Angela

source: Angela

"Angela" is a movie that has a not entirely unsuccessful stab at depicted the world through the eyes of a child. However, it never succeeds at keeping our attention for very long. It's like listening to a rambling storyteller who occasionally stumbles upon something interesting, but most of the time, you can safely tune him or her out without missing anything. I admit to being perplexed and distracted by the movie's boom mic being so often visible. I couldn't understand how a movie so beautifully shot and with actors like Frances Conroy, Vincent Gallo and John Ventimiglia could make such a basic mistake. Apparently, (as IMDB tells us), this fault was not with the filmmakers, but the distributors. The movie was supposed to be shown in letterbox format, which would have obscured the equipment. When transferred to DVD, the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen were removed. I'm glad to hear this wasn't the director's mistake, but still, it is very, very noticeable. The plot is about a young girl whose parents are struggling to deal with the wife's mental illness. Left largely to fend for themselves, the girls attempt to "enter Heaven", interpreting strangers as either good or bad angels there to help them on their journey. The movie reminded me a bit of that Swedish masterpiece, "Children's Island", but it's not nearly as good as that one, despite strong performances and beautiful photography. It doesn't bring you into the child's world as completely as that movie does, and it doesn't captivate you half as much.

A leisurely and ultimately tragic tale of two girls, ten-year-old Angela and her six-year-old sister Ellie, led astray by a dysfunctional life style and fantasies of religious salvation. Travail seems heaped upon travail. Father is distant and brusque. Mother is a bipolar who is hospitalized. The family is recently moved into a small town in upstate New York, and a pretty bleak one at that. Angela and Ellie are baptized in the local stream and run away from home. There is a weird, oneiristic episode in a carnival. A young man seems to befriend them but it's unclear whether his interest is paternal or more raw than that. (Angela is young and scrawny but rather appealing, with her long blond mane and sad face.) By this time Angela has begun to acquire religious delusions and believes the young man to be an friend from heaven -- or maybe a fiend from hell, I couldn't quite figure it out, since my own delusions don't run on a parallel track. The man gently kisses Angela's cheek. In the grip of her conviction, she tells him emphatically, "I know you. I know who you are." The man backs off, nonplussed, agitated, asks, "Who told you?", then runs to his car and drives quickly away. I don't know who he was, what his intentions were, or what he was afraid of, and you won't either. The whole movie is rather like that scene. The two girls wander through it and things happen to them. The significance of the events is only what we attribute to them. A placid white stallion wanders into the picture and Angela indicates the horse's member and explains to Ellie that that's what men have. Girls have to be married before they're twenty-one and do it with men, otherwise the girls begin to shrink. That's why you see so many little old ladies. (I'm not making this up.) Three features of the movie are memorable. One is the acting of the two kids. It's perfectly okay (except for an arguable second or two, here and there). How do they find children so young who can handle parts this well? Second is the location shooting and the everyone-else-is-dead atmosphere. The little town and the surrounding woods and fields aren't themselves ugly, but they're not pretty either. They're more indifferent than anything else. There's no enchantment in them, though there is the hint of a haunt. (A young boy runs into them in a grassy field, punches Angela in the eye, and scoots away.) In no scene is there ever more people than is absolutely necessary to establish even a minimal sense of verisimilitude. The streets of the town are dismal and empty of life. The carnival is practically deserted. The location LOOKS a bit like upstate New York but the atmosphere is misty and ridden with fundamentalist religion, suggesting Appalachia, a little farther South. Third -- look out, spoiler! -- third is Angela's death scene. It's flamboyantly understated. Angela believes that if one baptism is good for you, then an infinite number of them is infinitely better. So she dunks herself and dunks herself and gradually drifts downstream until the shallow creek turns into a wide rippling swiftly moving river and disappears without a sound. The budget is low. The story is despairing. I'm not sure what the point of the film is, outside of its capturing a number of strikingly composed shots. I guess it's tough to come from a broken family and it's tough to face adolescence. And, as the Buddha suggested, let's not take our actions to extremes, not even our attempts at salvation. Maybe, as Angela says, heaven is right here when you're alive, and hell is after you're dead.

This is a complex story about insanity, and the thin line between insanity and religious superstition. Two little girls are neglected by their parents, and the older girl (Angela) imagines or hallucinates seeing and talking to the devil. The younger girl has a scary moment imagining or hallucinating too. Nobody teaches these kids about reality, and in the end that lack of attention becomes a horrible disaster. The ending has such impact that the second time I saw the film I turned it off before the ending. The girls are absolutely adorable and the photography does them justice. There is one * scene (body suits?) that is completely innocent. The two girls are portrayed realistically most of the time, so that you don't really mind the occasional lapses in realism. The children are so lovable that the ending is doubly tragic: you want the story of their lives to go on forever. A great scene is when the two girls sneak away from the adults, find their way to a carnival, and meet a young man who is apparently a pedophile. They unwisely follow him to a somewhat secluded place, and he kisses Angela. But the child imagines he is an angel, and tells him "I know who you are." The poor guy is frightened to death that he's about to be arrested and runs away! There are many other great moments of comedy and irony in this film. Despite the lack of high-budget action or special effects, there isn't a boring moment in the whole movie. The writer/director is a creative genius, and the music is beautiful too! Frank Adamo, author of the documentary "Girl Becomes Woman."

The ten year-old Angela (Miranda Stuart Rhyne) and her little sister Ellie (Charlotte Blythe) move to an old house in the countryside with her parents Mae (Anna Thomson) and Andrew (John Ventimiglia). Their mother has mental illness and has just left an institution and her husband tries to keep the dysfunctional family together. Angela is an imaginative disturbed girl that might have inherited the illness of her mother and is obsessed by purification to get rid of her sins; and has visions of the fallen angel Lucifer and the Virgin Mary. She leads her little sister in her paranoia and uses a circle of toys and dolls to protect them against evil. They have a crazy neighbor that Angela believes is an angel and she asks the woman how to find the way to heaven. When Mae returns to the institution, Angela becomes uncontrollable in her quest to heaven. "Angela" is a weird and bizarre film about mental illness and religious paranoia. Angela seems to have inherited the mental disorder of her mother, having vision of Lucifer and Virgin Mary, and fantasizing purification processes to cleanse the sins to reach heaven. The worst is that she drags her little sister in her fantasy. The tragic conclusion is expected. It is impressive the number of times that the microphone is visible. My vote is six. Title (Brazil): 'Angela: Nas Asas da Imaginação' ("Angela: In the Wings of the Imagination")

I happened to see this on late night swiss TV(!); as far as I'm aware it was never released in Europe, where it would surely strike a note. Anyway: beautiful in every respect, true poetry in the photography and styling, the two girls are spellbinding, the whole thing is magical. Complimenti to R. Miller - eagerly awaitng your next movie.

After a slow start this film was like throwing a pebble into still waters and watching the ripples widen. Written, produced and directed by Rebecca Miller with insight, sensitivity and humour there are strong overtones of the magical and the sinister, the angelic and the devilish and performances from the two child actors which are entrancing. The sisters, aged nine and six, create a world of fantasy which is partly induced by longing for a happy family life and partly by a desperate desire by the older girl to find salvation through spirituality. Their mother, a pale and ravaged shadow of her former self, with distinct similarities to Marilyn Monroe (who was married to Arthur Miller, Rebecca Miller's father) barely notices the girls as they drift in and out of her line of vision and her drunken haze. Their father is totally focused on her unpredictable behaviour and his job in a car scrap yard. There is a strong sexual frisson between the two. When the film starts we see the family move in an old pick- up truck to a rambling and abandoned house with metal beds and dirty curtains. Through a grill in the floor the girls watch their parents making love below, a scene of mystifying and disturbing violence. "It looks as if it hurts", the older sister says to her little sister when she tries to prepare her for when she has to kiss boys and "do it" in order to have a baby. The little sister is, as is the case with siblings, in awe of her big sister and hangs on her every word, believing the increasingly bizarre and black rituals that she is told she must perform in order to "Go into the Big Nothing". There are terrifying moments, funny moments and wonderful cameos - like the next door neighbour who sleep walks every night and looks for a letter in her mail box, always dressed in her nightie and with curlers in her hair. There is a wonderful scene of a baptism in the nearby lake and a night time visit to a fairground where a young man with dangerous intentions almost gets his way. I found it riveting, worrying, delightful, believable and a completely brilliant portrayal of the power of the imagination that children have, which is sadly so little encouraged.

I saw Rebecca Miller's "Angela" advertised many years ago but never saw it until now. Knowing that "Angela" is directed by Arthur Miller's daughter makes it sound good, and indeed it starts out very interesting, focusing on two sisters living in a miserable existence. But then about halfway through, the whole thing comes across more as a B movie, and not just because of the scenes in which the microphone appears. As the movie progresses, the plot gets thinner and thinner, and the girls have almost nothing to do. I understand that Miller (now married to Daniel Day-Lewis) has directed some other movies, so I'll keep an open mind about them. This one is just not worth your time.

An evil child abuse picture. Exists just to hurt children and promote child abuse. People who made this hate little girls and so wanted to hurt little girls and call it "art" so made this trash.

I caught ANGELA on IFC a couple of years ago; it's been in the back of my mind since then. ANGELA is about two young girls who create their own realities in order to deal with the painful reality of their mother's manic depression. It pinpoints and explores the relationship between the interior self and the subjective world--the process by which we create meaning when meaning runs riot in the "objective" world. Its direction by Rebecca Miller is impeccable -- she coaxes sensitive, complex performances out of each and every character, most notably in the young protagonist and in her even younger sister. Such fine performances are a tribute the script, as well. From cinematography to art direction to costumes, it manages to convey a truly unified, important, tender and thought-provoking vision... The world would be a better place with more films like this one. Thank you, Ms. Miller!