Rent, John Woo and tensionless dancing

I’m not at all interested in seeing Rent, and, if it means committing a mild heresy, I’m generally uninterested in film musicals of any stripe. The blasé critical reaction to the film and the presence of master of mediocrity Chris Columbus aren’t exactly an incentive to spend my hard(ish)-earned ten bucks on a ticket, but more to the point, I find filmed musicals to be, at best, an awkward medium that tries to repackage the spectacle of live performance into 35mm frames. It rarely works.

Hong Kong film buffs and Western junkies have long heard how the best filmed action scenes, especially gunfights, work along the same general principles as great musical sequences. They are exuberant displays of the physical form in motion, the body not just as artist but instrument and art as well. It’s become basic film critic lingo to label high-octane dual-pistol gunfights with a John Woo quip and the word “balletic,” but to do so is to rob action scenes of an integral ingredient: conflict.

When Chow Yun-Fat busts out the pistols in the tea-house and slides down the banisters, icon-style, he’s not just engaging in an impressive bit of physical business: He’s saving his life. That tension derived from the inherent conflict of a gun or sword battle is entirely missing from the fussy, choreographed unreality of most musical numbers. Sure, they look great and they pull of some impressive moves, but there’s nothing at stake. The characters are going to continue to burst into weird song and dance numbers and they're not going to make mistakes. Pardon me while I thumb through my email.

In a live-performance setting, however, musicals don’t need to create tension in the plot; the spectacle of the choreography, and indeed, the tension created by the uncertainty about whether or not they’ll pull it off, is what keeps us interested. Live theater always has the capacity for error, and the feats it manages are incredibly impressive for the third row. On film, though, that excitement is entirely dissipated as there’s just no question about whether the performers will pull off the next move or not. Hell, half the time it’s a stunt-dancer. That’s not excitement; it’s sissified Oscar-bait.