Analysis Of The Movie Rent

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On Saturday, October 21, I watched the movie adaption of the musical, Rent. This musical takes place in New York City in the late 1980s to early 1990s, and involves a dysfunctional Bohemian friend group and their struggles. The friend group features eight characters: Mark Cohen, a Jewish filmmaker, Roger Davis, a HIV-positive songwriter and musician, Mimi Marquez, an HIV-positive erotic dancer, Maureen Johnson, a bisexual performer, Joanne Jefferson, a lesbian lawyer, Tom Collins, a gay part-time philosophy professor at NYU and anarchist who suffers with AIDS, Angel Dumott Schunard, a drag queen who also suffers with AIDS, and Benny Coffin III, a local landlord. Johnathan Larson acted as the musical’s original composer and playwright, and worked …show more content…

I believe that the character development is one of the strongest parts of the musical. One character that experiences strong character development is Roger. At the beginning of the musical, Roger is very depressed over the death of his girlfriend, and is six months clean from his heroin addiction. He is roommates with Mark, and hasn’t seen anyone but him in a very long time (Miller). He has a very heavy backstory, more so than other characters. As the musical progresses, we see Roger grow and heal with the help of his friends and his love interest, Mimi. An example of his growth can be seen through the song One Song Glory. Mimi also has strong character development, and her character steadily grows as the musical progresses. She connects strongly with Roger, and though we don’t know as much about her past as we do about Roger’s, we do know that she is a erotic dancer, and a struggling heroin addict who is HIV positive. As time passes, Mimi grows with Roger, and during the scene of Light my Candle, the two bond over their struggles and slowly fall in love. By the end of the musical, Roger and Mimi both have undergone extensive growth which can be seen when Roger sings Your Eyes to Mimi as she is faced with a near death …show more content…

I have listened to the cast albums for both the movie and the Broadway production, and many songs from the Broadway production were taken out of the movie. Some lines were not even taken out, but were spoken instead of sung. Personally, I think that when these line are sung rather than spoken, they evoke more emotional reactions in the audience. In the movie version, there are also some characters that do not appear in the original Broadway version. An example of this is seen through Roger’s backstory with April, his dead girlfriend - the movie shows Roger and April together, whereas in the Broadway version, she is only

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