A Passionless Rent and an Overstuffed Bee Season

Rent, the film adaptation of the popular 1996 Broadway musical, has finally arrived in theaters, courtesy of Columbia Pictures and Chris Columbus.The film features at least six of the original eight performers from the stage production. Somewhat surprisingly, most of the performers make the transition to film admirably. Rosario Dawson and Tracie Thomas are the two newcomers to the cast, and they deliver the most impressive performances. Dawson portrays Mimi, a dancer addicted to drugs; and Thomas portrays Joanne, a lesbian attorney.

The story centers around the lives of eight young adults struggling to make their way in New York City. The other racial ethnically diverse cast of characters includes Mark (Anthony Rapp), a documentary filmmaker whose girlfriend leaves him for a woman; Roger (Adam Pascal), a struggling songwriter who is grappling with his girlfriend’s suicide; Tom (Jesse Martin), a philosophy professor who is mugged at the beginning of the film; Angel, a drag queen who finds Tom after he’s mugged and then falls in love with him; and Benny (Taye Diggs), a former friend of the group who has recently married the landlord’s daughter and who now must collect rent money from tenants. The intersecting trials and tribulations of these characters are set against the backdrop of the crowded streets of New York and the presence of HIV/AIDS, which touches each of their lives either directly or indirectly.

The film adaptation features several entertaining musical renditions, and the performances are thoroughly engaging. Yet the film adaptation by director Chris Columbus is a by-the-numbers production that fails to muster the power that the film’s characters and their circumstances demand. Columbus’s previous directorial work includes Home Alone, Only the Lonely, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and The Bicentennial Man. These films are comparably much lighter, though, and Columbus’s gift for infusing those films with broad comedic strokes is not what is needed here. The film and its audience would have benefited from a director with the deft skill of combining passionate musical performances with the somber tone befitting young adults struggling with their sexual identities and the very prospect of living in an age of HIV/AIDS. Despite a full two hours-plus running time, the film never develops these characters beyond their initial conditions. The character of Angel, in particular, isn't given the screen time to become the emotional catalyst that the film demands. This is a shortcoming not only in Rent but in Chris Columbus's work in general. As in his adaptation of the first two Harry Potter novels, Columbus is faithful to a fault. But this is a detriment, for his effort here lacks artistic expression and interpretation. To astute observers, Columbus is anything but a logical choice for this material. Julie Taymoor, who brilliantly directed The Lion King on Broadway and then showed her versatility with her direction of Frida, could have effectively adapted this material for the screen. Unfortunately, the American studio system has produced and delivered a film that is packaged as proudly progressive, yet its direction is marred by restraint and limitation. The shortcoming renders the film void of vision and power and useless in impacting the callous conservativism it seeks to challenge.

Grade: C+

Bee Season

Bee Season is one of the more ambitious films audiences will see this year. Based on the novel by Myla Goldberg, it tells the story of Eliza, an eleven-year-old girl whose sudden success in spelling bees has an unforeseen effect on her family. Relative newcomer Flora Cross delivers a rich performance as the sixth grader. She's given a wide variety of emotions to portray and she does so amazingly well. Richard Gere, one of America’s most underrated actors, is convincing as the girl’s father, a quietly stern Jewish theologian with a special interest in mysticism and the Kabbalah. Julianne Binoche and Max Minghella (son of the renowned director Anthony Minghella) portray the girls’ mother and teenage brother, respectively.

Even in a great year for American films, Bee Season is memorable for its intelligence. As the film progresses, Saul (Richard Gere) teaches Eliza the secrets of the Kabbalah and explains how she can use her understanding of it to become an even better speller. The plot point is as thought-provoking and as philosophical and theological as any in American film this year, and it is water that is rarely tread intelligently. The film’s courage in challenging the audience to consider the role of faith in our lives and the relationship of faith to the gifts and talents God has bestowed upon us is to be admired.

But the film suffers somewhat from two subplots that seem as if they could have used a bit more time. One involves Saul’s neglect of his son Aaron and the other involves his wife Miriam’s inability to cope with the pressures of her daily life, caused by troubling memories of her parents’ death. The film asks us to believe that Aaron drifts away from the roots of his faith as retaliation for his father’s neglect, but how he retaliates is likely to be the subject of some debate. During the course of their own struggles, Miriam and Aaron each move apart from Saul while maintaining some closeness to Eliza. The subplots are not quite distractions from the main story of Eliza’s growth, for her growth is linked to how the situations involving her father, mother, and brother are resolved. They simply aren’t as finely executed, and for that the film is not as accomplished as it could be.

Bee Season was directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, the team who co-directed The Deep End, an acclaimed thriller from several years ago. As in The Deep End, the directors elicit passionate performances, and here they generate genuine suspense from the drama that unfolds. Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal, who wrote the screenplay to a family drama Running on Empty, adapted the screenplay for Bee Season. Her collaboration with McGehee and Siegel falls short of being the rousing critical successes of either of the aforementioned films. But for all of its ideas, Bee Season has a running time of only one hour and forty-four minutes. Its story construction and overall ambitions deserve more time, which would make viewing the film a more complete experience for audiences who may find themselves yearning for more.

Grade: B-

News and Notes

Syriana, a geopolitical drama about the oil industry, will open nationwide on Friday, December 9. It's one of several politically controversial films to be released this holiday season. The others include the soon-to-be-released Munich, directed by Steven Spielberg; Good Night and Good Luck from director George Clooney; and Jarhead from director Sam Mendes.

According to Entertainment Weekly, the five highest grossing movies for November 21-26 are as follows:

Harry Potter $102.3 million
Walk the Line $22.3 million
Chicken Little $99.1 million
Derailed $21.8 million
Zathura $20.3 million

The big movies to be released in the month of December include the following: The Chronicles of Narnia, Brokeback Mountain, King Kong, and Match Point.

You Heard it Here First: Vince's 2005 Oscar Predictions

Best Picture:

Memoirs of a Geisha
Brokeback Mountain
Munich
Match Point
Pride and Prejudice

Best Actor

Joaquin Phoenix Walk the Line
Daniel Strathairn Good Night and Good Luck
Philip Seymour Hoffman Capote
Heath Ledger Brokeback Mountain
Russell Crowe Cinderella Man

Best Actress:

Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice
Charlize Theron North Country
Gi Jhong Memoirs of a Geisha
Judi Dench Mrs. Henderson Presents'
Reese Witherspoon Walk the Line