From Broadway to the big screen, 'Rent' entertains

If there's one thing Chris Columbus, director and producer of the recently released musical film "Rent," is good at, it's spectacle. As kids, we all loved the wonderful high jinks of his "Home Alone" movies, and a new generation is discovering his Midas-like filmmaking touch through his two film adaptations of Harry Potter. "Rent," his latest endeavor, is perhaps his most mature film, dealing directly with angst, poverty, love, loss and moral quandaries not so easily resolved as those in his earlier films. At the same time, the mood of "Rent" is ultimately upbeat — due in part to the original musical's score and script, but also owing to Columbus' brisk pacing and ability to match the characters' artistic enthusiasm with a palpably Bohemian environment.

It was no mean feat to breathe fresh life into "Rent," given that its source can be traced back to a nineteenth century short story. Late in that century, Giacorno Puccini adapted the story to become the opera "La Boheme," which served as the basis for Jonathan Larson's 1996 Broadway musical, "Rent." That musical has now been adapted for the big screen, but its convoluted genesis is nowhere evident in the final product. The film "Rent" is neither an opera nor a Broadway musical; it stands on its own as an involving ride through the kind of lifestyle that we only find in the movies.

"Rent" is, by necessity, a character-driven film. Those characters are fortunately interesting, running the gamut from disgruntled artists to seductive courtesans. The central stories are those of the inhabitants of an unbelievably roomy New York apartment: Mark (Anthony Rapp) the aspiring filmmaker, Roger (Adam Pascal) the would-be, has-been rock-star and Tom (Jesse Martin) the computer-age philosopher. Roger's love interest is their downstairs neighbor, a stripper named Mimi (Rosario Dawson), and Tom becomes involved with Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia), a transvestite street musician who is easily the film's most sympathetic and entertaining character. Mark is left in the lurch romance-wise, since his old girlfriend Maureen (Idina Menzel), a beat poet, became a lesbian and dumped him for a straight-laced Harvard Law grad, Joanne (Tracie Thoms). Rounding off the ensemble is Benny (Taye Diggs), a former roommate of Mark, Roger and Tom who now collects rent from the broke Bohemians — and therein hangs the tale.

The Bohemian roots of "Rent" are what provide the film with its unique form of pseudo-reality. To be Bohemian is to be a rebel without a cause; the characters in "Rent" epitomize that seemingly contradictory statement. The film starts out with a strong social conscience when the title song, "Rent," is performed as a gradual crescendo of urban discontent spreads from Mark and Roger's apartment to their neighbors. Soon the entire block is throwing burning scraps of paper into the street and singing their refusal to pay rent any longer. The neighborhood seems like a boiling-pot ready for Marxist revolt. Being Bohemians, however, they express rather than revolt. This is problematic, as a bag lady points out to Mark, since they never really work out solutions to their problems.

Social progressivism takes the back burner to the characters' unusual relationships in the second half of the film. The various love stories of "Rent" may seem extremely modern, but they face age-old dilemmas. For example, it's of no concern to the rest of the characters that Joanne and Maureen are lesbians; rather, it's their competing personalities (effusive versus organized) that make them an interesting couple. Also figuring prominently into the romances is the AIDS epidemic. How each character deals with the disease is very revealing. Tom and Angel exhibit the kind of idyllic response: both HIV-positive, they remain upbeat and productive while being incredibly supportive when necessary. On the other hand, Roger, also HIV-positive, goes through the movie haunted and dejected on account of the disease. Their songs effectively capture their spirit and perspective, and the excellent score is reason enough to see the film.

Overall, the musical numbers are well integrated, but the ensemble pieces like "Rent" and "La Vie Boheme" capture the spirit of the characters' troubles better than the more somber, introspective solos and duets. By retaining most of the show's original Broadway cast and capitalizing on all the cinematic tricks in the book, "Rent" succeeds in bridging Broadway and Hollywood in a most satisfying fashion.

"Rent" is now playing at the Garden Theatre and Market Fair.