Did anyone besides me just hate the ending? It just seemed that the highly emotional nature of the rest of the film was resolved in such a way that...well made it all seem so trivial. The dialog, such as "You're all fabulous" really killed the deep mood of the film, and the direct speaking to the viewer sucked the dramatic aspect of the whole production right out of it. I honestly wish I had never seen the sixth part, as I would perhaps hold a better opinion of it.
shareI liked the ending a lot (although I had a few problems with stuff immediately before when the quartet are seated at the fountain).... but you're definitely not alone. A sizable minority of Angels fans judging by this noticeboard are in your corner.
Interestingly Harper's soliloquy/address to the audience through the plane window seems nearly universally loved, or did you dislike that as well?
It's not that I don't like the content so much as it is the address of the audience in itself. To me it always seems like the author (any author who uses the first person perspective) just couldn't think of a way to dramatically move the audience, so he/she has to spell out the moral or resolution of the story by having a character abruptly face us and explain. It looks cheesy, out of character, and, quite frankly, unprofessional. Unless this format is consistently used throughout the plot, maybe as an comical aside, or something inconspicuous like that, it fails to grab me as an effective way to end a film which has otherwise been shot from a spectator's perspective.
shareYour thoughts are interesting. I suspect that a lot of people appreciate the change in perspective that the coda represents, and that irks you. It's a common enough move after all... some great novels such as _Middlemarch_ have drop-dead brilliant codas that are written from quite different perspectives than the rest. _War and Peace_ has a whole *series* of concluding chapters that are like little philosophical treatises on the meaning of all the History the novel has recounted, and on history in general... that sort of thing. Some people are going to dislike that sort of material, whereas other people are going to treasure it. (I love Middlemarch's epilogue - it's the piece of prose I come back to most often - whereas Tolstoy's stuff seems to me ultimately to have needed an editor!). Anyhow, to me Prior's final speech to us feels like a reward. We the audience have been through quite a lot as you say from a spectator perspective by that point.... and then we get an expression of solidarity and uplift. We've earned it. I can't even imagine how powerful that must have been for, especially, the gay audience for the play at the beginning of the 90's, but I find it very affecting now in any case. But not everyone's going to buy it (just as I don't quite buy Tolstoy's concluding sermon-arama). Different strokes, and all that jazz.
shareI didn't especially love the ending with the quartet sitting in Central Park speaking directly to the audience. I think it took the movie's sincerity away. It's like...hello, I'm an actor! Harper's part in the airplane was vey moving. I cried. I loved the mental picture of the souls of the deceased tumbling and spinning towards space and holding fast to one another to repair the hole in the ozone....wow!....so much you can analyze just from that small part!
I am also very saddened about the ending and Joe never really having any resolution IMO. Does he stay alone....no Harper? no Louis? that sucks. Both of them walk out on him.....sad. He was such a nice man.
"The man who said, I'd rather be lucky than good, saw deeply into life"
missjazzy: I share your misgivings about the play's treatment of Joe. As well as the stuff you mention, there's a sense in which symbolically Joe's Mom also abandons him- at the end she's hanging out by the fountain with the cool kids including Joe's ex- and his rival.... That's harsh. I suspect that Kushner will be tempted to tinker with this aspect of the play sometime in the future... to extend just a little more sympathy to the closetted etc. ... but probably he shouldn't. _Angels_ is a "young man's" play for (mainly) better and for (occasionally) worse, and the occasional bad side is just the play being true to it's own perspective.
shareI also found the ending doesn't seem to flow with the rest of the story. However, a lot of the movie was very "stagey": the dialogue and the staging felt as if it should have been played on the stage instead of for cameras. The talking-to-the-camera ending also seems to be "stagey"; I can picture the actors speaking to a theatre full of people. Despite the occasionally clunky dialogue, I really loved this movie. The times it transcended the stage to become seriously trippy movie-making made up for the times it lagged. I also read the play, and would suggest it to anybody who loved the movie. Kushner's words jump off the page in a way that they don't always jump out of the screen. Check it out!
shareFunny, I had quite the opposite feelings towards the ending, but I can definitely see where you are coming from. It definitely took me off guard and took a little while to the idea of the characters speaking directly into the camera. I loved it, and being a gay guy myself, I can tell you that it moved me so much. I was in tears when I had Prior's words, so to each its own I guess. Anyway, isn't it strange that Harper's dialogue into the camera is universally loved like you've said, but the ending is not.
sharecosmic, jazzy, and coasterman:
I had the same question: Is the Epilogue necessary after pretty much of a resolution of all the characters? What my professor said that this was done that by breaking the 4th wall like that, and having the actors talk to the camera they were saying that this - what happened in the play (or film) - is not confined to just that reality or medium, that is all of us, and it affects us all, and it could happen elsewhere...
I had the same exact reaction; in fact I started a post on it as well on this board.
I think the reason everyone loves Harper's final monologue but some have misgivings about Prior's final sppech is this: Harper's monologue is very lovely and poetically written, and it seems in character for her. Prior's speech seems to break the narrative of the film and is not as good writing; he's just preaching at the audience and making a sort of call to arms. I agree with its message, but I didn't like the moral being told to me. I also couldn't believe that such a long, engaging, multi-layered, and complex work would end with the protagonist telling the audience "You are all fabulous."
But I guess it's ultimately just a stylistic choice. Myself, I tend to like plays/films that put the characters and stories first, and leave me with a really satisfying narrative. Angels In America seems to put politics and ideas first, with the characters and plot points being more metaphors. That's fine, and I enjoyed Angels, but I think it fell short of greatness.
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