I rhapsodized last August after I had the opportunity to see an advance screening of HBO’s Angels in America airing this Sunday, which has been translated to screen by Mike Nichols from a script by Tony Kushner, its Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning playwright.

I had seen the first half of the play, “Millenium Approaches,” in 1993 when it was on Broadway. A decade later, the film is an equally moving, stunning event. The play’s conceit, “a fantasia on national themes,” is translated masterfully, with more than several scenes of CGI and live action that will take your breath away. The cast includes Al Pacino, Mary Louise Parker, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, and Justin Kirk. There are some brilliant double castings which should be left surprises.

The film brought me right back to late 80’s New York (I was attending college upstate and in my first gay relationship with a fellow student named Michael who was from Manhattan) and the fear and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic. This work of art deals with so much more than that — relationships, imagination, loneliness. But more so it deals with the helplessness and feelings of desperation surrounding a plague that can’t be controlled. Michael contracted HIV a few years after we broke up and died on New Year’s Day 2000. I couldn’t help thinking that somewhere in his head he needed to make it past the Millenium.

It is 2003 now. Though the first half of the work is titled Millenium Approaches, that time is past us. In hindsight, Kushner’s work still resonates powerfully given the apocalyptic fervor of the age we live in today.

You can view the incredible trailer here.