Rent
Sony Pictures
Original Release Date: 11/23/2005
Genre: Musical
Directed by: Christopher Columbus
It’s been a while since I wrote anything. In fact, the last thing I wrote for Inside Pulse was a review of The Phantom of the Opera. Now, I’m going to pick up Rent, the film adaptation of the late Jonathan Larson’s Broadway hit.
It hasn’t exactly been receiving the best reviews across the board.
“I hated every 135 minutes of it. Heroic HIV-positive New Yorkers who do nothing and do not want to pay rent. They worship a flirty drag queen named Angel.”
— Victoria Alexander,
Of course, she liked Flight Plan, so there’s no accounting for taste.
“Get a job for God’s sake, people, and bring back some better songs while you’re out.”
— Jeffrey Bruner, DES MOINES REGISTER
Liked War of the Worlds, hated Star Wars: Episode 3. Also seems to despise comedy.
“Those who haven’t seen Rent on the stage will sense they’re missing something, and they are.”
— Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Predictably, loved Rosario Dawson, Jesse L Martin, and Taye Diggs’s performances… hated all the white people. Par for the course with ol Roger.
Rent, for those who don’t know, is a Broadway musical based on Puccini’s opera La Boheme. Larson used the Opera as his template; turning the poet into a songwriter, the painter into a film-maker, and placed them in New York’s Alphabet City. To Columbus’s credit, he’s actually the first recent director to make an effort to cast as many of the original actors as he could. As such, 6 of the 8 original cast members (Including Taye Diggs, Jesse L Martin; better known as Detective Green on Law & Order, and Idina Menzel; the original Elphaba in Wicked) reprise the characters they originated on Broadway.
This turns out to be a double-edged sword. While it’s excellent for the singing, it makes the mood of the film kind of forced and awkward. When you imagine the “New York City Starving Artist” template, most people envision a certain type of (Joshua Grutman) person. This person is usually not in their mid-to-late thirties. For example, when Tom Collins comes home in the first few minutes of the movie, you find out he just finished at MIT and got a teaching gig at NYU. That’s a perfectly reasonable story, except that Jesse L Martin is 38 years old. Most of the starving artists aren’t still starving into their late thirties, which makes Taye Diggs’ Benjamin the only believable character out of the original cast. Benjamin is the “evil” landlord who represents The Man. He’s let his dreams die and married into money, purchasing the building in Alphabet City that our Starving Artists live and work in. Diggs comes off as the person who “grew up” and fits his role.
The other believable character is Rosario Dawson’s Mimi. While the weakest singer out of the bunch (still good though, to her credit), she pulls off the only character that seems to really fit in the whole cast. She’s the drug-addicted stripper who tries to clean up for love, but doesn’t quite get all the way there. Rosario’s primary problem, however, is singing with people way, WAY out of her league. As such, it makes her seem like she has less talent than she actually does. I don’t want it to sound like she can’t sing… she’s just overpowered in some songs by Broadway singers. She is able to shine in her rendition of Out Tonight, which is a fantastic solo and shows what she can do when she’s not being trampled on.
As for the movie itself, I’m shocked it earned a PG-13 rating from the MPAA. Not that there’s anything tremendously offensive in the movie, but when you have a film that shows men kissing (one of whom is a drag queen), women kissing, a decent array of curses, and heavy drug and AIDS related material, it’s somewhat surprising that it swung a PG13.
That being said, the movie does delve into some very deep subject material. Each character has their personal demons to deal with. Mark the film-maker was just dumped by his girlfriend Maureen for another girl. He is also dealing with being constantly broke and wrestling with selling out to Corporate America. His roommate Roger is dealing with HIV and being unable to finish writing any songs. His girlfriend has recently died of AIDS, both of whom caught the disease from sharing needles. Roger meets Mimi, who is dealing with drug addiction and other problems. We see her try to get through coming clean. Maureen has left Mark for Joanne, a lawyer who can’t seem to deal with Maureen’s flirtatious lifestyle, and it comes to a head during their commitment ceremony. Collins has just returned to New York City after a stint at RIT and is immediately mugged and beaten within his first five minutes on screen. He is rescued by Angel, the HIV infected drag queen, who asks Collins to move in.
As it moves on, you are asked to take a pretty raw look at life in the city and deal with some pretty heavy material, from the death of one of the characters from AIDS to Mimi trying to beat her drug addiction.
All to song, of course.
Rent is really directed toward twentysomethings and Rentheads. The “no day but today” message the movie tries to communicate is something that is more lost on people as they get older. Teenagers and twentysomethings still can afford to live their lives as “no day but today” but the message tends to be lost with experience and real life. “What do you mean no day but today… I’ve got to think about the kids and retirement!” Taye Diggs, for example, is the bad guy for wanting to make money. Idina Menzel’s character Maureen is introduced to us by protesting The Man plowing over a tent city to put up a new building. Mark laments “selling out” to a network. Selling out means getting a job.
But that’s kind of the point of Rent, at the end, which Ms Alexander and Mr Bruner above don’t seem to get. If you have to ask: “why don’t they just get jobs” then the whole point of the movie was lost. Rent is about living your life as you want to and not worrying about regret and might-have-beens. Roger sits around his apartment lamenting the death of his girlfriend and his own struggle with HIV, brushing off the chance to live what’s left of his life with someone who loves him. Mimi really delivers the message of the movie and the musical with the line:
There’s only us
There’s only this
Forget regret
Or life is yours to miss
No other road
No other way
No day but today
The point is, you’re not supposed to ask “why don’t these people just get jobs?” You’re supposed to understand why they don’t want jobs. Their lives are theirs to live. The musical is written for the people who understand and appreciate the life these people lead. If you don’t understand it, then it least wants you to appreciate it and remember when you could live your life that way.
As for how it translates from the musical… the message remains intact even though some pieces are missing. Some songs were trimmed out to fit the movie into 2 hours and 15 minutes. Considering the cast, they are able to capture the feeling. And you can’t beat the singing. One of things that takes me out of the film version of Phantom Of the Opera is the sub-par, passionless singing from two people who are trying to live up to Sarah Brightman and Michael Crawford. In this case, they’re trying to live up to themselves, and they manage to make it feel about the same, even though they’re all ten years older. Even though they may not still identify with the characters they originated, they pretend pretty well. If you watch it, just remember what you’re watching it for.
And don’t miss the point.
