| RENT (2005)
Hamster Rating: 3 pellets |
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STARRING: Anthony Rapp [Mark Cohen], Adam Pascal [Roger Davis], Rosario Dawson [Mimi Marques], Jesse L. Martin [Tom Collins], Wilson Jermaine Heredia [Angel], Idina Menzel [Maureen Johnson], Tracie Thoms [Joanne Jefferson], Taye Diggs [Benjamin Coffin III]
SYNOPSIS: A year in the lives of Bohemian New York East Enders dealing with AIDS, love and poverty in the early 1990's.
Does anybody remember the movie Moulin Rouge? It starred Ewan McGregor as a young French writer who moved to the city in search of the bohemian ideal of true love and innocence, only to wind up broken and alone when his lifestyle imploded and the woman he fell for (Nicole Kidman) died of a tragic disease.
Didn't see that one? Most people didn't, but it was entertaining and well-made, if not well-seen. Watching Rent only made me want to watch Moulin Rouge again. Both films follow the escapades of impoverished, artsy bohemians living it up with drugs, diseases and sticking it to the man. Both have catchy tunes throughout, and both portray love and death. The key difference in the two stories is that Moulin Rouge's bohemians don't necessarily stay that way. The movie clearly demonstrates that innocence has inescapable and unpleasant consequences. The bubble can burst. Rent's characters deal with some equally troubling realities, but don't seem to ever make that connection. After death, disease and divisiveness have (pardon the pun) rent the group and brought them back together, they're still singing their bohemian anthem of "there is no future, there is no past, there's only this moment."
So what was the point of it all? To show that bohemian New Yorkers are idiots? I think most of the world already agrees on that. So even though Rent has good music, fine performances and decent production values, it feels only half-finished, or at best, incredibly shallow. I willingly admit that I have not seen Rent in its original format, so I cannot comment on how well it stacks up to the Broadway version. But the cast (largely the same as the stage show) are energetic and talented and some of the choreography is absolutely stellar. "Light my candle," a duet between HIV positive former junkie and rocker Roger and his junkie neighbor Mimi is touching and intricate. The same can be said for the smart, amusing "Tango Maureen." My favorite number was "Santa Fe," which was not only a lovely song, but it was staged in a subway car where singers Martin and Heredia use the poles like acrobats. It's amazing what they accomplish in such a tight space.
Unfortunately, the rest of the musical can't maintain the same level of quality. The rousing "Le Vie Boheme" number grows tiring as it goes on minute after minute. The love ballad between academic Tom Collins (Martin) and drag queen Angel (Heredia) is well-sung but struggles to feel sincere since the two characters are so drastically different. The keynote "Seasons of Love" number ("Five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes"...) that opens the musical takes place on an empty stage. For the rest of the show everybody's on the real streets of real New York City. The empty stage never appears again. Why start by driving home that "this is not reality," then spend the next two hours contradicting that?
Perhaps some of the incoherence of the story comes from the fact that it is told largely through frustrated filmmaker Mark's perspective. Mark is an outsider in this bunch; he's not HIV positive or gay. Everybody else falls under one or both of these categories. The only thing harder to swallow than Tom and Angel's unlikely romance is Roger and Mimi's bonding over AIDS medication. The East End is probably the only place you could go to a rave and be as likely to score some AZT as cocaine. It borders on the absurd, especially when Angel is the ideal everyone else aspires to.
If nothing else, I suppose these characters deserve credit for sheer pluck. Nothing dampens their free-spirited, fun-loving attitudes. That's admirable, I suppose, but mostly these people need to wake up and start being responsible for themselves. That's why Moulin Rouge was such a good film. The characters at least learned something at the end. At the end of Rent, the characters are making documentaries and writing songs, singing their hearts out about how great each and every moment of their bohemian lives are in spite of their hardships. I seem to remember Freddie Mercury doing the same thing. Remember "Bohemian Rhapsody"?:
Too late, my time has come/Sends shivers down my spine/Body's aching all the time/Goodbye everybody--I've got to go/gotta leave you all behind and face the truth...I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all.
Yeah. Le Vie Boheme!
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