RENT the movie went in a direction I never thought it would.  It made me proud to be gay, an artist and someone who values the human experience.  I have never seen the stage version, but I knew the music as familiar as one can.  Not without its flaws, the film's greatest strength is not the amazing vocals or its performances, but a heart that is unafraid to show itself.  Everyone (even a low key Roger) powers through the material and each song does not feel outside the realm of possibility.  Instead, I saw the crafting of musical numbers akin to the reenactment of memory; we value memories of importance, life, death and rebirth, and being unafraid to put a price too high to imagine on them.  The director, Chris Columbus, lets the characters sing their lives without restraint and in turn, he creates a most intimate picture of a time that is not gone of people, dying from AIDS and fighting and living despite.  He shows sexuality in a way I've never seen on film meant for such larger audiences, not with acts of sex, but acts of true caring.  He shows artists who are not necessarily talented proving their hearts that motivate them to become true artists.  This is a film that went beyond a movie of a musical and showed the truest image I have ever seen of family and love.  This became less a film where one could argue over the direction of a scene and instead became a labour of love, the exact intention that the creator, Jonathan Larson, was thinking.  In that frame of mind, it was absolutely perfect and an experience that I will always remember.