Throughout the film one becomes more and more disgusted with the unlikable English. William Adamson, who due to his sheer poverty must live in residence as a scholar to the dislikable Alabaster clan, suffers throughout the film. As a member of the lower classes, Adamson must act throughout the film as a half-aristocrat, half- servant as he works on his research and for the Alabasters as a researcher-schoolmaster. Classical liberals will rejoice throughout the film as the glaring flaws of the Alabaster aristocracy are pointed out in lavish detail: Eugenia, the depressed and neurotic wife of Adamson; Edgar, Eugenia's truly untalented, obnoxious and lecherous brother (who is great fun at parties); Lady Alabaster, the grossly overweight matriarch; the Reverend Harald Alabaster, the "lord of the manor" and frustrated academic unable to finish his magnum opus. Even the quasi-likable character Matty Crompton, aged beyond her years, spinster-esque, and stuck in the same situation as Adamson, has rather apparent flaws and obvious repressed feelings that the psychologists today would love. Added to this are an obsequient corps of servants and other social aristocrats that are entirely unlovable. Haas takes the horrendous character flaws of the Alabaster clan, along with the flaws of Adamson, and uses them as his engine to compare the civilized and cultured English to nothing but a colony of ants...of insects.
The imagery in the film is fantastic, with the comparisons taken between the human's investigation of ant colonies and the actual human interaction in the film done so clearly and done so well that one is left with a distinct impression of the message the director wants to send. The most ironic scene, for myself, was when the researchers looked at an ant colony kept in a terranium built like a cathedral. Filmed at an authentic English country manor, the costuming and set design will truly take one back to the Victorian era. Along with a baroque, depressing soundtrack to add to the pure melancholy that Adamson endures, one is swept through into his world.
Angels and Insects is a very well done social commentary, with the flaws of Victorian Society and as a parallel to that, our own, made apparent to the viewer in detail. It will force the viewer to truly think, a trait sorely lacking in most films today. The "angels" in the film are the natives, that to the English would be considered barbarous, yet live lives free of the modern societal prison and its' torrments. The English consider themselves cultured and civilized, yet they are restrained in the confines of that prison, with its' crushing conformity, social stratification, and other barriers to happiness. The viewer, when presented with this apparent conundrum, will be forced to ask himself whether the traditional goals of Victorian -- and today's society -- are worth the consquences: the pressures, societal norms, and other problems that we must endure as the price for that. Angels and Insects is well worth your three bucks to rent.