The music almost never stops, which helps move it in places where there's more exposition than progression. Got me interested in radio drama, actually, even though at the time I was much more of a physical actor.

When I finally saw it on a stage (on tour), it was played like a rock concert, with most of the actors just standing there singing as if they were all rock stars, and the audience was, well, the audience. It was great to see it live, but it didn't really add anything to the audio experience except for a single moment:

There's an abrasive line during one of the songs where two or three singers speak-sing a deliberate "I'm dreaming of a WHITE Christmas!" and on stage it was sung by three white cops chasing after a black homeless man. Otherwise, without even very much blocking, it just seemed static.

Still a powerful experience to see it live though.

So for the film I was thinking any movement, any blocking, any interesting camera movement (in short: any creative choices made by the director) could only serve to increase my appreciation of musical. Film was a way to add dynamic elements to it, right?

But the only interesting, new cinematic choice I saw that actually added anything was the Tango Maureen song (in which Maureen was actually introduced in the delirium induced dance number). Otherwise, you have brilliant acting (by six members of the broadway cast as well as by the newcomers) and incredible set design (except for the subway/Santa Fe number--that set looked kinda contrived) marred by a production that didn't really use the power and tools that cinema had to offer.

Really, I want you to change stuff for the new medium! I would have been okay with changing the sung lines to spoken if they'd done something interesting with them. Instead we get things like spoken answering machine messages (they're sung in the musical) and the cast just stopping and staring at the machine as lines are spoken that were written to be sung. So what you have is a film that's less dynamic than an audio-only track.

The film seemed to me like a half-assed attempt to introduce more realism into a play in places where it works better symbolically. The AIDs part, the economic realities, and the descrimination is real.

But: Rent isn't about hipsters who are so spoiled and shallow that they don't think they should have to pay for their living expenses. It's about people who society has abandoned or has never supported, who feel they don't owe their society the consumerism, conformity, and politeness society demands of them. It's about everyone--not just those living with disease--living impermanent lives, and being asked to pay rent for it. This is where Rent works better figuratively than it does literally. This could be considered a weakness in the original musical (that such a dominant theme doesn't work so well on a literal level), but instead of compensating for it, the film exascerbated the problem.

I'm glad the film got made. You couldn't have gotten a better cast (hate to single anyone out of such a talented group, but Anthony Rapp as Mark alone makes me wish I'd seen the original cast live). There were a few wonderful musical moments once you get past the awkward transitions between spoken word and song. The Life Support meetings were particularly moving. I hope the film brings attention to the values and causes that Larson espoused and that it leads people to the musical or (pretty much unabridged) soundtrack. I think it was better than just having the cast stand in front of a camera and sing, so it could have been worse. There was tons of energy in the cast and music, but I think I'd be much less of a cinematic snob about it had Spike Lee directed it.

So I'll point people to the two-CD musical soundtrack, which is such a fun entertainment experience. Listen to it on your next long car ride, and consider the film version a long trailer for it.


Filed under Journal, Peers & Peerless, World of Importance
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Posted by: Jason Erik Lundberg at December 16, 2005 10:05 AM