Angels in America (2003)
Angels in America is a 6 hour epic set in the 1980's taking on American politics, the new plague of AIDS, and religion. It has a strong agenda against belief in a "good" god, but it has an interesting commentary on human nature and what should be most important: compassion and honesty.
Ronald Reagan is president and people are beginning to die of AIDS in the United States. A corrupt and high profile NY lawyer tries to get his protégé to be his flunkey in Washington. The protégé is also a Mormon closet homosexual whose wife is beginning to catch on to. He becomes romantically involved with a filing clerk whose boyfriend is languishing in a hospital in the final stages of AIDS. His mother flies in from Salt Lake City to talk him straight. They all have supernatural encounters with otherworldly beings (angels) that try to guide them into some truth.
The HBO miniseries features a star studded cast with Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Patrick Wilson, Emma Thompson, Jeffrey Wright, and Mary-Louise Parker. There performances as multiple characters gives the film more of a stage play feel (which is what it is based on).
I didn't agree at all with how they represented God as a being who had gone astray and was only seeking our participation for some selfish deed. Judaism and Mormonism were the lenses through which the characters understood their visions and everything had a very dogmatic feel without much concern that it might be touching on something real (as in, they can play with it because God doesn't really exist anyway).
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