Well, my last pick turned out to be a total dud, so let’s try this again. Let’s go with a musical film made by someone I have a reasonable amount of faith can actually pull off this kind of production: Lin-Manuel Miranda. I have all manner of respect for what the guy has done already, between giving Daveed Diggs the kind of platform his talents deserve, and just how brilliant Hamilton is all on its own. However, despite some shared DNA, theatre isn’t cinema. And with him stepping into the director’s chair for the first time here, I am definitely rooting for him but I would totally understand if this doesn’t work out as planned. Not that I even need to entertain the thought of that being the case, though.
I have kept myself abreast of Andrew Garfield’s body of work to date, from Under The Silver Lake, to Breathe, to Silence, to Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man, to all the way back when he was in that Doctor Who two-parter about the dick-tentacle-faced alien underneath the Empire State Building. Nowhere in that timeline has he even attempted anything musical… but I get the feeling this production is going to change that. It’s not simply a matter of him doing well as a singer and general performer despite the lack of experience, although he most certainly is. It’s that the sheer amount of energy and life he imbues the character with gives the impression that this is what he (both the character and the actor) was always meant to do. That to live is to do so through song. This isn’t just revelatory; this might well completely change how I view this actor from this day forward. No matter what comes next, I am always going to think of him as Jonathan Larson.
He makes for the perfect casting pick for Larson, especially with how Miranda and writer Steven Levenson frame him within the story. There are echoes of the characterisation Miranda gave to Alexander Hamilton in how artistically brilliant and impetuously flawed he is, and there’s something to be said about how Larson also writes like he’s running out of time. He is shown as a musical marvel, but still very much human, so the biographical edge of the story is tempered by how the production isn’t looking to deify him or make him into some unreachable paragon of musical theatre. He doesn’t always make the right choice, but every choice he does make is guided by his need to self-express.
The story itself gave me quite a few flashbacks, as odd as this may sound, to Velvet Buzzsaw, as the genesis for the source material basically came from the same place: Salvaging a failure. The original Tick, Tick… Boom! is a “rock monologue” all about Larson’s failed attempt to get his dystopian rock opera Superbia made into a proper production, and with how Larson is characterised and performed, he certainly comes across like someone with a similar need to turn that stunted expression of self into its own expression of self. The man seemingly cannot help himself, writing songs about anything and everything, to the point where turning that passion into a paying gig almost seems perfunctory. Because no matter whether he gets paid to do so or not, he’s going to keep doing it anyway. As someone in a similar position of pouring all their time into their creative expression, yet butting up against the prospect of making it into a livelihood, I relate extremely to that kind of sentiment.
But where things get really interesting is with how this musical, which was originally conceived as a one-man show, has been translated into a full-fledged cinematic production with a sizeable cast (all of whom do brilliantly, from Alexandra Shipp as Larson’s girlfriend, to Robin de Jesรบs crushing it as his best friend, right down to getting Black Thought himself to do the rap number Play Game). Lin-Manuel Miranda knew exactly what to do with this material, as the way he works with DOP Alice Brooks and editors Myron Kerstein and Andrew Weisblum takes full advantage of the kind of pace and flow that can only be achieved through cinematic techniques, while staying true to its theatrical origins. The narrative is framed with Larson on-stage explaining and singing the story to the audience, intercut with spoken drama, nostalgic home video stock that helps connect this stylistically to another adaptation of Larson’s work in the film version of Rent, and some real moments of musical fantasy. It’s a serious head rush, and the pacing never slacks for even an instant, acting as its own visual symphony.
Seemingly not content with just setting Broadway ablaze with his theatrical works, and ingraining himself as one of Disney’s current go-to composers, Lin-Manuel Miranda can now add "talented filmmaker" to his repertoire. And what makes that even more gratifying is that the art itself is all about the overwhelming power of artistic expression, highlighting the ticking clock in all our lives and how there’s not enough time on it to be doing anything other than what we desire to do. This is genuinely beautiful cinema, and I highly recommend everyone reading this to go and check it out.
And for the love of all things sacred, Andrew Garfield, keep at it with this singing thing; don’t let that stop here.
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