Movie/Musical Review - Rent

Rent is a story about love, about hope, and about forgetting regret. The musical was based off of Puccini's La Boheme, which is an opera about young Bohemians living in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Rent is similarly structured. A group of 7 friends living in poverty in New York City can't seem to find work or pay their rent. Mark and Roger are the two roommates; their former roommate, Benny, is now their landlord, and demands their rent or they will be evicted, and the musical continues from there.

Along the way you meet Mimi, who's strong-willed and difficult to deter, and she falls in love with Roger. You get to meet Mark's ex, Maureen, a performance artist who left him for a lawyer named Joanne. You meet Collins, Mark and Roger's former rommate, who is a part-time philosophy professor at NYU and an anarchist. And you meet Angel, the wonderful street performer who has AIDS but is living every day like it's her last.

A wonderful thing about this musical is all the representation it holds in the media. Angel is a black trans* woman, and Maureen is a lesbian who's dating a black lesbian lawyer. And Mimi is a strong, Hispanic young woman. So much representation! It's not close to what we need in every day media, but the thing about this was that it showcased real people, living in New York City, struggling with being HIV positive but also learning to live each moment as their last.

Rent is a story about hope. It's a story about love, and it's a story about people "living with, living with, living with, not dying from disease". If you have the chance, watch Rent. It's a truly beautiful movie. The stage musical is better, but it's not on Broadway anymore. Even the soundtracks, both Original Broadway Cast and Original Movie Soundtrack are wonderful. 

"Let he among us without sin be the first to condemn la vie boheme" :)

Rent movie trailer