Rent [M]

It’s the end of the millennium in New York City and seven friends are doing the best they can with what they don’t have to make it through another year. With no money, no heat, no power, and four of them suffering from AIDs, there is only one thing that can pull them through the hardships: their love for each other. 

Directed by Christopher Columbus of all people, Rent is the musical film adaptation of the Jonathan Larson’s award-winning rock musical and equally as moving and musically stunning as Moulin Rouge or Chicago, though not really in the same league. Here I am, tears still running down my cheeks, causing my eyeliner to streak and make me look like a racoon, but I really do love this film for its wonderful songs, down to earth characters, and empowering message of the power of love. 

It’s the end of the millennium in New York City and seven friends are doing the best they can with what they don’t have to make it through another year. With no money, no heat, no power, and four of them suffering from AIDs, there is only one thing that can pull them through the hardships they are surrounded by: their love for each other. 

When you think “musical” you think bright lights, show tunes, sparkling costumes, and larger then life dance sequences and characters. But Rent has to be the only musical that I know of, that focuses on the mundane and the real. It’s a musical about everyday people in New York; 20-something year-olds who have not found their feet and are struggling to make their way on their own. What’s important to note about the setting of Rent is that it’s set in an age where making connections with other human beings is really hard and often dangerous. The characters in this film do not only battle against the cold, drug addiction, and disease, but against isolation, segregation, and corruption of morals and principals. It really is a wonderfully defiant movie without any political influence to tarnish it. 

The songs are not that of your typical Broadway musical, but heartfelt and often angry ones with lyrics that tell more of the story than the script does. It’s beautiful, harsh, and very depictive of society during that time and even now. 

Starring Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Rosario Dawson, Jesse L. Martin, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Idina Menzel, Traci Thoms, and Taye Diggs, Rent is a wonderful movie that’s filled with cold reality, rocking songs, friendship, drama, romance, and love. It’s wonderfully intimate, close to the bone, and therefore a really powerful musical film, not one just for show. 

No day but today