National Theatre Live: Angels in America Part Two: Perestroika (2017) Movie Script

ACT FIVE : Heaven, I'm in Heaven

- She's approaching - What are you...? She is?

Modesty forbids me explaining exactly how I know

I have an infallible barometer of Her proximity. And it's rising

- Oh, nonsense, mafs... - She's on her way

Turn the lights back on. turn the lights...

I I I I have returned. Prophet. and not according to plan

Take it back. Your Book. whatever you left in me. I won't be its repository. I reject it

Help me out here. Help me!I

I don't, I don't... This is a dream！it's a dream

- I don't think that's really the point right at this particular moment... - I don't know what to...

- Well it was your idea. reject the vision. you said - Yes but I thought it was more a metaphorical...

You said scriptural precedent. you said... What am I supposed to do?

- You wrestle her - Say what'!

It's an angel. you just grab hold and say... Oh what was it. wait. wait

Grab her, say, 'l will not let thee go except thou bless me'

- And then what? - Then wrestle with her till she gives in

You wrestle her, i dont know how to wrestle……

I will not let thee go except thou bless me

Take back your Book

Anti-migration. that's so feeble. I can't believe... you couldn't do better than that

Free me! Unfetter me! Bless me or whatever, but I will be let go

I I I I am the continental principality of America. I I I I am the bird of prey. I will not be compelled

Entrance has been gained. Return the text to Heaven

- Can I come back? I don't want to go unless... - You have prevailed. Prophet. You choose

Now release me. I have torn a muscle in my thigh

Big deal. my leg's been hurting for months

What! What'! You've got no business with me

I didn't call you, you're his fever dream not mine, and he's gone now and you should go, too

I am waking up right now

The body is the garden of the soul

Oh, it's you. My imaginary friend

- Are you dead? - Where are we?

- Heaven - Heaven? I'm in Heaven? But I'm not dead

We just had sex, and then he had to leave. I drank an enormous glass of water and two Valiums

Or six. Maybe, I'm overdosed, like Marilyn Monroe

- Did you die? - No, I'm here on business

- I can return to the world. If I want to - Do you?

- I don't know - I know

Heaven is depressing, full of dead people and all, but life...

To face loss with grace is key, I think, but it's impossible. All you ever do is lose and lose

- But not letting go deforms you so - The world's too hard. Stay here with me

I can't. I feel like shit but I've never felt more alive

I've finally found the secret of all that Mormon energy

Devastation. That's what makes people migrate, build things

Devastated people do it, people who have lost love

Because I don't think God loves His people any more than Joe loved me

The string was cut. and off they went. Ravaged. heartbroken. and free

I have to go home now. I hope you come back

Look at the place. Can you imagine spending eternity here?

It's supposed to look like San Francisco

Oh but the real San Francisco on earth Is unspeakably beautiful

Unspeakable beauty. that's something I would like to see

Good-bye

Greetings. Prophet. We have been waiting for you

Hurry

Oh my God, oh my God. This is too weird for words, it's Roy Cohn

- It's so creepy here. I hate hospitals - Stop whining. We have to move fast

I'm supposed to call the duty nurse if his condition changes. And it's changed

Take off those glasses. you look ridiculous

What happened to you?

Expiation. For my sins

- What am I doing here? - Expiation for your sins

I can't take the stuff out myself. I have to tell them he's dead and fill out all the forms

And I don't want them confiscating the medicine

- I needed a packmule, so I called you - Why me? You hate me

- I needed a Jew. You were the first to come to mind - What do you mean you needed a Jew?

- We're going to thank him. For the pills. - Thank him?

What do you call the Jewish prayer for the dead?

- The Kaddish - That's the one. Hit it

Whoah. hold on

- Do it. do it. they'll be in here to check and he... - I'm not. Fuck no

For him? No fucking way! The drugs OK, sure, fine

But no fucking way am I praying for him. My New Deal Pinko parents in Schenectady...

...would never forgive me. they're already so disappointed

'He's a fag, he's an office temp, and now look, he's saying Kaddish for Roy Cohn'

- I can't believe you'd actually pray for... - Louis. I'd even pray for you

He was a terrible person. He died a hard death. So maybe a queen can forgive her vanquished foe

It isn't easy. it doesn't count if it's easy. It's the hardest thing. Forgiveness

Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet

Peace. at least. Isn't that what the Kaddish asks for?

Oh it's Hebrew or Aramaic or something, who knows what it's asking

I'm thirty-two years old and I've never seen a dead body before

It's so heavy, and small

I know probably less of the Kaddish than you do. Belize. I'm an intensely secular Jew

- I didn't even Bar Mitzvah - Do the best you can

'Yisgadal ve`yiskadash sh'mey rabo，sh`mey de kidshoh,

Boray pre hagoffen. No. that's the Kiddush. not the Kaddish

Um... Shema YIsroel adonai..." This is silly, Belize, I can't

B`olmo deevro vhitoodry ve`yamlich malchusey

B`olmo deevro chiroosey ve`yamlich malchusey

Bechayeychon uv`yomechechon uvchayey d`chol beys Yisroel

Ba'agolo uvizman koriv... Ve'imroo omain. Yehey sh`mey rabo m'vorach

L`olam ulolmey olmayoh. Yisborach ve`yishtabach...

ve`yispoar ve`yismman ve`iysnasey ve`yis`hadar ve`YissalIeh ve`YishalIol sh'mey dekudsho

Berich hoo le`eylo min kol birchoso veshiroso...

Tushb`choso venechemoso, daameeron b`olmo ve`imroo omain

Y`he sh`lonm rabbo min st`mayo V`chayim olenu V`al kol Yisroel, V`imru omain

Oseh shalom bimromov hu ya-aseh shalom olenu V`al col Yisroel

V'imru omain - V'imru omain

- You sonofabitch - You sonofabitch

Thank you. Louis. You did fine

Fine? What are you talking about. fine? That was fucking miraculous

I'm back. Harper?

- What are you doing here? - Dead Joe. Doesn't matter

No, no. You lied to me. You said cancer, you said...

You could have read it in the papers. AIDS. I didn't want you to get the wrong impression

- You feel bad that you beat somebody - I want you to...

- He deserved it - No he didn't

Everybody does. Everybody could use a good beating

No. no. that's... I want you leave go Roy. you're really frightening me. Get out. You don't belong here

He didn't deserve what I did to him. I hurt him, Roy. I made him bleed. He won't ever see me again

Oh no. oh no. What did I do that for? What did I do? What did I do that for ?

Tell me what should i do now?

I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do, I thought I'd find my way, the way you did...

...to the heart of the things, to the heart of the world

I imagined myself safe there, in the hollow of...

But I'm above nothing. I'm of the world. Whatever that means

Whatever God thinks of the world, I think He must think the same of me

Tell me what`d I do now

I'm a liar. I lied. I never told you how much you frighten me, Roy

I'm not blind, not blind as I tried to be. I've always seen, known what you are

And I am not like that. I am not like you. But I've lied and I lied and I lied

Show me a little of what you've learned, baby Joe. Out in the world

Damn. I gotta shuffle off this mortal coil

I hope they have something for me to do in the Great Hereafter, I get bored easy

You'll find, my friend, that what you love will take you places you never dreamed you'd go

- Hope you didn't worry - Harper? Where were you?

- A trip to the moon on gossamer wings - What?

You ought to get your hearing checked. you say that a lot

I was out. With a friend. In Paradise

In the Hall of the Continental Principalities. Heaven. a city much like San Francisco

Six of seven myriad infinite aggregate angelic entities in attendance

May their glorious names be praised for ever and ever, Hallelujah

Permanent Emergency Council is now in session

...one week following the explosion at the number four reactor. the fires are still burning and an estimated...

...releasing into the atmosphere fifty million curies of radioactive iodine...

...falling like toxic snow into the Dnieper River. which provides drinking water for thirty-five million...

...consequence of the lack of safety culture caused by Cold War isolation

- When? - April 26. Three months from today

- Where is this place? This reactor? - Chernoby. In Belarus

We are losing the signal

- Hundreds, thousands will die - Horribly. Hundreds of thousands

- Let them. Uncountable multitudes. Horrible

- It is by their own hands. I I I will rejoice to see it - That is forbidden us. Silence in heaven

The reception is too weakl

- Can it be fixed? - It is beyond us

I I I do not weep for them. I I I weep for the irremediable wastage of fossil fuels

Old blood of the globe spilled wantonly or burned and jettisoned into the crystal air

If only he would return and explain to us

Most august fellow principalities. angels most high. I regret my absence. I was detained

- Ah, this is...? - The Prophet. Yes

I want to return thisI

- What is the matter with it? - lt just...

We can't just stop. We're not rocks

Progress. migration. motion is modernity. It's animate. it's what living things do

We desire. Even if all we desire is stillness, it's still desire for

Even if we go faster than we should. We can't wait. And wait for what?

God?God?

He isn't coming back. And even if He did...

If He ever did come back...

If He ever dared to show His face, or his glyph or whatever in the garden again...

If after all this destrution, if after all the terrible days of this terrible century...

He returned to see how much suffering His abandonment had created...

if all He has to offer is death You should sue the bastard

Sue the bastard for walking out. How dare He. He oughta pay

Thus spake the Prophet

So thank you for sharing this with me. but I don't want to keep it

- He wants to live - Yes

I'm thirty years old. for God sake

I haven't done anything yet. I want to be healthy again

And this plague, it should stop. In me and everywhere. Make it go away

We have tried. We suffer with you but we do not know. We do not know how

This is the tome of immobility. of respite. of cessation

Drink of its bitter water once. Prophet. and you will never thirst again

I can't

I still want my blessing. Even sick. I want to be alive

You only think you do. Life is a habit with you

You have not seen what is to come. We have

What will the grim unfolding of these latter days bring? That you or any being should wish to endure them?

Death more plenteous than all heaven has tears to mourn it

The slow dissolving of the great design. the spiraling apart of the work of eternity

The world and its beautiful particle logic all collapsed

All dead, forever, in starless, moon-Iorn onyx night

We are failing, failing, the earth and the angels. Look up, look up

It is not-to-be time

Oh, who asks of the orders blessing with apocalypse descending?

Who demands more life? When death like a protector...

...blinds our eyes shielding from tender nerve more horror than can be borne?

Let any being on whom fortune smiles creep away to death

Before that last dreadful daybreak，When all your ravaging returns to you".

With the rising. scorching. unrelenting sun：

When morning blisters crimson and bears all life away

A tidal wave of protean fire that curls around the planet

And bares the earth clean as bone

But still. Still... Bless me anyway

I want more life. I can't help myself. I do

I've lived through such terrible times. and there are people who live through much much worse

But you see them living anyway

When they're more spirit than body. more sores than skin...

...when they're burned and in agony. when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live.

Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that`s just the animal

I don't know if it's not braver to die. but I recognize the habit

The addiction to being alive. We live past hope

lf l can find hope anywhere. that's it. that's the best I can do. That's so much not enough.

so inadequate

But bless me anyway. I want more Iife

You haven't seen what's to come. You've only seen what you're afraid is coming

Until it arrives please don't be offended. but all you can see is fear

I'm leaving heaven to you now. I'll take my illness with me

And I'll take my death with me. too

The earth's my home, and I want to go home

- I'm exhausted - You've been working hard

- I feel terrible - Welcome back to the world

From where.

- Well look at this. It's the dawn of man - Venus rising from the sea

- I'm wet- Fever broke. That's a good sign

- They'll be in to change you in... - Mrs Pitt? Did she...

Elle fait sa toilette. Elle est tres formidable, ca. where did you find her?

We found each other. she... I've had a remarkable dream

And you were there. And you

- And you - I what?

And some of it was terrible. and some of it was wonderful

But all the same I kept saying I want to go home and they sent me home

- What are you talking about! - Thank you

- I just slept in the chair - She saved my life

I did no such thing. I slept in the chair. Being in hospital upsets me. it reminds me of things

I have to go home now. I had the most peculiar dream

Can I come in?

I have to start rounds

You're one of the lucky ones. I could give you a rose. You rest your weary bones

What are you... What happened to you?

Visible scars. You said...

Oh, Louis, you're so goddamned literal about everything

- I'm going now - You'll come back

if I can. I have things to take care of.

Please do. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers

Well, that's a stupid thing to do!

- Who's she? - You really don't want to know

- Before I depart. A homecoming gift - What?

I can't read the label. My eyes aren't any better

AZT? How on earth did you...? These are hot pills. I am shocked

A contribution to the get-well fund. From a bad fairy

These pills, they... They make you better

They're poison. they make you anemic. This is my life. from now on. Louis. I'm not getting better

l'm not sure I'm ready to do that to my bone marrow

We can talk about it tomorrow. I'm going home to nurse my grudges

Ta, baby, sleep all day

Ta, Louis, you sure know how to clear a room

Prior, I want to come back to you

I want the credit card. that's all

You can keep track of me from where the charges come from. if you want to keep track. I don't care

I have some things to tell you

I don't want to talk, we shouldn't do that anymore. Credit card

I don't know what will happen to me without you

Only you. Only you love me. Out of everyone in the world

I have done things, I'm ashamed. But I have changed. I don't know how. Please, please, don't leave me now, Harper

Harper，You are my good heart.

Did you hurt?

Yes. Remember that. PIease.

if I can get a job or something. I'll cut the card to pieces...

...and there won't be charges anymore.Credit Card.

Call or... Call. You have to

No. Probably never again. That's how bad

Sometimes, maybe lost is best

Get lost. Joe. Go exploring

With a big glass of water

I want to come back to you. You could respond. you could say something

Throw me out or say it's fine, or it's not fine, but sure what the hell or...

I really failed you. But... This is hard

Failing in love isn't the same as not loving. It doesn't let you off the hook

It doesn't mean you're free to not love

- I love you Louis - Good. I love you

I really do. But you can't come back

Not ever. I'm sorry. But you can't

Night flight to San Francisco. Chase the moon across America

God! It's been years since I was on a plane

When we hit thirty-five thousand feet. we'll have reached the tropopause

The great belt of calm air. As close as I'll ever get to the ozone

I dreamed we were there. The plane leap the tropopause, the safe air...

...and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn

Patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth. and that was frightening

But I saw something only I could see because of my astonishing ability to see such things

Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead

Of people who had perished from famine, from war, from the plague

And they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning

And these departed souls joined hands. clasped ankles. and formed a web

A great net of souls. and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules. of the stuff of ozone

And the outer rim absorbed them. and was repaired

Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead

At least I think that's so.

EPILOGUE : Bethesda

The Berlin Wall has fallen. The Ceausescus are out. He's building democratic socialism

The New internationalism. Gorbachev is the greatest political thinker since Lenin

I don't think we know enough yet to start canonizing him. The Russians hate his guts

Yeah but remember back four years ago? The whole time we were feeling...

...everything everywhere was stuck. while in Russia... look! Perestroika. The Thaw

It's the end of the Cold War. The whole world is changing overnight

- I wonder what'll happen now in places like Yugoslavia - Yugoslavia?

Let's just turn the volume down on this. OK? They'll be at it for hours

It's not that what they're saying isn't important,

This is my favorite place in New York City. No. in the whole universe. The parts of it I have seen

On a day like today. A sunny winter's day. warm and cold all at once

The sky's a little hazy. so the sunlight has a physical presence. a character

In autumn. those trees across the lake are yellow. and the sun strikes those most brilliantly

Against the blue of the sky, that sad fall blue, those trees are more light than vegetation

They are Yankee trees, New England transplants. They're barren now

It's January 1990. I have been living with AIDS for five years

That's six whole months longer than i lived with Louis.

Whatever comes. what you have to admire in Gorbachev. in the Russians...

...is that they're making a leap into the unknown

You can't wait around for a theory. The sprawl of life. the weird...

- interconnectedness - Yes

Maybe the sheer size of the terrain

It's all too much to be encompassed by a single theory now

The world is faster than the mind

That's what politics is. The world moving ahead. And only in politics does the miraculous occur

But that's a theory

You can't live in the world without an idea of the world. but it's living that makes the ideas

You can't wait for a theory. but you have to have a theory

Go know. As my grandma would say

This angel. She's my favorite angel. I like them best when they're statuary

They commemorate death but they suggest a world without dying

They are made of the heaviest things on earth, stone and iron

They weigh tons but they're winged. they are engines and instruments of flight

This is the angel Bethesda. Louis will tell you her story

Oh. Well, she was this angel, she landed in the Temple Square in Jerusalem, in the days of the Second Temple

Right in the middle of a working day she descended and just her foot touched earth

And where it did, a fountain shot up from the ground

When the Romans destroyed the Temple, the fountain of Bethesda ran dry

And Belize will tell you about the nature of the fountain, before the flowing is stopped.

walked through the waters of the fountain of Bethesda...

...they would be healed, washed clean of pain

They know this because I've told them, many times. Hannah here told me this

- She also told me this - When the Millennium comes...

Not the year two thousand. but the capital M Millennium

Right. The fountain of Bethesda will flow again

And I told him I would personally take him there to bathe. We will all bathe ourselves clean

Not literally in Jerusalem. I mean we don't want this to have sort of Zionist implications

- Right on - But on the other hand...

...we do recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist

But the West Bank should be a homeland for the Palestinians. and the Golan Heights should...

Well not both the West Bank and the Golan Heightsl

I mean no one supports Palestinian rights more than I do but...

Oh yeah right, Louis, like not even the Palestinians are more devoted than you.

I'm almost done

The fountain's not flowing now, they turn it off in the winter, ice in the pipes

But in the summer it's a sight to see. I want to be around to see it. I plan to be. I hope to be

This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all

And the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living. and we are not going away

We won't die secret deaths anymore

The world only spins forward. We will be citizens.

The time has come

Bye now. You are fabulous creatures. each and every one. And I bless you

More Life!

The Great Work Begins!

National Theatre Live: Angels in America Part Two: Perestroika (2017) - full transcript