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Forget Regret
Nov. 25th, 2005 12:18 pmSeeing Rent yesterday with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
appelle was an almost religious experience. I had such chills that I left my touque on the whole time.
If you're not a Renthead, it probably won't mean as much to you, but I know every note of that score. The world may well be divided between those who can give themselves over to the open-hearted, uncynical and ultimately fairy-tale sentiment of the play and those who cannot see any truth in its message. But for those of you who like Rent, you'll be glad to know it has more than survived its transition to the screen.
The history of musicals moving from Broadway to Hollywood has been a sad one -- great shows have been completely misunderstood, rewritten and neutered by the different mindsets of the two entertainment factories. I really have few good things to say about Chris Columbus, but he has my eternal gratitude for understanding what Rent was about. The move from theatre to hard-edged New York reality strengthened the show and led to a couple of improvements. The opening, with the entire block throwing fire into the street below in protest of their eviction notices was thrilling and I only wish that the movie had opened up more from the main characters into the mass elsewhere in the movie.
The riot that ensues after Maureen's show (in which she actually came across, appropriately, as a Laurie Anderson wannabe) was seen and not just spoken of including the police brutality against the homeless. And the most sublime use of location was the song Santa Fe which was sung on a subway car. The staging was beautifully choreographed and fluidly shot and yet wonderfully naturalistic; a bunch of friends cutting up on the subway with realistic New Yorker reactions.
Sure, the actors are now too old for the roles they created more than a decade ago, but using most of the original cast made a connection to the original and a commitment to its vision that came right off the screen.
The only real error was the one time the movie went Hollywood, creating a fantasy setting for the tango number that was well choreographed but annoying. The worst crime was letting Maureen appear in this scene. When Jonathan Larson wrote the show, he deliberately made the connection between Rent's Maureen and La Bohème's Musetta by having everyone talk about her and talk about her until she makes a showstopping entrance almost 45 minutes into the piece. The tango scene fucked that up egregiously.
As far as I'm concerned, Rent was the final chapter of the greatness of Broadway. The play is overwrought and while Larson had a great understanding of musical devices, he wasn't that hot a composer. But like Leonard Bernstein teaching the cast of On the Town a new song in a piano store shop window at three in the morning (the only piano they could get to) 50 years earlier, Rent had feeling of a group of artists singing what they cared about and all the high-stakes, tourist-bus accountants of Broadway be damned. Somehow, that isn't lost in the transistion to film.
And a note to John Cameron Mitchell who sent up Rent mercilessly (and, admittedly, well) in Hedwig and the Angry Inch: the ending of Hedwig is just as sentimental as Rent's but less believeable.
appelle was an almost religious experience. I had such chills that I left my touque on the whole time.If you're not a Renthead, it probably won't mean as much to you, but I know every note of that score. The world may well be divided between those who can give themselves over to the open-hearted, uncynical and ultimately fairy-tale sentiment of the play and those who cannot see any truth in its message. But for those of you who like Rent, you'll be glad to know it has more than survived its transition to the screen.
The history of musicals moving from Broadway to Hollywood has been a sad one -- great shows have been completely misunderstood, rewritten and neutered by the different mindsets of the two entertainment factories. I really have few good things to say about Chris Columbus, but he has my eternal gratitude for understanding what Rent was about. The move from theatre to hard-edged New York reality strengthened the show and led to a couple of improvements. The opening, with the entire block throwing fire into the street below in protest of their eviction notices was thrilling and I only wish that the movie had opened up more from the main characters into the mass elsewhere in the movie.
The riot that ensues after Maureen's show (in which she actually came across, appropriately, as a Laurie Anderson wannabe) was seen and not just spoken of including the police brutality against the homeless. And the most sublime use of location was the song Santa Fe which was sung on a subway car. The staging was beautifully choreographed and fluidly shot and yet wonderfully naturalistic; a bunch of friends cutting up on the subway with realistic New Yorker reactions.
Sure, the actors are now too old for the roles they created more than a decade ago, but using most of the original cast made a connection to the original and a commitment to its vision that came right off the screen.
The only real error was the one time the movie went Hollywood, creating a fantasy setting for the tango number that was well choreographed but annoying. The worst crime was letting Maureen appear in this scene. When Jonathan Larson wrote the show, he deliberately made the connection between Rent's Maureen and La Bohème's Musetta by having everyone talk about her and talk about her until she makes a showstopping entrance almost 45 minutes into the piece. The tango scene fucked that up egregiously.
As far as I'm concerned, Rent was the final chapter of the greatness of Broadway. The play is overwrought and while Larson had a great understanding of musical devices, he wasn't that hot a composer. But like Leonard Bernstein teaching the cast of On the Town a new song in a piano store shop window at three in the morning (the only piano they could get to) 50 years earlier, Rent had feeling of a group of artists singing what they cared about and all the high-stakes, tourist-bus accountants of Broadway be damned. Somehow, that isn't lost in the transistion to film.
And a note to John Cameron Mitchell who sent up Rent mercilessly (and, admittedly, well) in Hedwig and the Angry Inch: the ending of Hedwig is just as sentimental as Rent's but less believeable.
