The musical RENT is a film adaptation of a Broadway play. I've recently seen a pretty dang good Chicago production of it. It's got no shortage of heart, lots of energy, and lots of laughs and tears. It's also got some weaknesses that are precariously close to being its death blow. Its flaws don't kill it, but they come close.
The performances are absolutely amazing. I don't have a single critical thing to say about any of the actors.
Musically, I know this music has made the global rounds and it's huge. I don't think there's anything bad to say about the musical score either.
But looking critically at RENT, both as a story and as a film, reveals glaring flaws that keep me personally from falling head-over-heels in love with it and becoming a full-fledged RENT-head. This story has some problems that are both unfortunate and major, paradoxically leaving me with a sense of disingenuousness. Which doesn't make sense considering its origin, where it came from, Larson. I shouldn't be able to call 'BS' on RENT and be justified, and yet I can.
RENT assumes rather than earns its authenticity.
RENT has an unflinching, unapologetic self-centeredness that both serves it and cripples it. It has devoted so much focus and effort into being Gen-X'y, bohemian, and anti-establishment, that it has overlooked having a genuine identity of its own. Its uniqueness is stereotypical. It's confined to its freedom. Its portrayal of village artists and photographers is obvious, clunky, one-dimensional, cliché. The film is far too self-congratulatory to even consider noticing this.
RENT is trying (plaintively?) to make its characters' last year on Earth a celebration, but the thing is, I feel like a terrible situation of tremendous gravity, urgency, and despair has been turned into something of a 3-ring circus. On some level I feel like I have to question how seriously this was meant to be taken. Only its origin saves it from being creatively bankrupt. The exact same story coming from any Hollywood writer would rightfully get burned at the stake. Ultimately, these decisions ARE Larson's prerogative. I guess that being homeless and your imminent AIDS-related death doesn't automatically require an uptight documentary-style treatment.
RENT's excessive prettiness is also a big detriment to the film's authenticity, honestly. These people are awfully beautiful to be homeless AIDS victims. These are all designer characters. Their appearance is a deliberate, calculated, manicured image designed to make the idea more digestible. I rather suspect some watch this so they can feel like they've adopted some of the suffering of an underprivileged group of people. Do those individuals spend any actual time with the homeless? Who's to say. This mentality has infected other visual aspects of the film, too. Everything is so manicured and staged it becomes false. Everything is designer and Hollywood and perfect, including--nay, ESPECIALLY the abandoned buildings and alleys. The cinematography is a technical masterpiece and everything happens much too perfectly for me to believe in the world of RENT. It's not to be unexpected in a musical, but the nature of the subject matter changes the game quite a bit. Would I apply that equally to all films everywhere? Unfortunately, we're in the territory of art criticism here and it's subjective--and context matters, so no. For instance, Chicago has all the exact same traits, but they work for the film it instead of against it.
The entire scene with Sarah Silverman is the epitome of what I'm talking about. It fails to be the stark contrast with the rest of the film that it's trying to be. Furthermore, the entire subplot is an absurd non sequitur, but that's beside the point. It's trying to contrast how perfectly neat and tidy this corporate world is with how free and loose the world of the rest of the film is, but the entire film is actually neat and tidy--the spontaneity and freedom are artificial. I don't buy it.
But thanks to the performances, damn, RENT sure does have a fire in its britches.
It really challenges you to drop your hangups and relax and enjoy the ride.
I'm not a RENT-head, nor do I hate it. I don't think it's mediocre, canned, or kitsch. I don't think it's amazing or enlightening. Calling it pretentious isn't exactly fair, though there is a pretentiousness to it. I do, however, feel confident in saying both that it has flaws and has something to it.
So, how you feel about RENT will always come down to how deeply you connect to the characters and how much you're feeling the music. Is it an electrifying, heartbreaking celebration of life and love, or is it a mockery? Both cases could be made. My bottom line opinion: RENT is successful in spite of itself. The actors work harder than they should have to to sell a story that's working against them, confined by excessively stiff character molds--and they are so good, they pull it off. What's strong is incredibly strong. But to pretend its flaws didn't exist would be, for me, an intellectual suicide.
