Rent Rent - But Not an Apartment in Greenwich Village

Author's Rating:

Pros: excellent acting and singing, moving, good music

Cons: grim and gritty, depressing

The Bottom Line: 
Dark and edgy but ultimately inspiring. Rent it.

Author's Review
I went to a high school that had a very strong focus on the performing arts, so theater was a passion for many of my fellow students. If I learned anything about my fellow theater buffs during those four years, I think perhaps it was this: if you are a teenager who likes musicals, you are almost contractually obligated to love Rent. By the time I graduated, I felt like I'd heard the opening song 525,600 times. Okay, slight exaggeration. But having little familiarity with this play was just as bad as being a geek who had never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I finally amended that situation my freshman year in college, but my Rent initiation was considerably more delayed. But I've finally seen it - at least the movie version - and while I'll always be more of a Rodgers and Hammerstein gal, I can definitely see the attraction.

Rent is a rock opera that takes an old story - La Boheme - and recasts it in modern times. Our young heroes are a group of struggling artists in Greenwich Village. Maybe things have changed in 15 years, but it makes me awfully glad my brother is not planning to move to New York City any time soon. From the sounds of Paul Simon's haunting song, written in the sixties, it's been depressing for a while: "Voices leaking from a sad cafe. / Smiling faces try to understand. / I saw a shadow touch a shadow's hand / on Bleecker Street." The landscape could scarcely be less appealing. It's dirty and grimy and pestilential, and most the residents are cold and sick and, above all, poor. Nonetheless, they have dreams, and even those who could fairly easily escape this grim life would rather tough it out in the name of artistic integrity and friendship.

Friends comes to mind here, because this group of young men and women becomes its own family. We glimpse Maureen's parents and hear Mark's on the answering machine, but clearly they don't play a significant role in their lives at the moment. Screening your parents' call on Christmas? That's cold! But at least these upstarts care about each other. Mark (Anthony Rapp) is an observer. Quiet and somewhat detached after his break-up with the lascivious Maureen (Idina Menzel) - who ditched him in favor of level-headed lawyer Joanne (Tracie Thoms) - he spends the bulk of the film with a camera in hand, documenting the events of the year. His roommate Roger (Adam Pascal) was living the good life as a fairly successful rocker until he got caught up in a whirlwind of destructive choices and lost his girlfriend after she was diagnosed with AIDS. Consumed with guilt and determined to play it straight from now on, he resists the advances of Mimi (Rosario Dawson), a flirtatious, vixen who only has eyes for him - and heroin. Collins (Jesse Martin), who used to room with Mark, is a gentle, intellectual soul suffering from AIDS. When a transvestite named Angel (Wilson Heredia) hears his cry of distress and plucks him from the alley, the two become inseparable, bound by an enormity of spirit and a debilitating disease. Their lack of cynicism in a world that has treated them so harshly is refreshing.

The title stems from the fact that Mark and the gang face eviction from Benny (Taye Diggs), their former neighbor who married into wealth and now plans to intrude on his old stomping grounds to build a studio. While Maureen stages a protest, Mark searches for a way to raise awareness of their plight via his film-making skills. The bulk of this action occurs within a week of Christmas Eve, when the film starts, but we also get a good look at the next year in these people's lives, full of joy and turmoil, hope and heartache.

There is quite a bit of dialogue that is not sung, but the bulk of the film is taken up by one song or another. All the voices are perfectly up to the challenging melodies. Roger's voice has a harsh edge to it, which is appropriate for a rock musician. Mimi is a powerhouse, while Joanne's voice is deeper and resonant. Mark is the everyman, with a slightly nerdy tone to his voice that is endearing. The group numbers, such as Seasons of Love and the finale, are inspiring, while duets such as Light My Candle, Tango: Maureen and Take Me or Leave Me reveal a great deal about the characters involved. Some songs are better than others, of course, but generally I would say the songs were lyrical, compositionally complex and artfully performed.

I have never seen the stage play or listened to the original cast recording - aside from a song here and there - so I really can't compare this to its source material. That's probably just as well. It seems that seeing a play first tends to sour people on film adaptations, much as watching a movie based on a favorite book often makes viewers seethe. As one of the newly initiated, I'm perfectly prepared to give Rent my stamp of approval. As long it doesn't inspire Nathan to move to Greenwich Village.