Holiday and Movie

It was, indeed, a happy Thanksgiving; one of the happiest I can remember. In recent years, Thanksgiving at my family's house has been somewhat stressful, but this year was not. (The difference was largely, I think, because my mother cordially disinvited her brother-in-law and his family from sleeping over, although they came for dinner. They are wonderful people and gracious (if loud) houseguests (who rather enjoy arguing with each other); hosting them was a stress on my mom, and also meant that my sister, brother, & I were kicked out of beds and sent to toss and turn on air mattresses.) This Thanksgiving, however, was a great day, filled with various family members, immediate and extended, who chatted, circulated, ate, chatted, and ate some more. An ever-rotating group played many spirited games of Sorry! between snacks. I won one game.

The next day G. and I visited his family on the Cape. It was a smaller bunch--5 of us rather than the 15 at my homestead--and also very enjoyable. But OH! can his family talk and talk. I was dying for some sort of boardgame, but contented myself thumbing through the beautiful photos in Vogue when I needed to tune out for a minute.

Ah, Vogue.

Yesterday G. and I went to see Rent. Neither of us had ever seen the stage version, and both of us were disappointed with the movie. (G. didn't care for it at all.) My expectations were simply too high. There were touching moments, and the song "Seasons of Love" never fails to choke me up (even out of context). The scenes at the Life Support Group were beautiful, their songs moving. Many songs, however, were plain silly, with weak melodies and strained rhymes. Despite the dynamic cast, I couldn't care about the characters themselves (except for the generous, gentle, fabulous Angel and his lover, Tom Collins). Rosario Dawson shone as addict/stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold Mimi, but Mimi was a tired stereotype (archetype? hmmm...). Maureen, attention-grabbing performance artist/slut with a nasally voice, is a grating character, but frightfully accurate; I went to college with several of her. I wondered why her lover, successful lawyer JoAnn, spent time with this gaggle of pretentious, ineffective people.

The song much-touted as the "anthem of a generation", La Vie Boheme, smacked of self-importance. The moral center of the movie seemed off to me. Even as it serves as a sort of morality play about the Creative Spirit and Artists, their morals seem amiss, arrogant, and silly; and as it serves as a morality play about Kindness to the Homeless, it does so in a patronizing, ineffective way. I too often found myself agreeing with the Establishment (personified in former-Bohemian-turned-entrepreneur Benny Coffin III, played by a coolly confident Taye Diggs). The movie's most touching moments are its most honest and subdued, when the motley crew of artists grappled with the ravages of AIDS.

Although the two-and-a-half hours flew by, there was plenty of time for eye-rolling. When the credits rolled at the end, G. heard a woman behind us say, "See, I told you we should have gone to Harry Potter."