Rent

My wife and I went to see the new Harry Potter movie the other night. We ended up seeing a movie I knew nothing about: Rent.

The plot is based on bohemian types living in the armpit of urban squalor and on the verge of being evicted from their building in the cold of winter. No one ever really chooses to live like that if they have a better choice. Having been through that whole scene when I lived on Chicago's south-west side, and having lived in other urban environments I was immediately repulsed before I met the characters in earnest. I am sure this "starving artist" ethos is appealing to those who haven't lived it first hand...especially the middle-class white people (e.g. college kids) that show up for such movies. The lyrics to the Dead Kennedy's song, "Holiday in Cambodia" come to mind.

When I meet the characters they are getting evicted because an old friend "sold them out" to the man. My god! Despite the "betrayal", they are forced into a situation of having to pay back rent...and rent in general. So, what do they do? Get jobs? No. They have a protest rally. Not only do they have a protest rally to stand-up against the wicked white land-lord that wants what is justly due, they have an elaborate song and dance scene taunting their residential benefactors by celebrating the lifestyle that underscores the very reasons for their plight. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

And although I can almost forgive one male character for getting HIV from a heroin junkie girlfriend (she dies) he bothers to fall for another heroin junkie girl that whores herself as an "adult dancer" to pay for her habit. From the frying pan into the fire. I am supposed to care about this guy? Any character transformation and redemption comes too late.

The only main character we see earning an honest living (eventually) does do it by what he calls "selling his soul" and yet this same supposed forfeiture of his principles allows him to proudly take a stand when offered another pact with the devil landlord. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Any respect I built up for him (which was little) was lost.

The tender & real moments were too fleeting. Rent has great musical performances and the acting is great. The way they treat homosexual relationships was so respectful and well-done that it was the movie's only saving grace for me. Besides being disrespectful, I am so tired of the gay & lesbian schtick being played out as some comedic or dramatic mechanism for an otherwise weak movie. In Rent it is all really done well.

I remember where and what I was doing when I first heard about AIDS: as a child in a small town in Minnesota in the early 80's. Although I can only guess that the information I learned so quickly in school and on t.v. was common knowledge for those on the street who knew people affected by AIDS or cared enough to pay attention. I am not warming to a play or movie that asks me to tap my toes and sing along to a soundtrack that glorifies the lifestyles that leads to the characters doom. Maybe Rent would have been better if the characters weren't so stupid and I hadn't seen most of it before.