Since 1996, Rent has been the runaway underground hit of Broadway, stunning audiences with its sheer strength of sinewy emotion—the kind of raw power that renders shirt sleeves moist with tears. Now, after several failed attempts, Rent is on the silver screen, and it has transferred almost effortlessly, displaying its usual grace and retaining all of its emotional force. This film is not one to miss.
Naturally, one of the most important parts of Rent is the music. While the transition to film necessitated some changes in the way the songs pepper themselves throughout the story, and while unfortunately some songs were only included as dialogue, most remained. For example, the ever-popular “Seasons of Love” is performed by the cast during the opening credits. The power of this song is such that merely seeing the cast members standing in a line singing is sufficient to draw the audience in.
There is also, of course, the vividly vivacious “La Vie Boheme,” the show’s centerpiece, capturing all the reckless energy of the lifestyle it describes; and the deep love of “I’ll Cover You,” made especially poignant during the reprise of that song. “Over the Moon” and “Tango Maureen” delve into the delightfully deviant character of Maureen, and “Today 4 U” shows off the bubbling energy of Angel.
Indeed, all of the songs in Rent are equally adept at conveying in force whatever emotion they are designed to carry. This is in part due to the outstanding cast. Most of the recent Broadway actors and actresses reprised their roles: Taye Diggs as Benny, Wilson Heredia as Angel, Jesse Martin as Tom Collins, Idina Menzel as Maureen, Adam Pascal as Roger, and Anthony Rapp as Mark Cohen.
The roles of Mimi and Joanne are played by Rosario Dawson and Tracie Thoms, respectively. Far from seeming like they didn’t belong, Dawson and Thoms only stood out through their excellent portrayals of their characters. Every scene with Mimi in it was beautifully orchestrated, and the dynamic between the venerable Menzel and the sometimes-saucy Thoms was electric.
The most outstanding performance had to be Heredia’s Angel. A positively effervescent drag queen, Angel infuses the show with life, love, the pursuit of happiness, and an extra dose of creativity. Angel is the tie that binds the rest of the characters together into a coherent powerful whole, as well as providing the most poignant and exquisitely overwhelming subplot of the story.
In reality, the entire cast was outstanding. Every character is richly illustrated to a depth to which most movies cannot even begin to aspire. The result is a beautiful tapestry of mankind.
The Rent movie also benefits from the deeper pockets and expansive capabilities of a movie budget. While the play thrived on the (comparatively) minimalist sets of its Broadway theatre, the movie shows us entire New York City streets and grand skyline vistas. “Tango Maureen” has a troupe of black-clad anonymous tangoers, the banquet hall scene entails an actual banquet hall, the Santa Fe scene actually shows Santa Fe, etc.
The key word when discussing Rent is “scope.” The movie has such awe-inspiring breadth of emotion, and such variations and roller-coaster rides of feeling, that it has a human landscape unto itself. It is humanity that playwright Jonathan Larson captured, and that humanity has just as much depth on a screen as on a stage. Rent does for cinema what its performed version does for theater.
