Last week, our class watched the musical drama film Rent together in preparation for the upcoming opera, the plot of which is based on Giacomo Puccini‘s opera La Bohème. However, the story in Rent was adjusted and enriched with a number of modern elements, which depicts the lives of several Bohemians and their struggle with drugs, sexuality, and living. The film left me with some mixed feelings, but overall, I enjoyed it for its reveal of real love and true sentiments.
The film started with Christmas Eve, when the aspiring filmmaker Mark and his roommate Roger found out that their rent was due yet they struggled to pay it off, this was where the first song of the film “Rent” began. I think most of the songs are apt and euphonic, which I really enjoyed throughout the entire film. I was particularly impressed when all the people appeared at their balcony to ignite paper and protested the rent, the scene was so dramatic that I even worried for a conflagration for a few second. (Of course for the purpose of the drama, it did not happen.)
One thing that I found uniquely interesting about the film was that despite it was depicting lives of people with unconventional social habits or identities, such as drug addicts, HIV carriers, transgender, and bisexual. They were not portrayed in a negative way, instead, they were all characterized as people with true sentiments, people who are loving, caring and supportive. We could even find engagement in the stories that took place among them. Especially at Angel’s funeral, each of the main characters went onto the stage of the church and recollected their memories with Angel. I found the scene particularly moving and relatable as the I empathized with the characters.
In comparison to the real opera La Boheme. Despite the film mirrors certain main characters and plots from it, I still think that the difference between them are quite significant. In the opera, Mimi and Rodolfo fell in love with each other the first time they met. While in the film, Roger kept pushing Mimi away until the night of Maureen’s performance, he finally accepted her after knowing she was also HIV positive. There are a lot more differences between the two, perhaps it is because the film also aims to address certain modern issues that commonly exists in Bohemian’s live — their struggle for living, to manage relationships and to battle against diseases. It is the addition of these contemporary elements that rendered these disparities between the opera and the film.
Overall, I enjoyed the film a lot. Despite the lives of the main characters seemed to be far away from the reality of my life, I still found plenty of connections in the film, as one of the themes of the film is inseparable with the universal emotion that all of us share — love.
