I can't think of anything more unintentionally hilarious than a scene where 4 people sing in harmony to their terminally ill and formerly drug addicted friend about he should get off his high horse and do some heroin.
@@reganfisher8180 Damn, you really destroyed him there. Keep up the good work, calling random UA-cam commenters stupid. We need more people in this world like you.
Wow, I actually hadn't thought of the fact that Mimi was totally going to share needles and bone a dude...and she's HIV positive and didn't know he was HIV positive. Wooooow.
I've notice that movies and TV shows usually show a strong bias towards very attractive people. Hot men and women can get away with an awful lot of bad behavior and still be thought of as good people.
From all the times that I watched this, I never got the impression from the lyrics or acting that she actually wanted HIM to do heroin. She just wanted to bone, and then heroin is there because it shows that she's all edgy and it's a reason for conflict. But I could be wrong.
I couldn't get a very good look, but it seemed like she was carrying enough for two. And even if she wasn't, she knew that she was HIV-positive, and didn't know that he was, so wanting him to have sex with her is the same as wanting to roll the dice on him potentially getting infected.
Can we just talk about the fact that Roger's friends sing with and hug Mimi in opposition to Roger despite the fact that, if memory serves, NONE OF THEM HAVE MET HER BEFORE???
Actually Mimi and Angel know each other. All the relationships in this musical are a bit complicated. But they know each other from what I remember from the stage play.
+Mackie Jackson Huh. I have no memory of this. I know Mark doesn't meet Mimi until the Beginning To Snow song the next morning in the stage show. How does he even know what they're singing about?!
+Innuendo Studios From my own memory the relationships were described in a playbill or pamphlet Mimi and Angel def knew one another. And this song was also sang in the AIDS support group, only it wasn't about heroin obviously. So, while I doubt they knew this part was about drugs and boning, him, Angel, and Collins were prolly still on about not letting the illness run your life and make you shut everyone out. The message and scene is muddled to be sure and like he said, the scene totally forgets that Mimi is trying to get Roger to do drugs again, but I think that's how he knew.
I think they're kinda passively aware of each other, like Mark knows Mimi as "the girl downstairs", but, yeah, it's still deffos weird that they all just gang up on Roger, who they've known for years.
At the time, the context kind of made it make sense: They can tell Roger's turning her down and are empathizing with that because they all know exactly how poorly he would've reacted to any sort of flirting. But out of that framing, "you tried to score with my roommate/friend and he was a jerk" is a ridiculous reason to hug someone, especially in NYC.
I think Rantasmo should be included since there's a lot to dig into with the portrayal of the LGBT characters in RENT and that's kind of his wheelhouse.
1:05 I lost my shit after "quits _incredibly_ well-paying *part time* job" Do those things exist? Why would he do that? Even as an artist, what the hell does he gain from quitting something that offers _a LOT for less effort_ than a FULL-TIME JOB? _Does he really need every single second of his life for a home movie?!_ What the fuck does selling out mean? Having money while also having _time_ to do something you want??!
I don't know if it was a part time job. Roger confronts Mark about spending all of his time doing work "Mark has got his work, they say Mark lives for his work." Not only that but it's really inane stuff, tabloid news or something "Vampire Welfare Queens Who Are Compulsive Bowlers." Some famous UA-camrs have made public vlogs about why they quit Buzzfeed. I'd imagine it's similar to that. Not that it's necessarily the right choice when all your friends are literally dying and you can't pay rent or heat your home but there is an argument there.
The short answer is that the cost of living back then was much much lower. I lived in Boston on $27K a year, no roommates, did mostly what I wanted, and never really felt broke. The shorter answer is that Mark sucks. (The hot take from me is that if Jonathan Larson hadn't died before his show premiered, it would have been more critically examined and Larson maybe would have polished the script/story more. But the timing of his death gave a certain romantic glow around the writing and history of the show which it wouldn't have otherwise had, and that made RENT basically untouchable critically-speaking for a long time.)
I would describe the storytelling of RENT as being almost predatory--it capitalizes on subjects that are very personal and emotional for those that can relate to them, and through them pushes a view of morality that's really fucked. I got drawn into it too, for a long while. Doesn't hurt that some of the songs are pretty stellar. But in the end, no matter how good the song is, la vie boheme is ultimately a scene about a bunch of assholes making a scene in a restaurant as a petty form of revenge.
I've never seen Rent, and am not a film expert, but I can say that as someone who struggles with addiction and sobriety, the framing you describe of this scene is very much how struggling with your own sobriety can feel: you can feel very caged, unable to to participate in what you wrongly view as the happier and brighter side of life. At least Roger didn't shoot up there, good for him.
Anyone who feels caged in their sobriety is good, because that shit goes away with time, but when you're free, you're running amok on the streets, and that shit doesn't go away on its own... you think you're free but you're not. And it does take a while to truly learn to appreciate sobriety fully. And that's why people have to be ready to stop. But like, I wasn't ready to stop when I went through rehab. But what I learned allowed me to get my life under control. And then once I moved away from my abusive parents, I stopped all the way immediately. Weird how that works... anyways good luck brother
It baffles me what they changed from Boheme without considering the ramifications. Mimi being selfish and damaged (changed) doesn't mesh well with her outlook being endorsed as unambiguously correct (unchanged). Schaunard/Angel murdering a client's pet and being chipper about it (unchanged) is completely at odds with being the too-good-for-this-sinful-Earth character (changed). Benoit/Benny knowing the core cast beyond being landlord-and-tenants (changed) makes their being so flippant about stiffing him (unchanged) bizarre and all the more callous. And having Musetta/Maureen stay with Alcindoro/Joanne (changed) just leaves Marcello/Mark with nothing to do. All of it is not helped by Rent constantly screaming in your face that this is the best/only way to live.
Accurate, plus the plight of tuberculosis then vs AIDs now is not the same. There was nothing they could do to deal with TB, and that was kinda the point. That they were doomed. TB in an era before modern medicine is not the same as AIDS in the 80s. When there were treatments but our government considered your disease a just punishment for how you live your life and so kelt those drugs from reaching you.
@@Samantha_yyz There are many things one can blame on Reagan/Thatcher and their ilk, and they *did* contribute to the AIDS crisis. But they didn't do so by withholding treatment. We didn't know that there *was* a disease until 1982, didn't know what *caused* the disease until 1983, and a treatment was on the market (AZT) by 1987. It also received the fastest FDA approval in history at the time. The problem was that AZT wasn't a particularly effective treatment on it's own and the virus mutated over time, causing AZT to stop working for some people. We didn't really have effective treatment regimens until 1997 or so. Again, none of this absolves Reagan/Thatcher/other conservatives who very much preached (and made it unofficial government policy) that AIDS was a divine punishment for homosexuality and was the answer to their "gay problems." Those people were awful then, are awful now, and actively fought against common sense measures that would have prevented the spread of the virus and saved thousands, if not millions, of lives (ie needle exchanges / effective, *honest* , fact-based sex education). But they didn't do so by withholding extant, effective treatments.
What's interesting is I think this is perhaps the one problem that ONLY the movie has. In the play you are pretty much with Roger. The chorus of "No Day But Today" that joins Mimi is clearly NOT actually there with her (they're at the support group singing the mantra. It's meant to be a clue that Mimi is HIV positive that she parrots the life support theme). Most other criticism I've seen aimed at RENT is valid for both play and film.
Ah thank you so much for this! I used to LOOOOVE RENT back in the day, but it has not aged well with me at all. Almost all the characters are kind of shitty when stop and think about them. Even Angel, who's supposed to be the emotional center of the cast, MURDERS A FUCKING DOG, and has an upbeat hip hop song about it.
That song is so terrible, as an introduction of Angel it's so weird (I've never seen the stage version), I am so happy I'm not the only one bothered by that song!
Also the dog is identified as an Akita, but she talks about it as if it's some little Yappy poodle or something. Akitas are huge dogs half a step removed from wolves.
My only critique is the absence of another dig at the director - because in all stage productions of RENT I've seen, Mimi doesn't bring her heroin with her. Roger decries her using in their first encounter, and she doesn't bring it with her to their second - she only asks him to take her out (sex implied, but not demanded; the sexual language of theater is different than in film). Therefore, the moral dilemma *does* fall with Roger, because he's refusing to spend any time with her at all, excusing it only because "the fire's out anyway", when he's actually just afraid to have any romantic interaction with someone he thinks isn't HIV positive. Mimi's friends, additionally, aren't in this conversation in the stage version (which has been pointed out in comments already), but instead are at an HIV+ support group, making the entire number about the choices one makes when living with HIV. tl;dr - film bad, musical good, if not a little morally reprehensible. Angel *does* murder a dog off-stage.
fish -d In the recorded final Broadway performance and other bootleg Broadway recordings, she does pull out her stash and shakes it in his face at the end of “Out Tonight.” The film is actually far more subtle about it. I always thought this was some weird callback to her doing the same thing in “Light My Candle” but never thought that she was, in fact, encouraging him to shoot up with her (which she definitely is). To be fair to Mimi, Roger does take her stash and hide it from her in “Light My Candle,” so perhaps because of that she thinks he still wants to shoot up-not saying that she should encourage him given he says “I *used* to be a junkie.” Anywho, as someone that appreciates characters that have complexities and nuances, it’s a shame that the musical doesn’t dive deeper into these complexities and instead paints most of these people that have really shitty skeletons in their closets as slightly troubled quirky types with hearts of pure gold. Which is what happens when what was presented as the final version of a musical was technically unfinished.
It’s subtle but she definitely has a bag of Heroin. I saw it on lottery in 1999-at the time, Mimi throws the prop bag into the audience....in the second row I caught the baggie off sand they used. Pretty cool :)
correction from me 3 years later (this has 300 likes ??? what???) but: lol i was wrong abt this, lots of productions have mimi actively asking roger to shoot up. iirc the broadway 2008 revival doesn't, but i could also totally be wrong about that.
I always thought it was super weird how Roger's friends are encouraging a recovering heroin addict to hang out with a still using junkie with a serious drug habit.
I suppose since the movie forgot about the heroin, I also forgot about it when I first saw this. I assumed that it was more about getting Roger to leave the apartment, since it's implied he hasn't actually gone out since April died, and live what was left of his presumably short life (no day but today.) Mimi has heroin, that she drops, but I thought that was more to set up that she has a problem (which will eventually become a big deal later) rather than to imply that she actually wants Roger to do heroin with her. But also I was a kid so I maybe just didn't understand why she wanted a "light."
It is not just about the fact that he was isolating himself, he doesn't want to be hurt again, he already lost someone he loved to AIDS and Heroin. Mimi reminds him of that, brings up all those complex feelings, especially when she is a junky, just like April and himself were.
This is a good point. She had heroin, but my impression was that the bag was just a "McGuffin" to get back in to the apartment to flirt with Roger some more. She wants him to take her out, not stay inside for a sex and drugs party. I think the smack angle is being overplayed in this critique.
Jack Dryden but we are not talking about the play, we are talking about the movie, where Rosario Dawson's gets her drug out of her bra, waves it at him and then gives him a kiss. It is 100% clear about her untentions. It never was (in the movie) about him, it was always about her wanting drugs and sex.
To be fair, "No day but today" is in the scene where Roger and Mimi first meet and at the end where they finally get together. In the play, the phrase has a different meaning in each scene. Initially it means "Let's live for today, have sex, and do drugs" and at the end it means "Lets cherish each day we have together". What the significance is in the movie, I cannot really figure out, since your right the scene seems to imply that doing drugs is the right thing. Maybe the director was trying to imply that Roger needs to open up and everything will work out... magically curing Mimi of her addiction... because fuck it everyone just broke into song for no reason. Edit: Addiction not addition
When I first saw this back in uni my roommate and I actually had a small fight about this scene, with me on Roger's side and her on Mimi's. I was baffled at how she could think the former addict trying to stay clean was in the wrong, but seeing the scene broken down like this it actually kind of makes sense that she'd be "tricked" into sympathizing with Mimi.
Literally the first clip you show of Mark saying: "From now on, I shoot from my own script" brought back the RENT rage I buried so long ago. There are countless problems with this movie, and the fact that you spent 9 minutes on just one scene kinda magnifies this.Another problem I noticed in terms of it being a failure of visual story telling is near the end where Roger leaves the city and Mark is depressed by his job. This is meant to be a big pivotal moment, as it has both characters in drastically different places [both figuratively and literally] than at the beginning. Their emotional touchstones that the audience needs to feel.What do they do? Sing a song and 2 minutes later go back to where they started from. This is WAY too fast. Sure, it's based on the musical, but they could have tweaked it by inserting some more scenes to give a sense of a passage of time and save the end of the song for a reprise later in the movie.Or hell, the damn editing in the montage could have been tweaked to give this sense of passage. In Roger's edits, he drives into Santa Fe, sells his car, buys a guitar, busks a bit, walks on a beach, then boards a bus home. Mark meanwhile rides his bike to work, boards a news van then edits together his crappy home movie. These are such mundane events that there's nothing to suggest this didn't all happen in just one day except the fact that they're physically hundreds of miles away from each other. Even if they wanted to keep it as one continuous musical number, it would still have been possible. Show the frustration Mark's job gave him by quickly editing together similar sequences of him going through the same old grind. Show Roger trying and failing at music by busking at multiple locations and not making any money. Or maybe just have them change their goddamn clothes once in a while to give a sense that they're living an actual life. It's not like you have to worry about getting back on stage in time for costume changes.Or even just use a dissolve effect, I don't know, ANYTHING! God RENT sucks. God speed on Lindsay's review. One scene breakdown will not satiate my thirst for bohemian blood.
I maintain that this is a bad montage in the film that could have been salvaged, but yeah, having this story beat exist in the first place is a problem from source material [i.e. the stage play]. Maybe it's because I've immersed myself more with film analysis than theater, but I can't imagine how they could have made this work on the stage.
The stage play didn't have a montage. What You Own is a soliloquy. It's not supposed to portray months of passing time. They sing about the issues that have plagued them the whole show and have a moment of revelation, so Mark calls to quit his job to work on his film and Roger decides to buckle down and write his song. It functions as a traditional 11 o'clock number, in terms of theatre analysis.
you mean Mark "Quit a job that was selling out his dreams to work on the one documentary he's always wanted to make in tribute to Angel, the friend who changed all their outlooks on life" Cohen? ya, that one.
I love Rent. The stage version. Rent, at its heart, is a coming-of-age story. The characters are selfish, whiny, pretentious, and preachy, but they're supposed to be. If the characters in Rent were wise and well-adjusted, it would lose the heart of the story. These characters need to learn to see beyond their own selves, their own lives, their own immediate wants; to learn that we are a community, we are responsible for each other. But on the other hand, several of the characters are dealing with much bigger issues than average young adults should face: AIDS, death, suicide, drug addiction, unsafe streets, dubious offers from TV executives. How many college-age kids grapple with anything like that? To call the characters "whiny" misses the entire point of the story. This is exactly why the film version of Rent is awful. Because the directing, acting, and filmmaking choices are so unfocused and unnatural, it does not properly communicate the message of the story and the conflicts that the characters are going through. Chris Columbus muddled it, made it confusing -- so confusing that the people who don't know the artistry and complexity of this wonderful piece of musical theatre will dismiss it as an overrated schlock-fest. That is why I hate Rent. The film version.
I wouldn't say that I disagree, but I am of a different opinion. First of all, I think you hit on a key issue - the characters in the play are naive and so very earnest and sure of themselves as only teenagers / early 20 somethings can be. They don't realize yet how much they don't know. So, we cut them some slack. "Everybody has to go through stages like that", as the Sondheim lyric from "Follies" goes. The first problem the film hits is the same one that plagued "The Wiz" with Diana Ross. It's one thing to see a whiny selfish teenager. It's totally another to see someone in their mid-thirties act the same way. Yeah, it's cool to see the original cast and we know their connection to Jonathon and the material, BUT they are way too old to make this story play the way it's supposed to. I think that's a reason why some in the audience are put off, rather than drawn toward these characters. The next major problem is that Jonathon Larson died before the show was finished. He had never shown it to an audience and received that vital feedback so he could go back and find the weak links in the story and fix them. That task, as well as adapting it for the screen, fell to his estate. That is a tough road, even for estates like the Gershwins and Rodgers & Hammerstein that only have to look after works that were completed by their creators. The Larson family has had to step up to finish the musical and supervise the movie script, but of course they lack the talent and training Jonathon would have brought. So, the script is flawed. No argument there. Lots of people here have pointed out things that should have been altered. But at this point, Rent is what it is: a fly stuck in amber. As far as Chris Columbus is concerned, I like the look, the sound, and the choices he makes in shooting the story. I can't think how a different director could have done it better or overcome the limitations inherent in casting those thirtysomething actors.
Completely agreed. People do fucked up things in fucked up situations. Maybe they didn't establish the situation very well (others reactions to LGBT issues, POC disparities, etc.) but I always found it pretty self-evident based on the cast and setting. Maybe that's been lost a bit with time as multiracial multisexuality casts have become more common. They're not doing great socially or financially. It would be a larger disconnect for me if they had the same background or behavior as Sally from suburbia. Rent was also the first of its kind in so many ways, of course it's going to make some mistakes. It's akin to Hair for me: social ambition, occasional clumsiness, simple catchy musical style of the day, not some golden era, its impact on musical theatre and creative minority communities in general. I've listened to the music too many times to count, still see the show when I can. I saw the movie twice. First in theaters, second time at home to make sure I wasn't mistaken. For the sake of sparing everyone the paragraphs, it loses all grit in translation. Adventures in Babysitting and Home Alone probably should have been red flags that Columbus was not prepared to deal with East Village bohemia. Or anyone poor, really. Though it was sung well, in addition to the original cast probably being too old to sell it, film and theatre are very different mediums for performers and I don't think most of the stage actors were prepared to carry an ensemble film like this.
There's an alternative though a way better way more interesting alternative, this tiny little film called Trainspotting hits all the same themes but I'd say better.
I just wanna say that the stage version (idk if you've seen it) IS SO MUCH DIFFERENT AND SO MUCH BETTER. Just in this scene itself, on the stage version the other friends are in the Life Support meeting and no where near Mimi and Roger.
Yeah, I was on heroin for a few years. Meaning a few years more than I'd ever like to remember. Yeah, let's call it a clean decade. I got very, very, very, STUPIDLY lucky. All my "Friends" from those days are . . . well, they're all gone now. I think there are maybe two still kicking around . . . I don't know. I haven't seen any of them for years. This shit is so offensive to me, man. I've been homeless, I've been addicted, I've been ALL that . . . and frankly? _I'm EMBARRASSINGLY spoiled._ INSANELY spoiled. My parents are the only reason I'm alive at all. And still-those fucking nights on the streets, man . . . sweating blood from your eyes while waiting for some salvation to come and pay for your next point? They were horrible. I'm an over-emotional cat, so I go all flowery and wordy with my description of misery . . . but let's put it this way: MISERY is nothing to DESPAIR. To _despair_ is to lose hope entirely; my rather vicious case of clinical Depression / Anxiety (which is such a common case with drug addicts it was BEYOND cliche with us) made those nights just nightmarish in how LOW they'd go. I remember pacing the streets - all night - _looking for money on the ground._ THAT was my strategy! To go search for bills on the ground so I could buy a bottle of RUBBING ALCOHOL and try to drink that shit to forget the fact I was on the streets and withdrawing from Heroin! And I found a five dollar bill. On the ground. Finally. And I got that bottle. And _man_ . . . I was SO HAPPY. I was saved. THAT was a WIN! Rubbing Alcohol! So being homeless and on "Smack" isn't some bohemian vacation. It's a cruel, endless nightmare that's actually THOROUGHLY wiping out an entire generation of kids, seeing as how Fentanyl™ has become absolutely unavoidable with "heroin" and other opiates. AND I'M THE LUCKY ONE. I'M THE SPOILED ONE. I SHOULDN'T BE ALIVE. So you know what? Fuck you, _Rent._ I'm deeply offended by that shit, man. Why would anybody choose to highlight a story where a _grieving recovering addict_ is the BAD guy??? I'm sober because I found an antidepressant that WORKS. I literally stumbled upon a cure for my depression (and hence my addictions, which were only a byproduct of the Depression in the FIRST PLACE). So, AGAIN . . . I'm *stupidly, foolishly lucky.* For most cats out there, man . . . white-knuckling sobriety one day at a time . . . ? It's almost unthinkably hard. It really is. I have nothing but the most SEVERE respect for people in recovery. I'm the only one I've ever heard of who was literally given a _Get Out of Jail Free_ card in some heretofore unknown antidepressant. Most people getting off that shit crave it almost constantly. Fuck you, _Rent._ Seriously. How dare you. Those people BLEED EVERY DAY. I used to know so many. They're almost all dead now. Like I said . . . Fentanyl's doing an incredible job, wiping all us junkies off the face of this planet. It's so sad. It's so, so sad. And so "entertainment" like this is just a burning pie in the face to all those brave, determined ADDICTS I used to know, who struggled every day to stay clean . . . then inevitably cracked, got stoned one more time . . . but for the _last time._ Because Fentanyl. Like I said. It just takes one O.D., man. Most of then died alone. I'M THE LUCKY ONE. I'M STUPIDLY LUCKY. AND IT WAS STILL HARD. For my old brothers and sisters from back in the day . . . well, they just didn't have enough time. THEY are heroes to me. They tried as hard as they could to hold out. And . . . well, there just wasn't enough time. That's all. Fuck you, _Rent._ Go fuck yourself. •b in 18.
As someone that did see the show live on Broadway, I can tell you that this was in fact a direct carryover from the source material. Seriously, it was impossible to tell what anyone is singing about or doing or wanting or anything. Now that I think about it, as bad as the movie version was, it still had better sound mixing than the live version.
I've never seen Rent: none of the productions of it. But every time I see a UA-cam analysis of it in my Recommended list, I click through. It's just fascinating to me. Thank you for doing this!
Mimi represents the entitled "make me happy even if its costs you" mentality of a lot of people. I mean seriously.. knows she is HIV positive, gets mad when her victim turns her down for a quicky. And the drug pushing, wow. I guess RENT for for a special kind of fan-base...
HaveMindWillWander and the fucked up part is that it's implied that Mimi doesn't know that Roger is HIV+ she was literally going to infect but she doesn't give a fuck because she lives for the moment
This is such an interesting critique ESPECIALLY because the stage play does the opposite. The Life Support group is on a platform and MiMi and Roger are stage level. The group and the couple are not in the same location. At the end of the song MiMi leaves and the story follows Rogers story with "Will I?" Where he does a duet with another man in the life support group. During Another Day the support group is the choir in the dark and while they sing back up to MiMi Roger stays in the spot light in the middle for most of the song. Then he does a solo refrain of "Glory" before "Will I" During Will I all of the cast circles him singing in round while he sits in the spotlight center stage. Jonathan Larson very clearly loved all of these characters but when you understand who the writer was and what he was going through at the time you know that Roger and Mark were sort of autobiographical characters for him. All of your other critiques of the film at the start of the video are legit but they are all also addresses in the stage play which I suggest you watch asap. It is free on UA-cam.
I’m struck by how incredibly different the film is from most normal stagings of the stage musical, and truthfully, I think this crystallizes a lot of why I’ve always felt that the movie just felt… flat, compared to the show. Part of that is differences in the actual script (eg. Mimi’s secret heroine use; the vastly circumstances leading up to “Take Me or Leave Me”; etc.), and part of it is the fact that stage plays can simply get away with much weirder more metaphorical stagings while still being relatively “normal” (I went into the film most eager to see what on earth they could possibly do with the song “Contact” that wouldn’t be either bizarrely artsy compared to the rest of the show, or bump the rating… and surprise, the answer was they, like me, had no idea how to do that song in a film, so they cut it). But the visual choices you highlight here are absolutely another big piece of the puzzle. The original song in the stage play juxtaposes Mimi’s self-destructive “live in the present” mentality with the AIDS support group’s “live in the present” mentality, and sets up Mark’s cowardly refusal to connect with others in contrast to Roger’s trauma-induced refusal to do so. The point of the song is that neither philosophy is really complete absent context - saying “no day but today” in a support group full of friends is different from saying it as an excuse for meaningless sex and drug use; pushing human contact away in the depths of your own depression and trauma is different from doing so in order to keep the pain of the people you use for your art at arms length. The stage play “Rent” isn’t really about AIDS - it’s a remake of and commentary on La Boheme, which ends by quite explicitly saying that, unlike in the original (where Mimi dies as soon as she reconciles with Rodolfo in a very “death = art” sort of a way), the most revolutionary thing that Mimi can do upon reconciling with Roger - and by extension, the most anyone who is dying can do - is to *live*, emotionally connected to other people. It’s not all that deep, and there are absolutely problems with it, but I’m amazed by just how completely and at every turn the movie missed the point. The movie version of Rent strips out everything the show had to say about La Boheme in order to basically just remake La Boheme in the modern day, but worse.
Hmm. Not sure if that makes the scene a failure of visual storytelling so much as a success in visual storytelling towards a morally repugnant end. There's a big difference, in my opinion, between a film that has a positive message and supports it poorly visually and evidentially, and a film that has a terrible message but supports it consistently within the context of the story. I haven't seen RENT in its entirety, but here this scene seems to be the latter. The visual language works in communicating its meaning (too bluntly, as you say, but it does), combines its symbols, and makes clear which character the film supports; it's just that said character is asking for something selfish, which is a writing matter, not visual. I recall Roger Ebert talking about that a few times when discussing the difference between "one star" and "zero star" films, that he judged differently between a poorly made film like Transformers II and an evil one like I Spit On Your Grave and its remake.
It's the difference between Michael Bay and Triumph of the Will. Or the Star Wars prequels and Birth of a Nation. It's storytelling "gone horribly right".
The thing is, in this case it's a situation where the visual aspects of the film actually upend the original intent of the material. For example, Roger's friends joining Mimi in an angelic spotlight singing "No day but today," vs. the juxtaposition of Mimi singing it while sitting on Roger's desk, obviously high, with a bunch of supporting cast scattered around stage singing it to themselves. Another example is Out Tonight right before that scene. In the movie, Mimi is totally living her best life, with a ton of colorful lighting and a shot of her dancing down the street, while in the stage version, she's alone in her apartment and dancing manically (on drugs) before she barges into Roger's apartment and knocks all his shit off the table. It's the little details that the movie added or changed that make a big difference. One reason that Mimi is nineteen is because she's not supposed to be seen as this role model, but as a naive teen who is destructive to herself and to other people, but the cinematography of the movie changes a whole lot about that perception.
Pugachanlover Dude you need to chill, this guy is talking about RENT the movie, not the musical. If the producers wanted to convey the same message as the musical they very well should have done that for the movie in the first place.
you do realize that the movie is the musical, right? when im referring to the musical i dont just mean the broadway performance im referring to the show as a whole
Pugachanlover Yes. I know RENT is a musical. I don't live under a rock. I was merely saying that the person in the video is talking about the movie, not the musical. If the producers wanted to convey the same message as in the musical, they should have done so with multiple film devices. But their failure to do so resulted in many people not even knowing that the heroin/AIDS thing was a part of the plot, as you can see from the parent comment above. Please try to understand what's going on before you yap about what only you want to say and hear.
I don't think that fans of "Rent" do much examining of said musical. It's mainly about the music. Same thing with "Phantom", which is pretty problematic.
Someone on twitter recently said that RENT is one of those shows that's really really fun to perform (because of the music), even if it isn't that fun to watch (because of the characters), and I can see it.
+thevampirefrog06 I think I understand why a performer would enjoy being in the cast but not necessarily like watching Rent. I just listen to cast recordings. The music speaks for itself. The show... Well...
I love the musical, but it's great because stage musicals don't usually focus on story but rather the music. The movie version should've probably focused more on story
Did Mimi really want to shoot up with him? I thought she was just in there to bone and accidentally dropped her stash. She keeps on trying to get it back, and didn't exactly make it look like she wanted to share. It was more that he was lecturing her to stop using drugs, not that he was refusing her implicit offer to do drugs with him.
yeah, it was pretty obviously her wanting to do drugs. I've had people IRL who have had to move out of town to keep clean exactly because of people like Mimi. it's a horrible message to present, especially with a guy who's lost everything for drugs.
I don't know how I missed it but I never realized Mimi brought out the stash in that scene. When I was in a community theatre production of this show, Mimi kissed Roger at the end of "Out Tonight" and then he snapped at her with this song. Her addiction was an issue, but the motivation of "Another Day" was rooted more in his anger and grief keeping him from moving on than in an attempt to stay off drugs.
the low angle literally frames him as "the man" the scolding, grumping authority looking down upon her with judgement and disgust from his high tower for you know, not wanting to relapse on heroin and possibly infect someone with HIV
hold, Mimi knew she was HIV positive, didn't know roger was, and still wanted to bone/do heroine with him? wtf EDIT: we're supposed to take the side of the girl pushing heroin on a recovering addict? excuse me what?
I always thought it was really fucked up that Mimi kept shoving heroin in Roger’s face despite the fact he made it clear he was clean. Especially knowing his much higher risk of ODing and dying
I actually LOVE the stage version. I know it's problematic, but something about it is just really nostalgic for me. And yeah... the creator, Johnathon Larson, died (I think?) before it's off-broadway run, so I think there was a lot more he could've developed but we never got to see it. Kinda sad, but then again I don't think RENT would be nearly the hit it is without him dying.
My favorite part of the movie and stage version is when Mark, comes across a old black homeless woman who is being harassed my the police. He gets down on his knees with his handheld camera and tells them to continue when they look at him inquisitively. Lady pushes the camera and says “fuck you”, walking away. Just about all of these kids are trust fund kids cosplaying poverty. They refuse to “sell out”, call back the parents that love them and send money, and are full-time artist without a real, paying job, IN NYC!! Bohemia was better and Mimi in the opera is much more sympathetic
Yeah, this is a pretty awful movie adaptation. Is it such a sin that I still like the musical, though? The Live on Broadway DVD completely shits on this film.
Thom Avella absolutely right. The movie captures none of the fun, the complexity of the characters, the grittiness and danger of the neighborhood the characters live in, and it was SUCH a terrible choice having them speak lyrics of some of the songs as dialogue. It's remarkably awkward and literally removes the rhythm and timing and character of all the lines. Should have been sung-through like the show and directed by someone who understands that it takes a lot more than graffiti on the walls in the background to portray poverty. If you're going to watch Rent, watch a professional live production or the excellent Filmed Live on Broadway version from '08
no, it's not at all a sin to like the musical. why would it be? this is definitely one of my favorite musicals, although it almost seems wrong to call it a "musical" since it's so unlike most others. I really put it more in the category of Gilbert and Sullivan's satirical operettas: and it's worth pointing out that these also share in the sin of commercializing an unprivileged group of people even in the service of satire.
Yea the film adaptation feels very... neutered. All of the dark comedy was left on the cutting room floor in favor of brooding melodrama. Also, ironically enough, the two non-original cast members breathed the most life into the film, which never lit up until “Out Tonight.”
Not only is Roger not wanting to shoot up with her but is also trying to save her from having sex because he has AIDS. She also has AIDS and doesn't care about giving someone else the disease, as long as she gets hers.
I don't see a failure. I see a success on getting the message across. Doing drugs is good, and trying to get sober will only get you isolated, sad and alone. A message I 100% am against, of course, no media form should encourage people to do drugs and it is terrible that movies antagonize the effords of getting sober. Everyone should be encouraged to get sober, not the other way around.
If they had the awful message "drugs r' good, you should do drugs, mkay?" it would at least be somewhat interesting. However, didn't drug addiction had a horrible consequences for that character? So it's just weird and incosistent.
Okay, like, just to throw a little “I am an actual former heroin addict” perspective here, but like h o l y s h i t badgering someone in recovery to use with you just so that you can have more fun or get some money or feel less shitty about it is like arguably THE worst thing that addicts do to each other. Like, we do do it, yes. It happens a lot, actually! But it’s pretty universally understood to be a massive dick move *even by the people who do it*. It’s like drunk driving… you don’t wake up like “boy do I feel good about my decision to drive last night!”, you know? Gonna go out on a limb and assume Columbus is cis and seronegative and has never touched a syringe in his life.
In that first scene, I feel like what's off is the perspective. That could have easily been a metaphor for how Roger sees her life, the temptation the call of it to try and bring him back. As you said, he has the higher perspective, and I think it would have been an interesting play to mix that up and show that he's a little blinded by the lure that kind of life and that kind of choice has on him, even now. Instead they framed it from her perspective, made it more of a literal call to him and critique of his behavior, framing him like some kind of despotic villain for his choice.
Rent has always been one of my favorite musicals of all time, so I've always blindly left the movie adaptation unquestioned. This scene was weird, but I didn't really see why... now I totally get it. I'm glad I watched this.
As a recovering addict, I think that scene with Mimi is pretty good. getting sober is realllllly hard. and addicts love to bring their friends DOWN with them. The symbolism is pretty on point compared to how I felt when I got sober and I had triggers and temptations. It never felt like I had the moral high ground when I was newly clean, it felt horribly lonely and impossible. You're no longer numb to all of the horrible things you've done and those feelings and emotions come flooding back. It's horribly complex and intense at the beginning. For a newly sober person facing temptation, that looked pretty good to me. I think you know a lot more about movies than I do, but I disagree.
I remember you! The talking robot on Channel Awesome, I'm glad that gimmick was dropped, your own presence gives more gravitas to the discussion than told via puppetry.
The movie has always confused me from the point: where Mimi is on the street after their argument-song and I remember her friends coddling her. And acting like she's the victim and he's the oppressive asshole. She basically raped the guy, tried to force drugs on him, and basically tried to manipulate him. I was sitting there with my girlfriend and all her friends. While my goal was to be nice, because I don't like musicals in the first place, I had to say something at that point. "What the fuck? She's the asshole!?" Where-in, I got attacked and got no lovin' that night. I am glad another person is like "Yeah, this is weird - she's the asshole."
Yeah, I used to love Rent when I was a sophomore in high school and didn't read much into the actual text of the movie. Once came back to it a few years later with a critical eye and paid even a little attention to the lyrics, I sort of hated myself for missing it before.
I watched RENT for the first time in a long while with my friend recently, and we were both yelling at the screen over this scene. Thanks for elucidating why :)
I loved this video! I really enjoyed you dissecting this scene. Since I love this musical so much I don't think I really ever looked at it critically. I agree with everyone else you should do the whole movie!
+Jessie Yeah, I feel like the only problem with this video is that it's too short and I feel it would have been interesting too see him tackle the issues that he mentioned at 0:45-1:41 more at length, since he has a way of talking about frequently discussed issues in a really interesting way. Other than that, I liked this episode.
As bad as this is, the stage musical did it worse. The first time you hear the "no day but today" motif is in Roger's addiction support group, where the idea was there might not be a tomorrow to start treating yourself better and getting on the road to recovery. But then, when Mimi starts singing it from the perspective of hedonism, the support group fills in the Greek chorus singing it with her.
No, Jonathan did it right. Chris did not. In the stage version, Mimi is high on the rooftop singing of her desire to go out and have a good time before her life ends. She climbs down the fire escape and barges into Roger’s apartment and starts making out with him. Roger is upset by this cuz he’s still a good deal depressed over April and cuz he doesn’t know that Mimi has AIDS too, so he’s afraid of giving it to her. Mimi NEVER offered him heroin and just wants to go “out tonight.” Also, the chorus of "No Day But Today" that joins Mimi is clearly NOT actually there with her. Their at the support group singing the mantra. It's meant to be a clue that Mimi is HIV positive. The life support people don’t even know who Roger is or what he is dealing with, so why in the world would they randomly burst into his apartment and tell him that he needs to live everyday like it’s his last and that he should stop sulking?
I don't think the movie's great, but I LOVE the original musical (so just know I might be a bit biased). I personally don't think that Mimi was telling Roger to do drugs with her in this scene. I always interpreted her taking out the heroin as a sign that she has an addiction and can't be separated from it rather than as an offer for Roger to have some. The entire beginning of the film shows Roger as being isolated and not open to interacting with the outside world, and I think that in order to further that point to show his transformation throughout the movie, having the audience sympathize with Mimi made sense. What she's asking of him isn't necessarily right, but one of the show's major themes is "No day but today" and this song just further solidifies that point.
+gdf40 That is true. Now that I think about it, I should have wrote "Mark sounds like one of those people" instead of "You made Mark sound like one of those people". It was a small mistake.
Yup. He's an openly pretentious and close minded little shit. He basically treats them differently because they don't fit into his idea of the "community" he's in. I love the scene before "Santa Fe", when one of the homeless people from before catches him filming and just _roasts the shit out of him_.
"I don't need no goddamn help from some bleeding heart cameraman - my life's not for you to make a name for yourself off" spells it out pretty clearly.
Thank you for making this! I watched this movie tons of times and NEVER CONSIDERED that Mimi, in addition to trying to get Roger to loosen up, is also TOTALLY PRO HEROIN HERE! I really appreciate your insight and definitions for the curious layman like me.
I have to admit that the UA-cam algorithm picked this video and I had literally no intention of reliving, of all dismal points in my life, "RENT". I can now say that, after almost clicking past this video three times, that I'm glad I watched it as I not only agree with its content, it gives a great nutshell example of what bothered me about the film in general. Thank you for creating the film class I didn't want to take.
Thank you for this video. Rent as a whole, has always given me some fits, but I love schmaltz if it's sung, so I enjoyed the movie to a certain extent. But between this video and Lindsay Ellis's breakdown of Rent, I'm really seeing the problems. If you haven't watched it, it's forty minutes easy and well-worth it.
Seeing just this scene it appears to me like something interesting could have been developed around it though. It's a moment of great temptation, where doing the right thing may feel awfully lonely and depressing. So with the right framing by the rest of the movie, this exact presentation could have worked out great.
Another thing that bothered me was when the characters were giving Angel's Eulogy. Mimi says that Halloween was her favorite holiday, and Maureen talks about here wearing an old table cloth one day and then next year they'd be selling them at the gap. Only, Mimi and Maureen have only known Angel for 10 months and a week, so Mimi never celebrated Halloween with Angel and Maureen's story is a complete fabrication (Which wouldn't be at all out of character for her)
BraninT Mimi and Angel are actually friends well before the roommates meet Angel. It's part of the character bios, but I can't recall if the film squeezes that detail in.
BraninT Mimi and Angel are actually friends well before the roommates meet Angel. It's part of the character bios, but I can't recall if the film squeezes that detail in.
From what I remember from the actual show, the chorus of "No Day But Today" comes from the support group? Because from what I remember "Out Tonight" happens like right after "Life Support"? (I haven't watched rent life on Broadway In awhile but still). This is some of the weird things with the movie does that I'll never get.
I think you all need to calm down about Angel killing a fucking dog. I'd take it seriously if it was mentioned more than twice and had an actual scene, but neither in the play or the musical did this happen. As someone who likes to write, I can guarantee that Larson probably wrote about Evita dying so it could be mentioned in La Vie Boheme, and as a way to not bring in another character to play Benny's wife. When he did write about the dog dying, he probably thought it'd be funny if he made Angel kill the dog as a way to make money. if you hadn't noticed, in the song where angel is introduced, he doesn't use morbid or macabre words and details to explain how he killed the dog, he made it very vague so it could be comical. You're all activity as if Angel brutally murdered the dog, stuck it's head on a stick and fried up it's body and ate it. It was a fucking joke, all of you are being so extra to try and shit on the play.
It IS mentioned more than twice. "I think it's only fair to tell you, you just paid for the funeral of the person who killed your dog." "I know… I always hated that dog." Charming people.
I mean...it's a dark joke essentially. no one is saying what angel did is "good." a lot of the stuff in this musical isn't "good." addiction, cheating, promiscuity, theft etc. these aren't moral characters to adore and laud. but the movie adaptation doesn't really do the story much. it does much better as a stage production.
For me I found out my brother Jose had hiv a little before 2005, he passed in 2016 of aids …for me as silly as it was, the film was one of the first to really tackle aids and addiction together that I had ever seen, seeing Mimi try to live in the moment helped me cope amidst her faults and logic holes , considering my brothers response to his diagnosis was to shut down in depression like roger did…I see the flaws in the film but it helped me understand some the things they deal with….but dealing with someone dying of this disease in real life like how angel died is brutal ….the movie has some therapeutic healing aspects to the story and music….I guess my point is a in depth analysis is understandable on a technical level but with such a real gritty subject matter, that at its core drives the narrative and the music I never could look at the film as harshly but I understand your points.
I love Rent, but this entire show is literally the opera La Boheme reimagined and set in alphabet city at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Even the character names are stolen.directly from the opera and the play makes fun of this fact at multiple times through lines and through the song La Vie Boheme. Watch the opera and the play makes sense.
I mean, thats the point. La boheme was jonathan larsons favourite opera and he wanted to remake it set in his world of bohemian new york. Thats the entire concept of rent.
I am weirdly delighted to watch you tear into Rent. I never got to see it on stage (not counting the VHS rip that popped up on UA-cam, or the final Broadway cast, which I hated), and I love the film so much that I'm blind to its flaws. So it's interesting to hear a more objective take on it, even as I don't agree with all of it.
Love the rant, I saw the film ten years ago and remember thinking "What the fuck? Why are they all taking her side?" Can you imagine a film where a woman was shamed for turning down sex? Not to mention giving heroin to a heroin addict.
Of course the guy who directed the RENT movie is named Chris Columbus. Becuase if hisory has taught us well, anybody named Chris Columbus being in charge of anything ends well.
Out of curiosity, do you think that the movie's visual storytelling causes it's interpretation to differ from the interpretation the play would have? Basically, do you think that the play, which (probably) presented this scene from an inherently removed perspective, would still put the audience on Mimi's side? Also, if you kept the entire scene the same (with the camera angles as they are), but at the end you simply cut to Roger going back inside, would the scene's interpretation be different?
I enjoyed watching this develop from frustrated tweets, to long conversations to eventually a video. Just wish it was a little longer. There's a lot from the twitter conversations I would have liked to see expounded on in video form.
something little but super important (especially for the first bit where you bring up story problems), rent is a pretty straight adaptation (scene for scene in some instances, eg. the candle scene, the burning manuscripts for warmth, seeing Mimi bathed in moonlight) of the 1894 opera la boheme, swapping Paris for NY, tuberculosis for aids, and updating it. In addition to going a long way to explain the points you brought up in the beginning, it may explain some of the cinematography? Still not the best movie adaptation. Either way, check out la boheme, it gives an interesting perspective.
Maybe someone's addressed this, as this video is now almost 4 years old, but in the stage version, I read her having the bag as showing him she hadn't used it and is no longer planning to. The first time she came looking for a light. Now she wants to out with Roger instead. It's not after work, and she's not looking for sex, at least not right away - she wants to go "Out Tonight," and she ends up getting Roger to leave the house after months. Later on she says she's giving up her vices and going back to school. Of course she doesn't stick to that, and it almost kills her. The show does not endorse heroin use. So I think Dan's got it wrong in that regard, though if the movie makes things seem different, that does show a failure of visual storytelling. That's just one of the many ways the movie version screws things up. Another is setting it in 1989, when the stage version did not name a specific year.
I'm a big fan of musicals, even in movie format. I had a big collection of them, but RENT was the ONLY one I ever got rid off. I hated it from first view, as much as I loved the live musical. Mostly I hated the songs they changed to spoken language, and that they cut the Christmas song, which I think is central.
I'm sooooo with you on this. I have always absolutely hated that all of his friends are on Mimi's side after she brought heroin to a recovering junkie. Was never a fan of their love story after that point, and was pretty pissed at his friends.
after seeing the stage version earlier today its so much better with telling the story than the movie. i only watch the movie when i dont have anything else to watch because so much was cut and added that made it harder to understand.
I get what you're saying as far as the editing communicating a very black and white perspective, but a main theme of the musical is the highlighting of many grey areas in life. Roger is wise to refuse the heroin, but shuts the others and refuses to make meaningful connections or address emotional baggage as a form of self defense. Even though Mimi is a heroin user, later addict, she is more in tune with her emotions and can connect with others which helps her have a more positive outlook. They all have their baggage. They all have their good points. They all have their bad.
One thing I will say is that the actors in the movie make the bad movie better by being great at what they do. They're like great salespeople working with a shitty product, you just feel bad for them.
I'm a fan of RENT but I absolutely agree with your critical perspective about the movie. Someday I'll write my own version of RENT. Thank you for making this video.
Yeah, I first watched Rent (the movie) in my thirties, and was baffled until near the end at the moral perspective of the story. When the movie got to La Vie Boheme, I finally understood the moral underpinning of every prior scene, even if I didn’t agree with it. The movie’s assumptions about its audience made it difficult to get that far.
"It's over Mimi, I have the high ground!"
DON'T UNDERESTIMATE MY POWER.
"From my point of view, NOT doing heroin is evil!"
He said, after removing her arms and legs with a lightsaber...I would watch that movie.
This whole thread is golden.
YOU UNDERESTIMATE MY HEROIN
I can't think of anything more unintentionally hilarious than a scene where 4 people sing in harmony to their terminally ill and formerly drug addicted friend about he should get off his high horse and do some heroin.
"He's just a poor boy! // Just do some Her-o-in!"
Get off your high horse and get on regular Horse! 💉
Actually I can...this comment is unintentionally hilarious because while you think you did something...you sound completely ignorant.
@@reganfisher8180 Damn, you really destroyed him there. Keep up the good work, calling random UA-cam commenters stupid. We need more people in this world like you.
@@punic4045 Thanks for the vote of confidence... But you are equally as ignorant, so I'm not sure it'll take me too far. 🤷🏻♂️
Wow, I actually hadn't thought of the fact that Mimi was totally going to share needles and bone a dude...and she's HIV positive and didn't know he was HIV positive. Wooooow.
ikr
Yeah, that whole scene is disgusting, and shows just how awful Mimi actually is. Though, you wouldn't know that, considering how she's portrayed
I've notice that movies and TV shows usually show a strong bias towards very attractive people. Hot men and women can get away with an awful lot of bad behavior and still be thought of as good people.
From all the times that I watched this, I never got the impression from the lyrics or acting that she actually wanted HIM to do heroin. She just wanted to bone, and then heroin is there because it shows that she's all edgy and it's a reason for conflict. But I could be wrong.
I couldn't get a very good look, but it seemed like she was carrying enough for two. And even if she wasn't, she knew that she was HIV-positive, and didn't know that he was, so wanting him to have sex with her is the same as wanting to roll the dice on him potentially getting infected.
Can we just talk about the fact that Roger's friends sing with and hug Mimi in opposition to Roger despite the fact that, if memory serves, NONE OF THEM HAVE MET HER BEFORE???
Actually Mimi and Angel know each other. All the relationships in this musical are a bit complicated. But they know each other from what I remember from the stage play.
+Mackie Jackson Huh. I have no memory of this. I know Mark doesn't meet Mimi until the Beginning To Snow song the next morning in the stage show. How does he even know what they're singing about?!
+Innuendo Studios From my own memory the relationships were described in a playbill or pamphlet Mimi and Angel def knew one another. And this song was also sang in the AIDS support group, only it wasn't about heroin obviously. So, while I doubt they knew this part was about drugs and boning, him, Angel, and Collins were prolly still on about not letting the illness run your life and make you shut everyone out. The message and scene is muddled to be sure and like he said, the scene totally forgets that Mimi is trying to get Roger to do drugs again, but I think that's how he knew.
I think they're kinda passively aware of each other, like Mark knows Mimi as "the girl downstairs", but, yeah, it's still deffos weird that they all just gang up on Roger, who they've known for years.
At the time, the context kind of made it make sense: They can tell Roger's turning her down and are empathizing with that because they all know exactly how poorly he would've reacted to any sort of flirting.
But out of that framing, "you tried to score with my roommate/friend and he was a jerk" is a ridiculous reason to hug someone, especially in NYC.
Now I really want a video where you and Lindsay take the entirety of RENT apart for like 40 minutes.
I don't think Dan would be able to go talking about Rent for 40 minutes without rupturing an aneurysm, going catatonic or something.
That's why it's a cooperative effort! Lindsay doesn't get blackout drunk, Dan doesn't pop a vessel in his forehead!
Lindsay's working on a RENT review much like her Phantom one.
I think Rantasmo should be included since there's a lot to dig into with the portrayal of the LGBT characters in RENT and that's kind of his wheelhouse.
+
In retrospect, one of my favorite scenes in the musical is when the homeless woman calls Mark out on his bullshit.
-It's over, Mimi! I have the high ground!
-You underestimate my heroin!
Don't try it.
well then you are lost Mimi!
1:05 I lost my shit after "quits _incredibly_ well-paying *part time* job" Do those things exist? Why would he do that?
Even as an artist, what the hell does he gain from quitting something that offers _a LOT for less effort_ than a FULL-TIME JOB? _Does he really need every single second of his life for a home movie?!_ What the fuck does selling out mean? Having money while also having _time_ to do something you want??!
it apparently means 'occasionally devoting time to doing things you don't like in order to fund your dreams'.
I don't know if it was a part time job. Roger confronts Mark about spending all of his time doing work "Mark has got his work, they say Mark lives for his work." Not only that but it's really inane stuff, tabloid news or something "Vampire Welfare Queens Who Are Compulsive Bowlers." Some famous UA-camrs have made public vlogs about why they quit Buzzfeed. I'd imagine it's similar to that. Not that it's necessarily the right choice when all your friends are literally dying and you can't pay rent or heat your home but there is an argument there.
The short answer is that the cost of living back then was much much lower. I lived in Boston on $27K a year, no roommates, did mostly what I wanted, and never really felt broke. The shorter answer is that Mark sucks. (The hot take from me is that if Jonathan Larson hadn't died before his show premiered, it would have been more critically examined and Larson maybe would have polished the script/story more. But the timing of his death gave a certain romantic glow around the writing and history of the show which it wouldn't have otherwise had, and that made RENT basically untouchable critically-speaking for a long time.)
I would describe the storytelling of RENT as being almost predatory--it capitalizes on subjects that are very personal and emotional for those that can relate to them, and through them pushes a view of morality that's really fucked. I got drawn into it too, for a long while. Doesn't hurt that some of the songs are pretty stellar. But in the end, no matter how good the song is, la vie boheme is ultimately a scene about a bunch of assholes making a scene in a restaurant as a petty form of revenge.
still enjoyable af
True. I love most songs but if I could change some things in this story I'll definitely do it.
@@HYPNOPOSSUM heroin is also fun af... Or so I'm led to believe
I've never seen Rent, and am not a film expert, but I can say that as someone who struggles with addiction and sobriety, the framing you describe of this scene is very much how struggling with your own sobriety can feel: you can feel very caged, unable to to participate in what you wrongly view as the happier and brighter side of life. At least Roger didn't shoot up there, good for him.
but the film doesnt empathize with him in this moment like it should, it empathizes with her, which is crazy given the context.
Anyone who feels caged in their sobriety is good, because that shit goes away with time, but when you're free, you're running amok on the streets, and that shit doesn't go away on its own... you think you're free but you're not. And it does take a while to truly learn to appreciate sobriety fully. And that's why people have to be ready to stop. But like, I wasn't ready to stop when I went through rehab. But what I learned allowed me to get my life under control. And then once I moved away from my abusive parents, I stopped all the way immediately. Weird how that works... anyways good luck brother
@jongibson4766 Random message from a stranger, but I hope you are in a good place.
It baffles me what they changed from Boheme without considering the ramifications. Mimi being selfish and damaged (changed) doesn't mesh well with her outlook being endorsed as unambiguously correct (unchanged). Schaunard/Angel murdering a client's pet and being chipper about it (unchanged) is completely at odds with being the too-good-for-this-sinful-Earth character (changed). Benoit/Benny knowing the core cast beyond being landlord-and-tenants (changed) makes their being so flippant about stiffing him (unchanged) bizarre and all the more callous. And having Musetta/Maureen stay with Alcindoro/Joanne (changed) just leaves Marcello/Mark with nothing to do.
All of it is not helped by Rent constantly screaming in your face that this is the best/only way to live.
Accurate, plus the plight of tuberculosis then vs AIDs now is not the same.
There was nothing they could do to deal with TB, and that was kinda the point. That they were doomed.
TB in an era before modern medicine is not the same as AIDS in the 80s. When there were treatments but our government considered your disease a just punishment for how you live your life and so kelt those drugs from reaching you.
@@Samantha_yyz There are many things one can blame on Reagan/Thatcher and their ilk, and they *did* contribute to the AIDS crisis. But they didn't do so by withholding treatment. We didn't know that there *was* a disease until 1982, didn't know what *caused* the disease until 1983, and a treatment was on the market (AZT) by 1987. It also received the fastest FDA approval in history at the time. The problem was that AZT wasn't a particularly effective treatment on it's own and the virus mutated over time, causing AZT to stop working for some people. We didn't really have effective treatment regimens until 1997 or so. Again, none of this absolves Reagan/Thatcher/other conservatives who very much preached (and made it unofficial government policy) that AIDS was a divine punishment for homosexuality and was the answer to their "gay problems." Those people were awful then, are awful now, and actively fought against common sense measures that would have prevented the spread of the virus and saved thousands, if not millions, of lives (ie needle exchanges / effective, *honest* , fact-based sex education). But they didn't do so by withholding extant, effective treatments.
What's interesting is I think this is perhaps the one problem that ONLY the movie has. In the play you are pretty much with Roger. The chorus of "No Day But Today" that joins Mimi is clearly NOT actually there with her (they're at the support group singing the mantra. It's meant to be a clue that Mimi is HIV positive that she parrots the life support theme). Most other criticism I've seen aimed at RENT is valid for both play and film.
Ah thank you so much for this! I used to LOOOOVE RENT back in the day, but it has not aged well with me at all. Almost all the characters are kind of shitty when stop and think about them. Even Angel, who's supposed to be the emotional center of the cast, MURDERS A FUCKING DOG, and has an upbeat hip hop song about it.
That song is so terrible, as an introduction of Angel it's so weird (I've never seen the stage version), I am so happy I'm not the only one bothered by that song!
Realizing rent is full of shit is a painful but necessary part of growing up.
Also the dog is identified as an Akita, but she talks about it as if it's some little Yappy poodle or something. Akitas are huge dogs half a step removed from wolves.
Its just a dog.
Seriously?
"Oh, poor Mimi, did mean old Roger not want to do heroine with you?"
"heroin"
My only critique is the absence of another dig at the director - because in all stage productions of RENT I've seen, Mimi doesn't bring her heroin with her. Roger decries her using in their first encounter, and she doesn't bring it with her to their second - she only asks him to take her out (sex implied, but not demanded; the sexual language of theater is different than in film). Therefore, the moral dilemma *does* fall with Roger, because he's refusing to spend any time with her at all, excusing it only because "the fire's out anyway", when he's actually just afraid to have any romantic interaction with someone he thinks isn't HIV positive. Mimi's friends, additionally, aren't in this conversation in the stage version (which has been pointed out in comments already), but instead are at an HIV+ support group, making the entire number about the choices one makes when living with HIV.
tl;dr - film bad, musical good, if not a little morally reprehensible. Angel *does* murder a dog off-stage.
fish -d In the recorded final Broadway performance and other bootleg Broadway recordings, she does pull out her stash and shakes it in his face at the end of “Out Tonight.” The film is actually far more subtle about it. I always thought this was some weird callback to her doing the same thing in “Light My Candle” but never thought that she was, in fact, encouraging him to shoot up with her (which she definitely is). To be fair to Mimi, Roger does take her stash and hide it from her in “Light My Candle,” so perhaps because of that she thinks he still wants to shoot up-not saying that she should encourage him given he says “I *used* to be a junkie.”
Anywho, as someone that appreciates characters that have complexities and nuances, it’s a shame that the musical doesn’t dive deeper into these complexities and instead paints most of these people that have really shitty skeletons in their closets as slightly troubled quirky types with hearts of pure gold. Which is what happens when what was presented as the final version of a musical was technically unfinished.
She takes it out at the end of out tonight
It’s subtle but she definitely has a bag of Heroin. I saw it on lottery in 1999-at the time, Mimi throws the prop bag into the audience....in the second row I caught the baggie off sand they used. Pretty cool :)
That's just outright false
correction from me 3 years later (this has 300 likes ??? what???) but: lol i was wrong abt this, lots of productions have mimi actively asking roger to shoot up. iirc the broadway 2008 revival doesn't, but i could also totally be wrong about that.
I always thought it was super weird how Roger's friends are encouraging a recovering heroin addict to hang out with a still using junkie with a serious drug habit.
I suppose since the movie forgot about the heroin, I also forgot about it when I first saw this. I assumed that it was more about getting Roger to leave the apartment, since it's implied he hasn't actually gone out since April died, and live what was left of his presumably short life (no day but today.) Mimi has heroin, that she drops, but I thought that was more to set up that she has a problem (which will eventually become a big deal later) rather than to imply that she actually wants Roger to do heroin with her. But also I was a kid so I maybe just didn't understand why she wanted a "light."
It is not just about the fact that he was isolating himself, he doesn't want to be hurt again, he already lost someone he loved to AIDS and Heroin.
Mimi reminds him of that, brings up all those complex feelings, especially when she is a junky, just like April and himself were.
This is a good point. She had heroin, but my impression was that the bag was just a "McGuffin" to get back in to the apartment to flirt with Roger some more. She wants him to take her out, not stay inside for a sex and drugs party. I think the smack angle is being overplayed in this critique.
ORRR she was trying to get him to do heroin and he refused and is in fact in the morally superior position.
Jack Dryden but we are not talking about the play, we are talking about the movie, where Rosario Dawson's gets her drug out of her bra, waves it at him and then gives him a kiss. It is 100% clear about her untentions. It never was (in the movie) about him, it was always about her wanting drugs and sex.
To be fair, "No day but today" is in the scene where Roger and Mimi first meet and at the end where they finally get together. In the play, the phrase has a different meaning in each scene. Initially it means "Let's live for today, have sex, and do drugs" and at the end it means "Lets cherish each day we have together". What the significance is in the movie, I cannot really figure out, since your right the scene seems to imply that doing drugs is the right thing. Maybe the director was trying to imply that Roger needs to open up and everything will work out... magically curing Mimi of her addiction... because fuck it everyone just broke into song for no reason. Edit: Addiction not addition
Ooooh, NOW I get what Team America was parodying with their "Everyone has Aids" song.
Pretty much.
lol :p
Hasa Diga Eebowai.
You've caught up with everyone else XD - I love Team America haha
Or maybe showgirls "man everybody got aids and sh**"
When I first saw this back in uni my roommate and I actually had a small fight about this scene, with me on Roger's side and her on Mimi's. I was baffled at how she could think the former addict trying to stay clean was in the wrong, but seeing the scene broken down like this it actually kind of makes sense that she'd be "tricked" into sympathizing with Mimi.
Literally the first clip you show of Mark saying: "From now on, I shoot from my own script" brought back the RENT rage I buried so long ago. There are countless problems with this movie, and the fact that you spent 9 minutes on just one scene kinda magnifies this.Another problem I noticed in terms of it being a failure of visual story telling is near the end where Roger leaves the city and Mark is depressed by his job. This is meant to be a big pivotal moment, as it has both characters in drastically different places [both figuratively and literally] than at the beginning. Their emotional touchstones that the audience needs to feel.What do they do? Sing a song and 2 minutes later go back to where they started from. This is WAY too fast. Sure, it's based on the musical, but they could have tweaked it by inserting some more scenes to give a sense of a passage of time and save the end of the song for a reprise later in the movie.Or hell, the damn editing in the montage could have been tweaked to give this sense of passage. In Roger's edits, he drives into Santa Fe, sells his car, buys a guitar, busks a bit, walks on a beach, then boards a bus home. Mark meanwhile rides his bike to work, boards a news van then edits together his crappy home movie. These are such mundane events that there's nothing to suggest this didn't all happen in just one day except the fact that they're physically hundreds of miles away from each other. Even if they wanted to keep it as one continuous musical number, it would still have been possible. Show the frustration Mark's job gave him by quickly editing together similar sequences of him going through the same old grind. Show Roger trying and failing at music by busking at multiple locations and not making any money. Or maybe just have them change their goddamn clothes once in a while to give a sense that they're living an actual life. It's not like you have to worry about getting back on stage in time for costume changes.Or even just use a dissolve effect, I don't know, ANYTHING! God RENT sucks. God speed on Lindsay's review. One scene breakdown will not satiate my thirst for bohemian blood.
Don't know why the comment bunched all of my paragraphs together. It does make it look more like a rage-induced rant which is fairly appropriate...
The movie handled that montage quite well compared to the stage play. just sayin.
I maintain that this is a bad montage in the film that could have been salvaged, but yeah, having this story beat exist in the first place is a problem from source material [i.e. the stage play]. Maybe it's because I've immersed myself more with film analysis than theater, but I can't imagine how they could have made this work on the stage.
I can't hate it because of the bro-hug at the end.
The stage play didn't have a montage. What You Own is a soliloquy. It's not supposed to portray months of passing time. They sing about the issues that have plagued them the whole show and have a moment of revelation, so Mark calls to quit his job to work on his film and Roger decides to buckle down and write his song. It functions as a traditional 11 o'clock number, in terms of theatre analysis.
Rodger is the best character in this movie because he actually acts like a human being.
Faith Mark does too
You mean Mark "Quit my easy well-paying job to work on my shitty home movies exploiting the homeless" Cohen?
you mean Mark "Quit a job that was selling out his dreams to work on the one documentary he's always wanted to make in tribute to Angel, the friend who changed all their outlooks on life" Cohen? ya, that one.
You probably don't live in New York
Joanna too, who is sadly gaslighted by Maureen and made to feel like she's controlling when Maureen is awful to her.
I love Rent.
The stage version.
Rent, at its heart, is a coming-of-age story. The characters are selfish, whiny, pretentious, and preachy, but they're supposed to be. If the characters in Rent were wise and well-adjusted, it would lose the heart of the story. These characters need to learn to see beyond their own selves, their own lives, their own immediate wants; to learn that we are a community, we are responsible for each other. But on the other hand, several of the characters are dealing with much bigger issues than average young adults should face: AIDS, death, suicide, drug addiction, unsafe streets, dubious offers from TV executives. How many college-age kids grapple with anything like that? To call the characters "whiny" misses the entire point of the story.
This is exactly why the film version of Rent is awful. Because the directing, acting, and filmmaking choices are so unfocused and unnatural, it does not properly communicate the message of the story and the conflicts that the characters are going through. Chris Columbus muddled it, made it confusing -- so confusing that the people who don't know the artistry and complexity of this wonderful piece of musical theatre will dismiss it as an overrated schlock-fest.
That is why I hate Rent.
The film version.
Fellow commenters, I'm curious as to your thoughts on what I have just ranted about. I encourage you to reply to me with what you think.
I wouldn't say that I disagree, but I am of a different opinion. First of all, I think you hit on a key issue - the characters in the play are naive and so very earnest and sure of themselves as only teenagers / early 20 somethings can be. They don't realize yet how much they don't know. So, we cut them some slack. "Everybody has to go through stages like that", as the Sondheim lyric from "Follies" goes.
The first problem the film hits is the same one that plagued "The Wiz" with Diana Ross. It's one thing to see a whiny selfish teenager. It's totally another to see someone in their mid-thirties act the same way. Yeah, it's cool to see the original cast and we know their connection to Jonathon and the material, BUT they are way too old to make this story play the way it's supposed to. I think that's a reason why some in the audience are put off, rather than drawn toward these characters.
The next major problem is that Jonathon Larson died before the show was finished. He had never shown it to an audience and received that vital feedback so he could go back and find the weak links in the story and fix them. That task, as well as adapting it for the screen, fell to his estate. That is a tough road, even for estates like the Gershwins and Rodgers & Hammerstein that only have to look after works that were completed by their creators. The Larson family has had to step up to finish the musical and supervise the movie script, but of course they lack the talent and training Jonathon would have brought. So, the script is flawed. No argument there. Lots of people here have pointed out things that should have been altered. But at this point, Rent is what it is: a fly stuck in amber.
As far as Chris Columbus is concerned, I like the look, the sound, and the choices he makes in shooting the story. I can't think how a different director could have done it better or overcome the limitations inherent in casting those thirtysomething actors.
Completely agreed. People do fucked up things in fucked up situations. Maybe they didn't establish the situation very well (others reactions to LGBT issues, POC disparities, etc.) but I always found it pretty self-evident based on the cast and setting. Maybe that's been lost a bit with time as multiracial multisexuality casts have become more common. They're not doing great socially or financially. It would be a larger disconnect for me if they had the same background or behavior as Sally from suburbia. Rent was also the first of its kind in so many ways, of course it's going to make some mistakes. It's akin to Hair for me: social ambition, occasional clumsiness, simple catchy musical style of the day, not some golden era, its impact on musical theatre and creative minority communities in general.
I've listened to the music too many times to count, still see the show when I can. I saw the movie twice. First in theaters, second time at home to make sure I wasn't mistaken. For the sake of sparing everyone the paragraphs, it loses all grit in translation. Adventures in Babysitting and Home Alone probably should have been red flags that Columbus was not prepared to deal with East Village bohemia. Or anyone poor, really. Though it was sung well, in addition to the original cast probably being too old to sell it, film and theatre are very different mediums for performers and I don't think most of the stage actors were prepared to carry an ensemble film like this.
it also hurt them to use the original actors because when they're 30 they just look whiny
There's an alternative though a way better way more interesting alternative, this tiny little film called Trainspotting hits all the same themes but I'd say better.
I just wanna say that the stage version (idk if you've seen it) IS SO MUCH DIFFERENT AND SO MUCH BETTER. Just in this scene itself, on the stage version the other friends are in the Life Support meeting and no where near Mimi and Roger.
Yeah, I was on heroin for a few years. Meaning a few years more than I'd ever like to remember.
Yeah, let's call it a clean decade. I got very, very, very, STUPIDLY lucky. All my "Friends" from those days are . . . well, they're all gone now. I think there are maybe two still kicking around . . . I don't know. I haven't seen any of them for years.
This shit is so offensive to me, man. I've been homeless, I've been addicted, I've been ALL that . . . and frankly? _I'm EMBARRASSINGLY spoiled._ INSANELY spoiled. My parents are the only reason I'm alive at all.
And still-those fucking nights on the streets, man . . . sweating blood from your eyes while waiting for some salvation to come and pay for your next point? They were horrible. I'm an over-emotional cat, so I go all flowery and wordy with my description of misery . . . but let's put it this way: MISERY is nothing to DESPAIR. To _despair_ is to lose hope entirely; my rather vicious case of clinical Depression / Anxiety (which is such a common case with drug addicts it was BEYOND cliche with us) made those nights just nightmarish in how LOW they'd go. I remember pacing the streets - all night - _looking for money on the ground._
THAT was my strategy! To go search for bills on the ground so I could buy a bottle of RUBBING ALCOHOL and try to drink that shit to forget the fact I was on the streets and withdrawing from Heroin! And I found a five dollar bill. On the ground. Finally. And I got that bottle. And _man_ . . . I was SO HAPPY. I was saved. THAT was a WIN! Rubbing Alcohol!
So being homeless and on "Smack" isn't some bohemian vacation. It's a cruel, endless nightmare that's actually THOROUGHLY wiping out an entire generation of kids, seeing as how Fentanyl™ has become absolutely unavoidable with "heroin" and other opiates.
AND I'M THE LUCKY ONE. I'M THE SPOILED ONE. I SHOULDN'T BE ALIVE.
So you know what? Fuck you, _Rent._ I'm deeply offended by that shit, man. Why would anybody choose to highlight a story where a _grieving recovering addict_ is the BAD guy???
I'm sober because I found an antidepressant that WORKS. I literally stumbled upon a cure for my depression (and hence my addictions, which were only a byproduct of the Depression in the FIRST PLACE). So, AGAIN . . . I'm *stupidly, foolishly lucky.*
For most cats out there, man . . . white-knuckling sobriety one day at a time . . . ? It's almost unthinkably hard. It really is. I have nothing but the most SEVERE respect for people in recovery. I'm the only one I've ever heard of who was literally given a _Get Out of Jail Free_ card in some heretofore unknown antidepressant. Most people getting off that shit crave it almost constantly.
Fuck you, _Rent._ Seriously. How dare you. Those people BLEED EVERY DAY. I used to know so many. They're almost all dead now. Like I said . . . Fentanyl's doing an incredible job, wiping all us junkies off the face of this planet. It's so sad.
It's so, so sad. And so "entertainment" like this is just a burning pie in the face to all those brave, determined ADDICTS I used to know, who struggled every day to stay clean . . . then inevitably cracked, got stoned one more time . . . but for the _last time._ Because Fentanyl. Like I said. It just takes one O.D., man. Most of then died alone.
I'M THE LUCKY ONE. I'M STUPIDLY LUCKY. AND IT WAS STILL HARD. For my old brothers and sisters from back in the day . . . well, they just didn't have enough time. THEY are heroes to me. They tried as hard as they could to hold out. And . . . well, there just wasn't enough time. That's all.
Fuck you, _Rent._ Go fuck yourself.
•b in 18.
That's a sad story. I can't imagine being so hard up for a buzz that I'd drink isopropyl alcohol. Rent makes addiction look like a vacation.
@@RoastedLocust I read that and I actually heard my GERD scream.
After watching the Lindsay Video Essay I'm glad I'm also subscribed to you as well
So they're singing in Daredevil's apartment?
THATS WHAT I THOUGHT TOO
holy shit, they are
Foggy'd be into it
Also, the sound mixing is fucking AWFUL. I can barely hear their voices over the instrumentals, and for a musical, that's the biggest sin
Super Pochaco your profile picture is the biggest sin
Yeah, it is past Christmas, time to switch to a new Pochaco pic.
As someone that did see the show live on Broadway, I can tell you that this was in fact a direct carryover from the source material. Seriously, it was impossible to tell what anyone is singing about or doing or wanting or anything.
Now that I think about it, as bad as the movie version was, it still had better sound mixing than the live version.
Andrew McPhail I don't...think you can mix live performances?
Kagamine Auror
You can, in a sense.
I've never seen Rent: none of the productions of it. But every time I see a UA-cam analysis of it in my Recommended list, I click through. It's just fascinating to me. Thank you for doing this!
Mimi represents the entitled "make me happy even if its costs you" mentality of a lot of people. I mean seriously.. knows she is HIV positive, gets mad when her victim turns her down for a quicky. And the drug pushing, wow. I guess RENT for for a special kind of fan-base...
HaveMindWillWander and the fucked up part is that it's implied that Mimi doesn't know that Roger is HIV+ she was literally going to infect but she doesn't give a fuck because she lives for the moment
It's about accepting people for their flaws to an extent. Mimi, Maureen, Mark are all shit people.
This is such an interesting critique ESPECIALLY because the stage play does the opposite. The Life Support group is on a platform and MiMi and Roger are stage level. The group and the couple are not in the same location.
At the end of the song MiMi leaves and the story follows Rogers story with "Will I?" Where he does a duet with another man in the life support group.
During Another Day the support group is the choir in the dark and while they sing back up to MiMi Roger stays in the spot light in the middle for most of the song.
Then he does a solo refrain of "Glory" before "Will I"
During Will I all of the cast circles him singing in round while he sits in the spotlight center stage.
Jonathan Larson very clearly loved all of these characters but when you understand who the writer was and what he was going through at the time you know that Roger and Mark were sort of autobiographical characters for him.
All of your other critiques of the film at the start of the video are legit but they are all also addresses in the stage play which I suggest you watch asap. It is free on UA-cam.
I’m struck by how incredibly different the film is from most normal stagings of the stage musical, and truthfully, I think this crystallizes a lot of why I’ve always felt that the movie just felt… flat, compared to the show. Part of that is differences in the actual script (eg. Mimi’s secret heroine use; the vastly circumstances leading up to “Take Me or Leave Me”; etc.), and part of it is the fact that stage plays can simply get away with much weirder more metaphorical stagings while still being relatively “normal” (I went into the film most eager to see what on earth they could possibly do with the song “Contact” that wouldn’t be either bizarrely artsy compared to the rest of the show, or bump the rating… and surprise, the answer was they, like me, had no idea how to do that song in a film, so they cut it). But the visual choices you highlight here are absolutely another big piece of the puzzle. The original song in the stage play juxtaposes Mimi’s self-destructive “live in the present” mentality with the AIDS support group’s “live in the present” mentality, and sets up Mark’s cowardly refusal to connect with others in contrast to Roger’s trauma-induced refusal to do so. The point of the song is that neither philosophy is really complete absent context - saying “no day but today” in a support group full of friends is different from saying it as an excuse for meaningless sex and drug use; pushing human contact away in the depths of your own depression and trauma is different from doing so in order to keep the pain of the people you use for your art at arms length. The stage play “Rent” isn’t really about AIDS - it’s a remake of and commentary on La Boheme, which ends by quite explicitly saying that, unlike in the original (where Mimi dies as soon as she reconciles with Rodolfo in a very “death = art” sort of a way), the most revolutionary thing that Mimi can do upon reconciling with Roger - and by extension, the most anyone who is dying can do - is to *live*, emotionally connected to other people. It’s not all that deep, and there are absolutely problems with it, but I’m amazed by just how completely and at every turn the movie missed the point. The movie version of Rent strips out everything the show had to say about La Boheme in order to basically just remake La Boheme in the modern day, but worse.
Hmm. Not sure if that makes the scene a failure of visual storytelling so much as a success in visual storytelling towards a morally repugnant end. There's a big difference, in my opinion, between a film that has a positive message and supports it poorly visually and evidentially, and a film that has a terrible message but supports it consistently within the context of the story. I haven't seen RENT in its entirety, but here this scene seems to be the latter. The visual language works in communicating its meaning (too bluntly, as you say, but it does), combines its symbols, and makes clear which character the film supports; it's just that said character is asking for something selfish, which is a writing matter, not visual.
I recall Roger Ebert talking about that a few times when discussing the difference between "one star" and "zero star" films, that he judged differently between a poorly made film like Transformers II and an evil one like I Spit On Your Grave and its remake.
It's the difference between Michael Bay and Triumph of the Will. Or the Star Wars prequels and Birth of a Nation. It's storytelling "gone horribly right".
I like the way you think!
The thing is, in this case it's a situation where the visual aspects of the film actually upend the original intent of the material. For example, Roger's friends joining Mimi in an angelic spotlight singing "No day but today," vs. the juxtaposition of Mimi singing it while sitting on Roger's desk, obviously high, with a bunch of supporting cast scattered around stage singing it to themselves.
Another example is Out Tonight right before that scene. In the movie, Mimi is totally living her best life, with a ton of colorful lighting and a shot of her dancing down the street, while in the stage version, she's alone in her apartment and dancing manically (on drugs) before she barges into Roger's apartment and knocks all his shit off the table. It's the little details that the movie added or changed that make a big difference. One reason that Mimi is nineteen is because she's not supposed to be seen as this role model, but as a naive teen who is destructive to herself and to other people, but the cinematography of the movie changes a whole lot about that perception.
maybe don’t make a comment then if you haven’t seen the entire movie or know anything about the show 😐
@@reganfisher8180 but he's right
While watching it I had NO IDEA about the whole heroin subplot for the movie...
BECAUSE THAT ISN'T THE SUBPLOT THIS GUY KNOWS STUFF ABOUT PRODUCTION...BUT NOT MUSICALS THESE COMMENTS R PISSING ME OFF THIS GUY IS A FRAUD
Pugachanlover Dude you need to chill, this guy is talking about RENT the movie, not the musical. If the producers wanted to convey the same message as the musical they very well should have done that for the movie in the first place.
you do realize that the movie is the musical, right? when im referring to the musical i dont just mean the broadway performance im referring to the show as a whole
I didn't know mimi and Roger were hiv positive???
Pugachanlover Yes. I know RENT is a musical. I don't live under a rock. I was merely saying that the person in the video is talking about the movie, not the musical. If the producers wanted to convey the same message as in the musical, they should have done so with multiple film devices. But their failure to do so resulted in many people not even knowing that the heroin/AIDS thing was a part of the plot, as you can see from the parent comment above. Please try to understand what's going on before you yap about what only you want to say and hear.
I don't think that fans of "Rent" do much examining of said musical. It's mainly about the music. Same thing with "Phantom", which is pretty problematic.
Someone on twitter recently said that RENT is one of those shows that's really really fun to perform (because of the music), even if it isn't that fun to watch (because of the characters), and I can see it.
I think Beth Elderkin(one half of the Shark Jumping YT channel) said that cos she did a production of RENT
+thevampirefrog06 I think I understand why a performer would enjoy being in the cast but not necessarily like watching Rent. I just listen to cast recordings. The music speaks for itself. The show... Well...
Roberto Lie That might have been her! It was someone responding to Lindsay.
I love the musical, but it's great because stage musicals don't usually focus on story but rather the music. The movie version should've probably focused more on story
"Inference is dramatically inferior to being shown." YES
You ever decide to watch a UA-cam video and then halfway through realize you've seen it before? It's a weird feeling.
Did Mimi really want to shoot up with him? I thought she was just in there to bone and accidentally dropped her stash. She keeps on trying to get it back, and didn't exactly make it look like she wanted to share. It was more that he was lecturing her to stop using drugs, not that he was refusing her implicit offer to do drugs with him.
That's 'Light My Candle'. 'Another Day' is pretty explicit that she's there to party.
paulmarko she didn't drop the stash. She got it out and waved it to him offering him to get high..
Ah yeah. My mistake. I thought it was during "would you light my candle." not "after "out tonight"
yeah, it was pretty obviously her wanting to do drugs.
I've had people IRL who have had to move out of town to keep clean exactly because of people like Mimi. it's a horrible message to present, especially with a guy who's lost everything for drugs.
I don't know how I missed it but I never realized Mimi brought out the stash in that scene. When I was in a community theatre production of this show, Mimi kissed Roger at the end of "Out Tonight" and then he snapped at her with this song. Her addiction was an issue, but the motivation of "Another Day" was rooted more in his anger and grief keeping him from moving on than in an attempt to stay off drugs.
the low angle literally frames him as "the man" the scolding, grumping authority looking down upon her with judgement and disgust from his high tower
for you know, not wanting to relapse on heroin and possibly infect someone with HIV
hold, Mimi knew she was HIV positive, didn't know roger was, and still wanted to bone/do heroine with him? wtf
EDIT: we're supposed to take the side of the girl pushing heroin on a recovering addict? excuse me what?
I love how this channel shows me so much about filmmaking that I would never consider as a passive cinema-goer
I always thought it was really fucked up that Mimi kept shoving heroin in Roger’s face despite the fact he made it clear he was clean. Especially knowing his much higher risk of ODing and dying
RENT is about terrible people who can sing.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The Musical
honestly i would pay to see that
Yah if you're not capable of critical thinking lol
Like Cabaret?
I'll dare to update that: RENT is about terrible people who can sing... but nearly all the songs are awful anyway. :(
I actually LOVE the stage version. I know it's problematic, but something about it is just really nostalgic for me.
And yeah... the creator, Johnathon Larson, died (I think?) before it's off-broadway run, so I think there was a lot more he could've developed but we never got to see it. Kinda sad, but then again I don't think RENT would be nearly the hit it is without him dying.
My favorite part of the movie and stage version is when Mark, comes across a old black homeless woman who is being harassed my the police. He gets down on his knees with his handheld camera and tells them to continue when they look at him inquisitively. Lady pushes the camera and says “fuck you”, walking away.
Just about all of these kids are trust fund kids cosplaying poverty. They refuse to “sell out”, call back the parents that love them and send money, and are full-time artist without a real, paying job, IN NYC!!
Bohemia was better and Mimi in the opera is much more sympathetic
Yeah, this is a pretty awful movie adaptation. Is it such a sin that I still like the musical, though? The Live on Broadway DVD completely shits on this film.
Thom Avella absolutely right. The movie captures none of the fun, the complexity of the characters, the grittiness and danger of the neighborhood the characters live in, and it was SUCH a terrible choice having them speak lyrics of some of the songs as dialogue. It's remarkably awkward and literally removes the rhythm and timing and character of all the lines. Should have been sung-through like the show and directed by someone who understands that it takes a lot more than graffiti on the walls in the background to portray poverty.
If you're going to watch Rent, watch a professional live production or the excellent Filmed Live on Broadway version from '08
it good
Thom Avella hk
no, it's not at all a sin to like the musical. why would it be? this is definitely one of my favorite musicals, although it almost seems wrong to call it a "musical" since it's so unlike most others. I really put it more in the category of Gilbert and Sullivan's satirical operettas: and it's worth pointing out that these also share in the sin of commercializing an unprivileged group of people even in the service of satire.
Yea the film adaptation feels very... neutered. All of the dark comedy was left on the cutting room floor in favor of brooding melodrama. Also, ironically enough, the two non-original cast members breathed the most life into the film, which never lit up until “Out Tonight.”
You're back!!! Dan I hope you'll find the time for new episodes, I really missed your analyses :)
Not only is Roger not wanting to shoot up with her but is also trying to save her from having sex because he has AIDS. She also has AIDS and doesn't care about giving someone else the disease, as long as she gets hers.
I don't see a failure. I see a success on getting the message across. Doing drugs is good, and trying to get sober will only get you isolated, sad and alone.
A message I 100% am against, of course, no media form should encourage people to do drugs and it is terrible that movies antagonize the effords of getting sober. Everyone should be encouraged to get sober, not the other way around.
If they had the awful message "drugs r' good, you should do drugs, mkay?" it would at least be somewhat interesting. However, didn't drug addiction had a horrible consequences for that character? So it's just weird and incosistent.
I showed this to my sister, who loves RENT, and she hasn't spoken to me in months. Mission Accomplished.🤣
Okay, like, just to throw a little “I am an actual former heroin addict” perspective here, but like h o l y s h i t badgering someone in recovery to use with you just so that you can have more fun or get some money or feel less shitty about it is like arguably THE worst thing that addicts do to each other. Like, we do do it, yes. It happens a lot, actually! But it’s pretty universally understood to be a massive dick move *even by the people who do it*. It’s like drunk driving… you don’t wake up like “boy do I feel good about my decision to drive last night!”, you know? Gonna go out on a limb and assume Columbus is cis and seronegative and has never touched a syringe in his life.
In that first scene, I feel like what's off is the perspective. That could have easily been a metaphor for how Roger sees her life, the temptation the call of it to try and bring him back. As you said, he has the higher perspective, and I think it would have been an interesting play to mix that up and show that he's a little blinded by the lure that kind of life and that kind of choice has on him, even now.
Instead they framed it from her perspective, made it more of a literal call to him and critique of his behavior, framing him like some kind of despotic villain for his choice.
That awkward moment when you love the movie but can't argue with a thing he's saying ^^;
Rent has always been one of my favorite musicals of all time, so I've always blindly left the movie adaptation unquestioned. This scene was weird, but I didn't really see why... now I totally get it. I'm glad I watched this.
As a recovering addict, I think that scene with Mimi is pretty good. getting sober is realllllly hard. and addicts love to bring their friends DOWN with them. The symbolism is pretty on point compared to how I felt when I got sober and I had triggers and temptations. It never felt like I had the moral high ground when I was newly clean, it felt horribly lonely and impossible. You're no longer numb to all of the horrible things you've done and those feelings and emotions come flooding back. It's horribly complex and intense at the beginning. For a newly sober person facing temptation, that looked pretty good to me. I think you know a lot more about movies than I do, but I disagree.
I remember you! The talking robot on Channel Awesome, I'm glad that gimmick was dropped, your own presence gives more gravitas to the discussion than told via puppetry.
Yeah, this is one of the best analyses of this film I've ever seen. Subbed. Looking forward to more of this!
The movie has always confused me from the point: where Mimi is on the street after their argument-song and I remember her friends coddling her. And acting like she's the victim and he's the oppressive asshole. She basically raped the guy, tried to force drugs on him, and basically tried to manipulate him.
I was sitting there with my girlfriend and all her friends. While my goal was to be nice, because I don't like musicals in the first place, I had to say something at that point. "What the fuck? She's the asshole!?" Where-in, I got attacked and got no lovin' that night. I am glad another person is like "Yeah, this is weird - she's the asshole."
Yeah, I used to love Rent when I was a sophomore in high school and didn't read much into the actual text of the movie. Once came back to it a few years later with a critical eye and paid even a little attention to the lyrics, I sort of hated myself for missing it before.
I watched RENT for the first time in a long while with my friend recently, and we were both yelling at the screen over this scene. Thanks for elucidating why :)
I loved this video! I really enjoyed you dissecting this scene. Since I love this musical so much I don't think I really ever looked at it critically. I agree with everyone else you should do the whole movie!
I've watched this several times, but youtube keeps forgetting and recommending it again. That's ok. I'll just watch it again
Great video! Although I do wish it were longer! I feel there's more you could've touched on.
+Jessie
Yeah, I feel like the only problem with this video is that it's too short and I feel it would have been interesting too see him tackle the issues that he mentioned at 0:45-1:41 more at length, since he has a way of talking about frequently discussed issues in a really interesting way. Other than that, I liked this episode.
Check out lindsay Ellis. Its 45 minutes and goes much farther in depth into the themes of the movie
As bad as this is, the stage musical did it worse. The first time you hear the "no day but today" motif is in Roger's addiction support group, where the idea was there might not be a tomorrow to start treating yourself better and getting on the road to recovery. But then, when Mimi starts singing it from the perspective of hedonism, the support group fills in the Greek chorus singing it with her.
No, Jonathan did it right. Chris did not. In the stage version, Mimi is high on the rooftop singing of her desire to go out and have a good time before her life ends. She climbs down the fire escape and barges into Roger’s apartment and starts making out with him. Roger is upset by this cuz he’s still a good deal depressed over April and cuz he doesn’t know that Mimi has AIDS too, so he’s afraid of giving it to her. Mimi NEVER offered him heroin and just wants to go “out tonight.” Also, the chorus of "No Day But Today" that joins Mimi is clearly NOT actually there with her. Their at the support group singing the mantra. It's meant to be a clue that Mimi is HIV positive. The life support people don’t even know who Roger is or what he is dealing with, so why in the world would they randomly burst into his apartment and tell him that he needs to live everyday like it’s his last and that he should stop sulking?
I need you to drag everything about this film. This video is incredible!
I don't think the movie's great, but I LOVE the original musical (so just know I might be a bit biased). I personally don't think that Mimi was telling Roger to do drugs with her in this scene. I always interpreted her taking out the heroin as a sign that she has an addiction and can't be separated from it rather than as an offer for Roger to have some. The entire beginning of the film shows Roger as being isolated and not open to interacting with the outside world, and I think that in order to further that point to show his transformation throughout the movie, having the audience sympathize with Mimi made sense. What she's asking of him isn't necessarily right, but one of the show's major themes is "No day but today" and this song just further solidifies that point.
1:28-1:41
You made Mark sound like one of those people that treat homeless people like scientific subjects instead of real human beings.
that's because he is
+gdf40
That is true. Now that I think about it, I should have wrote "Mark sounds like one of those people" instead of "You made Mark sound like one of those people". It was a small mistake.
Yup. He's an openly pretentious and close minded little shit. He basically treats them differently because they don't fit into his idea of the "community" he's in. I love the scene before "Santa Fe", when one of the homeless people from before catches him filming and just _roasts the shit out of him_.
"I don't need no goddamn help from some bleeding heart cameraman - my life's not for you to make a name for yourself off" spells it out pretty clearly.
@Madeline Wildish Yet that doesn't prompt him to change his outlook on the homeless, because "selling out" is bad.
Thank you for making this! I watched this movie tons of times and NEVER CONSIDERED that Mimi, in addition to trying to get Roger to loosen up, is also TOTALLY PRO HEROIN HERE! I really appreciate your insight and definitions for the curious layman like me.
I have to admit that the UA-cam algorithm picked this video and I had literally no intention of reliving, of all dismal points in my life, "RENT". I can now say that, after almost clicking past this video three times, that I'm glad I watched it as I not only agree with its content, it gives a great nutshell example of what bothered me about the film in general. Thank you for creating the film class I didn't want to take.
Thank you for this video. Rent as a whole, has always given me some fits, but I love schmaltz if it's sung, so I enjoyed the movie to a certain extent. But between this video and Lindsay Ellis's breakdown of Rent, I'm really seeing the problems. If you haven't watched it, it's forty minutes easy and well-worth it.
Seeing just this scene it appears to me like something interesting could have been developed around it though. It's a moment of great temptation, where doing the right thing may feel awfully lonely and depressing. So with the right framing by the rest of the movie, this exact presentation could have worked out great.
Love your style of videos man. Notifications on, keep it up!
Excellent stuff. Thanks for making this.
I still love the musical though, and even though it’s not the best, I still love the movie (and yes I agree it’s a million times better on stage)
Another thing that bothered me was when the characters were giving Angel's Eulogy. Mimi says that Halloween was her favorite holiday, and Maureen talks about here wearing an old table cloth one day and then next year they'd be selling them at the gap. Only, Mimi and Maureen have only known Angel for 10 months and a week, so Mimi never celebrated Halloween with Angel and Maureen's story is a complete fabrication (Which wouldn't be at all out of character for her)
Angel could have just shown them some of her old clothes and then when to the gap to show how much of a trend setter she really is.
BraninT Mimi and Angel are actually friends well before the roommates meet Angel. It's part of the character bios, but I can't recall if the film squeezes that detail in.
BraninT Mimi and Angel are actually friends well before the roommates meet Angel. It's part of the character bios, but I can't recall if the film squeezes that detail in.
Fantastic video and top notch analysis as always! :D
From what I remember from the actual show, the chorus of "No Day But Today" comes from the support group? Because from what I remember "Out Tonight" happens like right after "Life Support"? (I haven't watched rent life on Broadway In awhile but still). This is some of the weird things with the movie does that I'll never get.
I think you all need to calm down about Angel killing a fucking dog. I'd take it seriously if it was mentioned more than twice and had an actual scene, but neither in the play or the musical did this happen. As someone who likes to write, I can guarantee that Larson probably wrote about Evita dying so it could be mentioned in La Vie Boheme, and as a way to not bring in another character to play Benny's wife. When he did write about the dog dying, he probably thought it'd be funny if he made Angel kill the dog as a way to make money. if you hadn't noticed, in the song where angel is introduced, he doesn't use morbid or macabre words and details to explain how he killed the dog, he made it very vague so it could be comical. You're all activity as if Angel brutally murdered the dog, stuck it's head on a stick and fried up it's body and ate it. It was a fucking joke, all of you are being so extra to try and shit on the play.
Epitome Of Narcissism this whole comment section us just a bunch of negative Nancys that think they graduated from the film Academy of bs
Saidie Jimenez Preach
It IS mentioned more than twice.
"I think it's only fair to tell you, you just paid for the funeral of the person who killed your dog."
"I know… I always hated that dog."
Charming people.
Bryndís Víkingsson Oh. My. God. Chill. Y'all are blowing this out of proportion
I mean...it's a dark joke essentially. no one is saying what angel did is "good." a lot of the stuff in this musical isn't "good." addiction, cheating, promiscuity, theft etc. these aren't moral characters to adore and laud. but the movie adaptation doesn't really do the story much. it does much better as a stage production.
Damn this channel is so good
I didn't ever think I'd find a medium to codify all the problems I had with this movie. You sir, have made my day.
For me I found out my brother Jose had hiv a little before 2005, he passed in 2016 of aids …for me as silly as it was, the film was one of the first to really tackle aids and addiction together that I had ever seen, seeing Mimi try to live in the moment helped me cope amidst her faults and logic holes , considering my brothers response to his diagnosis was to shut down in depression like roger did…I see the flaws in the film but it helped me understand some the things they deal with….but dealing with someone dying of this disease in real life like how angel died is brutal ….the movie has some therapeutic healing aspects to the story and music….I guess my point is a in depth analysis is understandable on a technical level but with such a real gritty subject matter, that at its core drives the narrative and the music I never could look at the film as harshly but I understand your points.
im surprised at how quickly you churned this out considering you were livetweeting watching rent like... a few days ago
I love Rent, but this entire show is literally the opera La Boheme reimagined and set in alphabet city at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Even the character names are stolen.directly from the opera and the play makes fun of this fact at multiple times through lines and through the song La Vie Boheme. Watch the opera and the play makes sense.
I mean, thats the point. La boheme was jonathan larsons favourite opera and he wanted to remake it set in his world of bohemian new york. Thats the entire concept of rent.
excellent analysis! i love your stuff
I am weirdly delighted to watch you tear into Rent. I never got to see it on stage (not counting the VHS rip that popped up on UA-cam, or the final Broadway cast, which I hated), and I love the film so much that I'm blind to its flaws. So it's interesting to hear a more objective take on it, even as I don't agree with all of it.
I really like RENT, but you're so right about these things and I agree with you on every regard...
Love the rant, I saw the film ten years ago and remember thinking "What the fuck? Why are they all taking her side?" Can you imagine a film where a woman was shamed for turning down sex? Not to mention giving heroin to a heroin addict.
Amazing channel, keep them coming!
I totally felt this dissonance while watching Rent, but I though I was just missing the plot. Glad you are here.
Of course the guy who directed the RENT movie is named Chris Columbus. Becuase if hisory has taught us well, anybody named Chris Columbus being in charge of anything ends well.
He also directed the worst Harry Potter movies
z beeblebrox he didn't direct Goblet of Fire...
Out of curiosity, do you think that the movie's visual storytelling causes it's interpretation to differ from the interpretation the play would have?
Basically, do you think that the play, which (probably) presented this scene from an inherently removed perspective, would still put the audience on Mimi's side?
Also, if you kept the entire scene the same (with the camera angles as they are), but at the end you simply cut to Roger going back inside, would the scene's interpretation be different?
I enjoyed watching this develop from frustrated tweets, to long conversations to eventually a video. Just wish it was a little longer. There's a lot from the twitter conversations I would have liked to see expounded on in video form.
something little but super important (especially for the first bit where you bring up story problems), rent is a pretty straight adaptation (scene for scene in some instances, eg. the candle scene, the burning manuscripts for warmth, seeing Mimi bathed in moonlight) of the 1894 opera la boheme, swapping Paris for NY, tuberculosis for aids, and updating it. In addition to going a long way to explain the points you brought up in the beginning, it may explain some of the cinematography? Still not the best movie adaptation. Either way, check out la boheme, it gives an interesting perspective.
Maybe someone's addressed this, as this video is now almost 4 years old, but in the stage version, I read her having the bag as showing him she hadn't used it and is no longer planning to. The first time she came looking for a light. Now she wants to out with Roger instead. It's not after work, and she's not looking for sex, at least not right away - she wants to go "Out Tonight," and she ends up getting Roger to leave the house after months. Later on she says she's giving up her vices and going back to school. Of course she doesn't stick to that, and it almost kills her. The show does not endorse heroin use. So I think Dan's got it wrong in that regard, though if the movie makes things seem different, that does show a failure of visual storytelling. That's just one of the many ways the movie version screws things up. Another is setting it in 1989, when the stage version did not name a specific year.
I'm a big fan of musicals, even in movie format. I had a big collection of them, but RENT was the ONLY one I ever got rid off. I hated it from first view, as much as I loved the live musical. Mostly I hated the songs they changed to spoken language, and that they cut the Christmas song, which I think is central.
I'm sooooo with you on this. I have always absolutely hated that all of his friends are on Mimi's side after she brought heroin to a recovering junkie. Was never a fan of their love story after that point, and was pretty pissed at his friends.
after seeing the stage version earlier today its so much better with telling the story than the movie. i only watch the movie when i dont have anything else to watch because so much was cut and added that made it harder to understand.
I get what you're saying as far as the editing communicating a very black and white perspective, but a main theme of the musical is the highlighting of many grey areas in life. Roger is wise to refuse the heroin, but shuts the others and refuses to make meaningful connections or address emotional baggage as a form of self defense. Even though Mimi is a heroin user, later addict, she is more in tune with her emotions and can connect with others which helps her have a more positive outlook. They all have their baggage. They all have their good points. They all have their bad.
One thing I will say is that the actors in the movie make the bad movie better by being great at what they do. They're like great salespeople working with a shitty product, you just feel bad for them.
I'm a fan of RENT but I absolutely agree with your critical perspective about the movie. Someday I'll write my own version of RENT. Thank you for making this video.
Yeah, I first watched Rent (the movie) in my thirties, and was baffled until near the end at the moral perspective of the story. When the movie got to La Vie Boheme, I finally understood the moral underpinning of every prior scene, even if I didn’t agree with it. The movie’s assumptions about its audience made it difficult to get that far.