Tuesday Movie Night

The characters are defiantly anti-bourgeois and anti-authority. Consider simply the opening scene: They feel free to live in buildings they neither own nor have leases to and are resentful of being expected to pay rent. Getting a job is considered "selling out."” As voiced in the main musical number, "“La Vie Bohme," "To loving tension, no pension/To more than one dimension/... Hating convention, hating pretension/Not to mention, of course/Hating dear old Mom and Dad/To riding your bike/Midday past the three-piece suits/To fruits, to no absolutes."”

This worldview taints some otherwise noble sentiments and actions in this story. It's heartbreaking to see the members of the HIV support group rely on nothing more than vague feel-goodism to get through the day. Beyond that, they seem to have no hope-or even awareness that there is hope. Similarly, advice to forgive past wrongs and to seize the day, otherwise admirable counsel, is rooted in nothing more than mere sentiment.

There's no doubt that Larson (who died unexpectedly shortly before Rent premiered Off Broadway in 1996) was a skilled writer, and the music of Rent is particularly good. The lyrics, on the other hand, are often questionable, and Larson sneaks a degenerate worldview past undiscerning viewers by means of that great songwriting.

As actor Jesse L. Martin explained, "I think there'’s something in the music for Rent that allows people to open up in a way that they wouldn'’t if they were just talking. If I just told you that [my character, Tom Collins] has AIDS and that I'’m probably going to die and this is my girlfriend, who is a drag queen, it just wouldn'’t be the same. But because we’re singing about it, what I'’m saying seems a bit easier to take." Idina Menzel, who plays Maureen, added, "“Music has a weird way of sneaking up on people and making them feel something they wouldn't necessarily feel if they were being preached at."

Indeed. Whether moviegoers are aware of it or not, they'’re being preached at. And this sermon contains a romanticized glorification of a lifestyle-be it homosexuality or what should now be called neo-bohemianism-that despite the movie's upbeat conclusion ends ultimately in hopelessness.