"Rent"

(left: Wilson Jermaine Heredia as 'Angel': more pictures at Yahoo!)

I went and saw "Rent" and was very pleased. I sat right up in front, just below the screen, so the film would overawe me. I spent most of the time with tears in my eyes (it had been a long time since I had heard the music from "Rent" and it hit me with full-force).

Since the movie adheres to standard movie musical convention, people who don't like the idea of actors breaking into song at the drop of a hat will have trouble with this film (I pity these people, though - haven't they ever seen and loved the innumerable movie musicals of the 1930's through 1950's?)

My main quibble was with Idina Menzel's performance-art protest: it is all about performance, and the protest part almost disappears altogether. Protest requires anger, after all, and Menzel couldn't seem to convey that emotion, or at least not to my satisfaction. You can hear the anger on the CD, but not see it on film, which may be because Menzel is performing as well as singing, and there's a lot she has to do. Menzel makes up for it later, with emotional intensity, in the chaotic wedding reception, though, so no hard feelings (that reception is apparently a latter-day add-on, and wasn't in the original stage version).

I loved the Baz-Luhrmann, Moulin-Rouge inspired fantasy tango sequence ('The Tango Maureen'), and indeed, I wondered if an old ballroom dance teacher from Tucson days, Rick Valenzuela, was there (Rick played the nasty, awkward third leg of the love triangle in the movie 'Dance With Me'), but none of the tango dancers were listed in the credits, and I suspect they might have been an uncredited specialty Argentine tango dance team, and Rick probably wasn't there at all.

Most considered criticism of the movie "Rent" focuses on the self-absorption of the characters. Ce'st la vie. That is a common characteristic of many creative communities, though, and why this one should be different, I don't know. Transitions between songs are sometimes a bit awkward, but that is the inevitable price of following standard movie musical convention (the transitions are certainly easier here than in a standard Astaire-Rogers musical).

I will write more later, but I will list minor observations:

• in the cemetery scenes, the prominent names on the headstones (e.g., Kline, Coleman) are prominent members of the crew (as listed in the credits);
• having grown up in NM, the Santa Fe, NM scenes made me smile. It's strange to hear that place just up the freeway described as a form of paradise. I'm sure there are people in Santa Fe who dream of New York.
• That 'Welcome to NM' sign isn't actually at the NM border, but rather close to Santa Fe (it just helps to story move along). The Santa Fe bus depot is not directly across the street from St. Francis Cathedral, the most important 19th-Century structure in the entire state (but putting it there helps move the story along). But the Palace of the Governors and Santa Fe Plaza were as big as life, and Adam Pascal fit in there with his guitar just fine.
• Wouldn't Jake Montoya make a fine 'Angel'?

DMTC's current problems with Varsity Theater 'Overtime Fee', and our strident protests against it, kept springing into mind with the overture, "Rent" (which crescendoes):

ALL
what binds the fabric together
when the raging, shifting winds of change
keep ripping away

BENNY
draw a line in the sand
and then make a stand

ROGER
use your camera to spar

MARK
use your guitar

ALL
when they act tough--you call their bluff

MARK & ROGER
we're not gonna pay

MARK & ROGER & 1/2 THE COMPANY
we're not gonna pay

MARK & ROGER & OTHER 1/2
we're not gonna pay

ALL
last year's rent
this year's rent
next year's rent
rent rent rent rent rent
we're not gonna pay rent

ROGER & MARK
'cause everything is rent

Here's a relevant quote from Chris Columbus about his desire to keep the original cast together as much as possible for the movie. Apparently Columbus wanted the experience of the original cast to work for the project, and I think it did. For example, having the characteristic voice of Mark (Anthony Rapp) somehow seems very important for tying everything together. It would be noticeably different with someone else in that role:

“There was a blip in Entertainment Weekly about me hiring some of the original cast members saying that they were too old," said Chris Columbus. "Well, they’re not too old. They still look like they’re in their ‘20s. Tom Collins, who’d be played by Jesse, could be older than the other cast members. It’s part of what Rent is. So I wrote them a letter which will be in the next Entertainment Weekly and it’s basically about the fact that these people created these characters and lived through Jonathan Larson’s death. And as a result, that show was a memorial to Jonathan for the 18 months that they were all in it together. And they’ve tried to recreate it with other cast members and sometimes they’re successful. They’ve taken it on the road. But it’s never had the emotional honesty or integrity that it did when those people were in it. So we looked at a lot of people and then I met individually with each one of these cast people. I needed to meet with the people I haven’t seen on screen. So Taye and Jesse, I haven’t met with but I see Jesse on Law and Order every week and I see Taye on his show so I know that they can still do the roles. But I’ve met with Idina Menzel and Adam Pascal. Daphne is seven months pregnant, so… We’re not going with Frenchie. I found someone new, a woman named Tracy Thoms, whose had a lot of experience, is a fantastic Joanne. Anyway, so these people have been through it and I wanted to capture that emotion on film, so I thought it would be great to get them all back together. I just felt that they bring something to it that you rarely get to see on screen, that experience. And I think it’s going to be interesting. If you have people too young, you have people that are 21 playing those roles on camera, on screen, I don't think you’d buy it. I think you have to believe that they’ve lived a little bit of a life. And anyway, they all look like they’re in their ‘20s and it’s going to be a remarkable movie just because of the sheer power.”

Columbus is right, experience does count for something!