I bought two DVDs from Amazon without ever watching them before which is not something that i usually do. I have, however, seen staged productions of them both. The movies were Rent and Proof which i had seen staged at DeVos and Circle Theatre respectively.
It's really not fair comparing the musical Rent to the film but i couldn't help myself as i was watching it. On the plus side, it was cool seeing so many of the original cast members and seeing the benefits of complete changes of location to move the story along. The movie added more spoken scenes whereas the stage production is practically all sung. I thought this hurt somewhat because, as musicals are often criticized, it is odd when someone suddenly bursts out into song. On stage, since everything is sung, you are lead to believe that's just how they talk in their world. It's like seeing a show where the actors are using a southern dialect during the most of the play and then jump into an English accent for the really emotional parts. Maybe i was just bummed that they cut some of my favorite musical parts of the show (namely "Goodbye Love" and "Halloween"). While most of the film had a wonderful "real" look to it, i was distracted by the obviously digitally added condensation clouds that puffed from the actor's mouths during the outside "cold" scenes. They just didn't look real to me.
I had to buy Proof because i want my DVD collection to contain as many math movies as possible. In actuality, there is very little real math in there and the story is approachable to people who have never studied math beyond simple addition. I think the play was full of wonderful themes about how we can make others believe in us and how we learn to believe in ourselves. The show also puts absolute certainty along side of mental instability in an unsettling way.
In both cases, i wish i had a way to reset my brain to remove the preexisting impressions i had of the material so i could see it again as if for the first time. I kept battling my expectations of what i thought was supposed to happen next and what actually did happen. Both shows were transformed and rearranged for their life as a feature film. I can't tell if the changes made it better or worse. It feels that i'm just looking at the same thing from a different point of view. It's like each story exists outside of any specific production or telling. I've chosen parts from each that reveal the story that i want to be told. Is that allowed?
Posted by Matthew at March 12, 2006 10:57 PM