Rent

Posted on November 20, 2005 at 10:45 am

When thinking about a Tony- and Pulitzer-prize winning musical based on an opera, an almost-entirely-sung story about homeless artists, some of them drug addicts, some infected with the AIDS virus, the director of Mrs. Doubtfire is not the first thought that comes to mind, but he turns out to be a wise choice.

Director Chris Columbus is not known for being edgy. But he is known for respecting the material and the performers and for bringing solid, if uninspired, journeyman skills — like attention to detail — to productions designed around reliably marketable themes (romantic comedies, heartwarming family stories) and reliably marketable big Hollywood stars (Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon in Stepmom, Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire), and for taking on the first two Harry Potter movies and not messing them up. He is safe.

That may seem like an odd choice for “Rent,” not just a critically acclaimed Broadway musical, not just an all-but perpetually-playing theatrical production around the world, but a genuine cult, with Rent-heads camping out overnight to get the limited low-price tickets set aside for each performance, people who have been to see dozens of productions. But when you consider the challenges faced by those who wanted to adapt this phenomenon for film, the choice of Columbus makes sense — and so does the result.

Adapting any play for screen is always tricky. What works on stage does not necessarily work in a movie. Plays are more about the words. But movies, where so much is communicated with the slightest motion of an eyebrow, feel weighed down and stagey if they seem too talky. Furthermore, the play “Rent” is very much an artifact of its era. Do we try to update it a decade, adding cell phones, digital video cameras, and internet access? AIDS is neither the shock nor the death sentence it was in 1989. Do we keep it as a time capsule? Its inspiration, La Boheme, still works, even though not many people die of tuberculosis anymore.

But, and I know I am risking a flood of email here, “Rent” is also an artifact of another era, the subjective era of transition into adulthood. That made it a totem for young audiences. The underlying theme is a fantasy for 15-year olds, who think it is all so simple and romantic to build your life on the principle of “epater le bourgeois” (shock the middle class).

Its starkness has a lot of appeal to the us/them tendencies of adolescents. It suggests that the only legitmate and authentic option is to live in poverty in the name of artistic integrity. And there is even more appeal in the idea of leaving your family of origin to create one of your own with your friends, a happily multi-ethnic, pan-sexual alliance of ever-merry, ever-devoted, ever-honest comrades in arms who know that all that matters is “la vie boheme.”

They sing an anthem: “To loving tension, no pension/To more than one dimension/To starving for attention/Hating convention, hating pretension/Not to mention of course/Hating dear old mom and dad/To riding your bike/Midday past the three- piece suits/To fruits to no absolutes/To Absolut/to choice/To the Village Voice/To any passing fad/To being an us-for once-, instead of a them….”

What could be more heavenly? To live in a picturesque little artistic hovel with artists who understand that art and love and fun are all that matter. At its best, it taps into the 15-year-old longings we all keep inside.

The power of the music and the characters and the live performance somehow make the weakness of those themes work, especially in the context of the show’s mythic backstory. The man who wrote it, Jonathan Larson, who was waiting tables just months before the show opened, died suddenly just after the final rehearsal, never knowing that his first play would become a sensation. But how can you translate that to film without throwing it all out of balance?

Furthermore, the conventional wisdom in Hollywood, even after the success of Chicago is that the “traditional” musical is no longer possible, that any movie with songs has to have a “device” like the stagey artificiality of Moulin Rouge or the “it’s all in her mind” approach of Chicago. Is it possible in the 21st century for us to accept the idea of a bunch of squatters dancing and singing through subways, abandoned buildings, AIDS support groups, and elegant engagement parties?

Enter the safe Christopher Columbus who has just successfully shepherded another property with fanatically protective fans, the first two Harry Potter films. And he turns out to be just the right sensibility for this material.

How can it broaden its appeal from that specific moment? The music is strong and sustainable. The characters are vivid and (mostly) endearing. The first good decision Columbus made was to keep as much of the original Broadway cast as possible. Six of the original eight leads appear. Most Hollywood films have no rehearsal time and actors often meet each other just before the scene begins. These actors worked together over a long period of time, performing the show together over a very successful run. Their complete comfort with their characters and command of the material adds immeasurably to the depth and richness of the performances. And the fact that they are not played by over-familiar Teen People cover icon pop stars (reportedly, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera were considered for parts in the movie) helps us to believe in the performers as unknowns living in poverty.

The story centers around roommates Roger (Adam Pascal), an AIDS-infected songwriter still mourning the death of his girlfriend, and Mark (Anthony Rapp), a documentary film-maker and refugee from the suburbs, still mourning the loss of his girlfriend — to her new girlfriend. His former girlfriend is Maureen (Irina Menzel), an outspoken performance artist, and her new love is Joanne (Tracie Thoms), a lawyer from a wealthy family.

Roger and Mark have a former roommate, Benny (Taye Diggs), now married to a wealthy girl. He is working for his father-in-law, planning a rennovation of the neighborhood. On Christmas Eve 1989 he offers his friends free rent if they will stop Maureen’s performance art protest of the development. A downstairs neighbor named Mimi (Rosario Dawson) comes up looking for a light for her candle. And another friend, Collins (Jessie L. Martin), a renegade professor, comes by with the flamboyant but sweet-natured cross-dresser Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia), who rescued him after a mugging and later brings him to an AIDS support group, and then becomes his lover.

We go through a year with these characters (or, as they put it, 525,600 minutes) as they struggle with issues of health, romance, money (always needing that “rent”), and art. Will Maureen and Joanne stay together? (A highlight of the movie is a sensational angry duet in the middle of an elegant engagement party given by Joanne’s parents.) Will Roger risk loving again? Will Mark go to work for a sleazy tabloid television show (the Faustian offer is made in a funny cameo by Sarah Silverman of Jesus is Magic). Will Collins give up New York for the stark beauty of Santa Fe?

Columbus wisely begins with the cast standing on a stage singing one of the show’s key songs, acknowledging the inherent artificiality, and then he just asks us to accept that we are entering a place in New York where people just break into song all the time, and we do.

The musical numbers are capably, if not especially imaginatively staged (with the exception of Angel’s introductory number, which has some distracting editing), and the structural pruning and smoothing Columbus and screenwriter Steve Chbosky have done is judicious and unobtrusive.

The show-stoppers deliver, especially “La Vie Boheme,” with the cast dancing on a restaurant tabletop. Pascal sometimes seems to have wandered in from a 1970’s dinner theater production of Jesus Christ Superstar and Tony winner Heredia gives us more of Angel’s sweetness than his sass, but Menzel and Martin are jump-off-the-screen superstars, fiery, gutsy, and touching. Dawson and Thoms, the two additions to the cast, are both magnificent, matching the old-timers every step of the way. As they play the two outsiders to the close-knit community, their energy works well to complement the members of the original cast who play Roger, Mark, and their friends, and by the end of the movie, we feel that we, too, are a part of this family, or wish we were.

Parents should know that this movie has very strong material for a PG-13, including gay, straight, and bi-sexual characters, many of whom have AIDS and are or have been drug addicts. Characters use strong language, drink, and abuse drugs. A character is mugged and injured. A dog is killed (off-camera) and there is a very sad death. Parents who have concern about the suitability of this film for teenagers should see it before deciding whether it is appropriate, and, if they do decide to permit middle or high schoolers to see it, they should be prepared to discuss it with them afterward.

Families who see this movie should talk about the moral choices faced by Mark, Benny, Collins, and Maureen, and how they decided what their priorities and options were. How did Angel see his choices differently, and why? They should read the lyrics of “La Vie Boheme” and see how many of the references they can identify. They should also read and talk about this essay by Dave Eggars about what it means (and does not mean) to “sell out.”

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Chicago and Hair. They will also enjoy seeing a live or video production of the opera that inspired this musical, Puccini’s gorgeous La Boheme (just as in “Rent,” the ailing Mimi comes upstairs to get a light for her candle). The version by Baz Lurhmann, director of Moulin Rouge and Strictly Ballroom is very striking. Harvard Law Professor Joe Singer’s thoughtful comparison of the movie and stage versions of the show is very worthwhile and the DVD version has some fascinating (and heartbreaking) background footage.

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Flightplan

Posted on September 19, 2005 at 8:13 pm

It’s always a bad sign in a thriller when the big reveal is greeted by hoots of derisive laughter, and that’s what happened at this movie. It’s an even worse sign when two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster is out-acted by a child who is missing or unconscious for most of the movie, but that happened, too.

Just-widowed Kyle Pratt (Foster) is flying from Berlin to New York with her 6-year-old, Julia (Marlene Lawston), taking her husband’s casket home to be buried. They are exhausted and shaken, so they find some empty rows in the back of the plane and go to sleep. When Kyle wakes up, Julia is gone. As she searches the plane, getting more and more worried, the attitude of the flight attendants shifts from helpful to wary to hostile. It seems there is no evidence that Julia ever boarded the plane. A federal air marshall travelling undercover believes Kyle is delusional, and so does the captain. Kyle starts to wonder if they could be right.

Then it all veers into a level of preposterousness that would be too silly to go into even if it didn’t contain spoilers. There are some tense moments, but unlike the other recent airplane thriller, “Red Eye,” this one never creates a sense of claustrophobic containment. Kyle, an engineer who helped to design this aircraft, the largest ever, understands the blueprints well enough to know where to look, and as she keeps exploring new places, some of which appear positively cavernous, it dissipates the tension. So do the below-par one-note performances from Foster, Sarsgaard, and Sean Bean (as the pilot). This film may be called “Flightplan,” but it never takes flight and there is nothing that rises to the dignity of a plan of any kind. Discuss. But don’t bother with the movie.

Parents should know that this movie has intense peril and violence, including shooting, explosions, and references to murder, suicide, kidnapping, and molestation. There is some strong language, though less than average for a PG-13. A strength of the movie is its portrayal of a strong woman and the way it raises the issue of bigotry when some passengers assume that the Middle Eastern men on the airplane must be untrustworthy.

Families who see this movie should talk about how national security issues have affected the way people feel about air travel. They should also talk about the various arguments Kyle used and which ones were most persuasive.

Families who enjoy this film will also enjoy some of the far-better disappearing person classics, especially The Lady Vanishes (from which this film lifts one of its key clues), Bunny Lake is Missing, and So Long at the Fair, as well as Foster’s last Mother Courage performance in Panic Room all of which have vastly more satisfying conclusions than this one.

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“Gothika Rule” Action/Adventure Drama

MirrorMask

Posted on September 18, 2005 at 2:21 pm

A curiously distant story is surrounded by enchanting visuals and special effects in this Alice in Wonderland-style tale of a young girl who has to solve a puzzle in a magical land in order to get back home and help her mother get well.

Helena (Stephanie Leonidas) has, as her mother points out, a life most kids her age would love to run away to. Her parents own a little circus. Helena performs as a juggler, but wishes she could stay in her room, making up stories and drawing pictures. Other girls might wish they could join the circus, but Helena wishes she could run away to “real life.” In an angry moment, she says she wishes her mother was dead.

And then Helena’s mother (Gina McKee of Notting Hill) becomes ill and has to have surgery. While she is gone, Helena somehow gets transported to The Dark Lands, a place of fantasy and magic. Nothing is right because the Queen of Light is sleeping and cannot awaken until a missing object is found.

Helena doesn’t just not know where it is; she does not know what it is. Still, she is confident she can find it. She sets off with Valentine (Jason Berry), an adult but an unreliable companion. Helena has to answer the riddle, find the key, and outsmart those who try to stop her to figure out why there is a young woman who looks just like her in what looks like her bedroom, behaving in a way that appalls her. She meets up with two queens, one asleep, one who will do anything to keep her, both looking a little familiar. And through these adventures she learns more about herself and begins to grow up.

But this movie is all about the sights, not the story, and the sights are glorious, all burnished shades of gold and scritchy lines. The magical images will engage and fire the imagination of the audience, even if the story sometimes feels cool and understated.

Parents should know that sensitive viewers of all ages may find some of the images and characters in this movie disturbing. Characters are in peril and a young girl worries about whether her mother will survive an operation. There are unhappy confrontations. Teenagers kiss, which another character finds gross and upsetting.

Families who see this movie should talk about why Helena wanted something different from a life that many kids her age would love to have. What was the most important thing she had to learn on her journey? What was the most important thing that Valentine had to learn? Parents and children often feel, like Helena, that adolescence is like swapping the person you know for someone who looks the same but feels and behaves very differently, the “real” one feeling as though he or she is living in a strange new place. What stories, like this one, have that as a theme?

Families who enjoy this film will also enjoy The Wizard of Oz and (for older children and teenagers) Return to Oz, as well as other movie visits to fantasy lands like The Never-Ending Story, Labyrinth, Willow, The Dark Crystal, The Phantom Tollbooth, My Neighbor Totoro and Alice in Wonderland. They may want to take a look at the work of Saul Steinberg and Ronald Searle, whose drawings may have inspired some of the images in this film. And they will enjoy the novels of Neil Gaiman.

G

Posted on August 30, 2005 at 3:21 pm

Audacious, ambitious, and provocative but uneven and ultimately unsatisfying, this long-delayed film adapts F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel of class, love, and power, The Great Gatsby, to the present. Instead of Jay Gatsby, the gangster who can’t forget the girl he lost, we have Summer G, the gangsta, the head of a successful hip-hop recording label.

Richard T. Jones is commanding as Summer G, whose college romance with Skye (Chenoa Maxwell) ended when she married Chip Hightower (Blair Underwood), heir to a publishing dynasty. He has taken a house in the Hamptons not far from where the Hightowers have a home.

When Skye’s cousin Tre (Andre Royo) comes to interview Summer G, Chip asks him to cover for him so that he can see his girlfriend without Skye’s finding out. Tre refuses, until Chip reminds him that the magazine Tre works for is owned by Chip’s father.

Summer G then puts the same kind of pressure on Tre. He will not cooperate with the interview unless Tre helps him see Skye. Again, Tre refuses at first, then reluctantly agrees.

Summer G’s recording artists are staying with him. One who has not had a hit for a while becomes increasingly dependent on his girlfriend, who goes away for what she says will be just a few days and then stops returning his calls. Another becomes bitter and manipulative when she believes Summer G is not giving her the chance she deserves.

The Fitzgerald novel has plenty of material for an update that raises some contemporary issues of race and class and culture, but this film falters and misses the point and butchers the metaphors, turning a brilliant story into a soapy love triangle.

Jones has a commanding presence and Underwood does what he can with a cardboard cad of a character. But Royo is weak and Maxwell is hopelessly bad and the uneven, bumpy narrative and long delay between completion and release support the rumor that the movie has been recut following unssuccessful test screenings. Fitzgerald famously placed a green light on the dock in this novel. This review is intended to place a red light on any plan to see this film.

Parents should know that this movie has extremely strong language (including the n-word), drinking, smoking, drug references, sexual references and situations, and violence, including guns, with characters injured and killed.

Families who see this movie should talk about why Skye decided to stay with Chip instead of Summer G and how the movie differs from the original book.

Families who enjoy this film will also enjoy the earlier film versions of “The Great Gatsby,” especially the with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow and a television miniseries.

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Based on a book Drama

War of the Worlds

Posted on June 26, 2005 at 1:50 pm

“Is it the terrorists?” a frightened child asks, because that is the scariest thing she knows. But what makes this thing scary is that it is something no one knows. It is beyond our knowledge, even beyond our imagination. Earth is under attack and no one knows by whom or what they want.

These are not the “let’s play musical notes together” aliens of Close Encounters of the Third Kind or the Reese’s Pieces-loving, bicycle-flying botanist alien from E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. There’s no “Take me to your leader,” or Klaatu Barada Niktu. These aliens don’t even want to keep humans on as slave labor as in Battlefield Earth. They don’t want us to understand or negotiate with them. It does not seem to be about power or plunder. They just want to destroy us. As one character says, “This is not a war any more than there’s a war between men and maggots. It’s an extermination.”

Steven Spielberg knows two things better than anyone else who ever made a movie, and both are in top form here. First is his extraordinarily evocative sense of family life, the way every detail of home and connection (even, maybe especially the most frayed of connections) tell the story and make us care about it. A ribbon, a mirror, a boot, a box of family photographs, a Beach Boys song –- the juxtaposition of the ordinary with the unthinkable sustains a “golly” factor that grabs our throats and our hearts at the same time.

The special effects in the movie are dazzling. Just when we thought that we were so accustomed to the limitless wonders of CGI that we could never be stunned in a theater again, Spielberg just plain knocks our socks off. My husband counted eight spontaneous “Oh my Gods” coming from me during the movie. It isn’t just that it all looks real, seamlessly integrating the effects. It’s that what looks so real is so “Oh my God.”

The images are fresh and imaginative and yet perfectly believable, mixing the normal with the inconceivable, from the vast alien machines to the buckling of the earth and the apocalyptic landscapes. The most vivid images are when we see the trappings of everyday life transformed. In one moment of complete insanity, the bells at a railroad crossing start to clang, and the striped barriers come down as though it is a perfectly ordinary day and the commuter train is about to arrive on schedule. Everyone stops and takes a breath and then the train comes in, filled with flames.

Spielberg’s other great trick is his mastery of scale, and again, that use of context brings the story literally home. At least half of the “Oh my Gods” were responses to wow-style reveals of new threats, new invasions.

And Spielberg makes invasion into a theme, from the very beginning, when with stunning economy he sets the stage for all that is to come.

Our hero-to-be, Ray (Tom Cruise) arrives home late. His ex-wife Mary Ann (Miranda Otto), pregnant by her new husband, is standing there with a hand on her hip. The new husband is handsome, a little sleek-looking in a black turtleneck, but clearly so nice you can’t even bring yourself to hate him, though Ray has clearly tried. Even though the ex-wife is late, she decides to carry their daughter’s suitcase into Ray’s house. Ray is very uncomfortable as she opens his all-but-empty refrigerator and peeks into his messy bedroom. He feels invaded. His children seem alien. And yet, in one of the most understated but meaningful moments in the movie, a shared joke between Ray and Mary Ann shows us a glimpse of Ray’s asperity and resolve.

But all of that is under the surface. When we meet him, Ray has long been used to disappointing people. It is not clear which is worse, the sullen animosity of his son Robbie (Ray wears a Yankees baseball cap; Robbie pulls out one with a Red Sox logo) or the patient lack of expectations from his daughter, Rachel (Dakota Fanning). But when it becomes clear that something very, very bad is happening, Ray will do anything to keep his family safe. This will be his story more than it is the story of the battles. The movie is at heart, well, heart.

And Cruise does heart well. He and Fanning anchor the film with outstanding performances of conviction and charisma. Rachel’s protection of her “space” and Ray’s efforts to care for her memory and spirit all echo the invasion theme. The story moves well from the large scale destruction of a city to a small-scale intrusion into a shattered basement retreat occupied by three people. Throughout, the focus is on Spielberg’s favorite subject, the family as fortress. The government barely exists, the army is dedicated and honorable but overmatched.

And, as Ray points out, the humans are almost as dangerous as the aliens. Ray is not the only one who will do anything to keep his family alive and the ochlochratic chaos means that nowhere is safe.

The story is affecting, the action scenes are thrilling, the issues are resonant. Yet it is not ultimately as satisfying as less skillful movies like Independence Day. It may be wiser and it may have more artistic validity, but summer explosion movies call out for a more complete resolution than the Wells book allows. A valid but subtle point is lost, not for lack of respectful presentation, but perhaps because ot it.

Spoilers alert: Parents should know that this is an extremely tense and intense movie, with constant peril and violence. Many characters are killed. Many are neatly vaporized, but there are scenes with dead bodies, a brutal off-camera murder, a death by impalement, guns, grenades, lasers, and other weapons, and some grisly images. Characters use brief strong language. There are tense confrontations between family members. Some viewers will find the behavior of the humans more disturbing than that of the aliens.

Someone once said that the aliens in movies tell us more about what we are thinking about than about any likely real-life extraterrestrials. The UFO movies of the cold war era were, under this analysis, a reflection of our fears about communism and the atomic bomb — with the 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Day the Earth Stood Still as examples, contrasted with the more benign aliens of Spielberg’s other movies. What does this movie tell us about our current fears?

Families who see this movie should talk about how the story has changed since it was originally written by H.G. Wells more than 100 years ago. How was that era’s interest in the relatively recent scientific discoveries reflected in the book and how has the current version used modern concerns to connect to a contemporary audience? What do you think about the balance of the story between the action and the personal drama as Ray’s character has to become more responsible and
find a way to communicate with his children. How did both parts of the story help each other? In a situation like this, who do you help? Who do you accept help from?

Families who appreciate this film may enjoy listening to the legendary Orson Welles broadcast. This version of the book has the radio script as well. The text is also available online at Project Gutenberg. The new version has a small tribute to the George Pal movie. They will also enjoy Independence Day, one of the all-time best alien invasion movies, and they might get a kick out of Battlefield Earth, one of the worst, and Signs, one that has a bit of both.