Please let me start by admitting right off the top that though I love music and spend as much time as I can in its presence, I don’t care much for musicals. My friend Bob knows this so he’s asked me to review another one. “There’s a lot in there if you listen and look for it,” he told me.
So OK, here goes.
Rent is a musical drama based on the Broadway musical of the same name, which was in turn based on the opera La Boheme which premiered in 1896. The film was directed by Chris Columbus and was released in 2005.
The movie depicts the struggles of a group of bohemians dealing with life, love and the inability to pay their rent, all in the shadow of HIV/AIDS in 1989-1990, in New York. Several members of the group are HIV positive and a good deal of the film is concerned with their love stories.
As the film opens, Roger and Mark learn that last year’s rent, which their landlord had let slide up to then is now due and that they are about to be evicted if they don’t pay. Benny, their landlord and erstwhile friend, offers them a deal. He has big plans for the neighborhood now that it’s been rezoned and he offers them free rent for good if they can get Marks’ ex girlfriend Maureen to cancel the big protest she’s organizing against his plans.
Meanwhile, former roommate and poz guy Tom Collins shows up and promptly gets mugged before getting in the door. He’s found bleeding in an alley by Angel, a cross dressing street drummer who is on her way to Life Support, a local HIV support group meeting. Tom immediately discloses his own HIV status and the two become inseparable.
Later that night, Roger, a recovering drug addict who is HIV positive is visited by Mimi, who lives just downstairs. Mimi is a stripper and heroin user who is also HIV positive. The two are mutually attracted but …
I don’t want to outline much more of the plot as I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it.
So: how was it? Well, Bob was right. The cast is great (six of the original Broadway cast reprise their roles here) and the performances are mostly moving and at times even powerful. There are some great, catchy songs, though I wished some of the music wasn’t quite so much like, well, show tunes.
As a recently diagnosed poz guy I was pulled in right away by the film’s HIV plotline. The dilemma of disclosure all poz people face one way or another is shown in the contrast between Angel and Tom, who were able to disclose all right away and whose love flourishes while Mimi and Roger can’t make the leap, being so laden with baggage. Their love struggles until they do make the leap.
There’s a lovely sense of uplift to all this, nicely evoked in “No Day But Today”: “…There’s only us. There’s only this. Forget regret-or life is yours to miss.”
Basically, any time someone wants to make a film that sends out positive messages about living with HIV, that’s great as far as I’m concerned so I feel a bit guilty for not liking this movie more than I do.
Overall I found this plotline to be a very positive portrayal and there are several moving moments but they are ill served by the movie’s other main theme, which concerns the group’s struggle to maintain their living space as well as their values and lifestyle. None of this has as much emotional weight as the HIV story and I found the transitions from one scene to the next a bit jarring at times.
It’s as if the movie can’t quite decide what it wants to be. One minute it’s a sensitive depiction of a group of friends dealing with life, HIV and one another. Then the rollicking La Boheme side asserts itself and it’s fine as far as it goes but it diffuses much of the emotional impact created up until then.
The fact that most of what anger there is in the film is directed towards, nothing much to do with HIV, but Benny the landlord serves to make the poz characters less plausible, at least to me; because of it they seem two dimensional. Sort of as if “Friends” had HIV and good singing.
While the film contains some lovely messages about living with HIV and particularly about disclosure they could have connected much better without the almost schizophrenic direction.
Rent is still a great movie to watch though, especially if you love musicals and even more so if you love musicals that send out positive messages about living with HIV. Bob was right. There is indeed a lot in there if you listen and look for it.
You might just have to look and listen a bit more attentively because of the way it’s put together.