen 
reading the Book of Moroni with pebble stone 
glasses which automatically translate the 
writings on the gold plates of the angel Moroni
into English.

for me the movie rocked most when Roy 
Cohen finally dies after tricking the ghost
of Ethyl Rosenberg into believed that he 
believes her to be his mother. Sing to 
me mother, I'm scared, says Roy. Meryl/
Ethyl Rosenberg sings him a lullaby in
YIDDISH after which he sits up suddenly
in bed and crows I tricked you.

Then he dies. Miss Thing phones Louis
to come over and take the 50 bottles of
AZT tablets which Roy Cohen got from
the National Institute of Health from their
double blind testing of AZT; and not the placebos.
(According to the Wikipedia article on
Roy Cohen, the lawyer actually did 
pull strings in Washington to get the pills).

Miss Thing insists that Louis say Kaddash
the prayer for the dead over Roy Cohen.
He first says the blessing for bread, finally
commences the Kaddash, the ghost of Ethyl Rosenberg 
whom Roy Cohen sent to the electric chair,
chants the Kaddash together with him:

Yitgaddal v'yitqaddash sh'meh rabba 
etc, etc.

(i should mention that i tried to memorize the
Kaddash prayer before my mother was buried but was 
unable to. and the rabbi i hired said it differently 
from the transliterated crib i was reading it from.
very unsatisfactory. Meryl Streep said it so as 
to rip at the heart strings but then again she is
a world class actrice. it also doesnt matter 
whether you understand the words when you
are saying them, it is sufficient that the words 
are sounded in Hebrew) <-isn't religion cute?