Rent Analysis

Jonathan Ang

AIDS Fundamentals

ID# 64546397

RENT

Rent is a film that is almost identical to its Broadway musical counterpart. It is a story of eight individuals whose lives collide on one Christmas and become a family over the course of a year. They struggle with love, success, and AIDS in the poor area of East Village of New York City in the late 80s. The movie opens with Mark and Roger, both roommates, who are angry over paying rent. Collin is Mark’s previous roommate Collin, who is HIV-positive, has just returned from being out of town and on his way home he is attacked by three men and left for dead on some alley. Angel is an HIV-positive transvestite drummer who meets Collin. After their first acquaintance they start to become attracted to one another. The landlord Benny, who is a former roommate of Mark and Collins, married into a wealthy family, offers again to give Mark and Roger free rent if they can convince Maureen, who is Mark’s ex-girlfriend, to stop protesting. Maureen left Mark for a female lawyer named Joanne. The protest is concerning Maureen’s performance space which Benny plans to turn into a cyber-cafÐ"©. Later that night Roger finds out that his girlfriend April has committed suicide when she found out she was HIV-positive. Roger who now has contracted the HIV virus from April mourns over her death, but he later meets a new girl, Mimi. Mimi is a night club dancer as well as an addicted heroin user who also has HIV-positive. Roger soon attends a Life Support Meeting after confronting Joanne, from Maureen’s request for help with a technical problem. He films the meeting for his new documentary and someone in the group goes out talking about how he finds it hard to accept what they teach in the group because he doesn’t know what to do, because he was should of died 3 years ago. The following day after Mark agrees to attend the meeting along with Roger, Collins, and Angel, the four of them talk about leaving New York and opening up a restaurant in Santa Fe. Later that night Maureen’s protest occurs and Mark records everything down. He plans to sell his footage to Buzzline, to earn $3,000 a segment. This is when things begin to go downhill, with the proposal of Maureen and Joanne failing, Roger soon finds out and believes that Mimi is cheating on him with Benny, Mimi begins to fall into her drug habit, and Angel’s symptoms are becoming worse and eventually dies. After Angel’s death everything seemed to be in despair but when Roger left to Santa Fe and realized