Director: Richard LaGravenese
Score: 7/10
The Small Stage Moves To The Big Screen
The Last Five Years is a musical that tells the story of a fledgling romance between a writer and an actress as it grows, blooms into a marriage, and then falls into disrepair as that marriage grinds to a slow and painful halt before ending over the course of a five-year span.
I know that seems like a pretty big spoiler, but trust me; it isn’t. The “gimmick”, if you will, for this story is that the two perspectives are unsynced in time. The story as told by Jamie (Jeremy Jordan) starts at the beginning and works forwards, the story as told by Cathy (Anna Kendrick) starts at the end and works backwards, and the two meet in the middle for his proposal and their wedding day. Heck, the first line in the movie is “Jamie is over / and Jamie is gone.”
And you’d better believe that you need to understand that mechanic going in, otherwise you will be hopelessly lost. The movie does have one or two other cues to help out, though. It makes a habit of showing the year in slightly obvious manner, and the color grading is the most extreme at the beginning and end of each timeline (blue/teal shadows for the future and orange highlights for the past). I was fully expecting that to happen, but the way it was executed still kind of lost me and had me confused for about 90% of the movie. Because the color grading only applies to the extremes of time and not the characters’ perspectives, it can be very hard to tell that the perspective has in fact changed. I know it changes with every song as the characters hand the story back and forth, but it’s really not immediately apparent in the visual.
Anyway, the movie is fairly solid. The two leads (who are—true to the stage production this movie is based on—the only two named cast in the movie) can sing like crazy, and the emotion feels very real, even as they sing their parts live rather than rely on studio tracks to sync to. Some parts are very obviously tracked, of course (I’m pretty sure singing while eating or kissing is difficult to do), but overall, the effect is organic enough to draw you in. The real downside of this movie for me is that I saw this production first on the stage, where it was created. This is a story that was designed around a one-room stage set, and it shows, as the movie just doesn’t quite have the dramatic crossing that the stage play has. The movie has to spend time diluting drama with establishing shots and such, while the play relies more heavily on your imagination.
That being said, the soundtrack is fantastic, and I’m not sure if I more prefer the movie’s almost-score or the stage version’s reliance on just a violin and piano. It gets a bit Hollywood-musical at times, but the more thoughtful and moody progressions to the songs are well-crafted and echo meaningfully back on themselves over the course of the musical.
The thing that really gets me as I watch the movie and/or play, though, is how it affected me. I can’t even be entirely sure why, maybe it’s the way the movie is shot or the way the actors play the characters, or maybe it’s just me bringing the baggage of my past into my perception, but I almost can’t help but take sides in the conflict. I have a great, compelling need to feel sympathetic towards one of the characters, and if we’re honest, that’s difficult to do. Neither side is anything like blameless. Mistakes are made, Cathy projects her failures onto her partner, who then pulls inward and betrays her, and nobody’s hands are clean. The film is a gut-punch of “what if”, and there’s a healthy part of my psyche that just doesn’t want to experience it, not even via someone else’s acting.
That being said, this play is a fantastic representation of what art can do via empathy and catharsis. This is the sort of entertainment that really strives to make you feel something—and if it doesn’t resonate with you, you’ll find that it falls very flat indeed.
Overall, The Last Five Years has a distinctly “meh” score from most reviewers and viewers, and I’m betting this disconnect between audience and material is the reason why. Some people just haven’t been in a place where this movie/play will be meaningful to them. I have been, and it is meaningful for me, so it does its job well. That being said, it’s not a perfect masterpiece, and the technical execution of this script is still done far better on the stage, where the impact isn’t lessened by the constraints of cinema.
Acting: 8
Story: 7
Visuals: 5
Sound: 7
Enjoyment: 6
Overall Score: 7/10
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