Andrew Garfield sings and dances for two hours about the throes of creativity and the search for self-determination.
Young people, and especially young and loving people, are always immortal - in this state / mood / position of the limb as such does not exist, all the main finals like graduation from school and university are already behind, time becomes more difficult to measure in periods, and therefore the stages turn into continuous lengths ... This happens until there is a huge cobblestone on the road, which it is impossible not to stumble over: the 30th birthday. I want to make time stop, re-celebrate the 29th anniversary and never waste their fourth decade: as if the next day would inevitably become the beginning of the end.
It is in such thoughts that John (Andrew Garfield) bathes from morning to evening - he is the composer and director of a successful Broadway musical, but so far only in projection, in fact, a great author is serving dishes in a classic American diner, in which nothing has changed since the 50s ... Larson's life is hardly different from what it was 10 years ago. He is an exemplary representative of the New York bohemian of the 90s: the last money goes to drinks for friends, and therefore the electricity bills will have to wait, like his girlfriend Suzanne (Alexandra Shipp), who seeks to discuss a common future, which incredibly spoils the mood the creator is in crisis. Soon the first run-through of the play, and not a single chord has yet been written for that main song.
Garfield-Larson will delightfully sing and dance about all this and many other things: it is the genre that becomes the loudest note in this opera of delayed growing up. Be "Tick tock, boom!" dramedies, the film would be like touching and bitter films from "Sundance" that roam the small festivals, and then surface somewhere on the web and remain almost unnoticed. But Lin-Manuel Miranda, who made his debut in film directing with this tape, could not do without music. Firstly, he himself is a successful Broadway director, artist, composer and winner of a heap of awards: "Emmy", "Tony" and even "Pulitzer". Simply put, a treble clef that suddenly appears at the bottom of the pool at the right time is his element. Secondly, the biography of the composer is based on, but there is a risk of discovering that everything is for real, only on the final credits. Without opening Wikipedia and ignoring the history of pop art, it is easy to imagine that John Larson is a collective, invented and artistically embellished image: he is too recognizable to be true. And the stylistic addition in the form of a documentary chronicle, which sometimes interrupts events, looks like a funny invention of the director, and not a copy of life, and the lyrics of the songs are too painful for the present day, and not only for the decay of the twentieth century.
All this is fair, but partly: undoubtedly, in the figure of Larson (the owner of the same Pulitzer and the author of the play Rent, which changed Broadway) Miranda saw himself, his friends, colleagues, teachers and students - not a hero of ours, but of any time. Every day and even every second, John opposes the existential quest of the demiurge to the sharp teeth of capitalism and a stable job for a corporation, but at the same time yearns for financial well-being and a comfortable life: who doesn't want to meet a smiling concierge in uniform upon returning home? The upcoming holiday only marks the line more sharply, stabbing in the ribs even more painfully when it comes to comparisons. As you know, the best under thirty received Emmy, and climbed Everest, and made discoveries in science, while John was only washing dishes and imagining his success, sitting on the living room floor. All this, in general, understandable, but rather sad reflection does not fall on the audience's head with lengthy dialogues, but sounds from the screen with songs - those that John Larson wrote for the autobiographical play Tick-tock, boom! played several roles.
It is all the more surprising after watching to discover that, despite the conventions of the film language, Andrew Garfield not only played one of the best roles in his career, but also got into the prototype both externally and intonationally, and Miranda justified his solvency as a supplier of biopics. A film that is loose with genres, but still loyal to them, may well be on the same shelf as Leos Carax's recent Annette: Tick, Boom! ranks in the same place among musicals as "500 Days of Summer" in the world of romantic comedies. And, most likely, he will receive a response from the same viewers whom he struggles to support.
Life-affirming singing that failures make an artist, and that success comes to every talent in due time, works akin to sedatives or antidepressants: if you did not become what you wanted, before thirty, then this does not mean at all that you will not become until thirty-five ... But it so happens that among the immortals, someone still turns out to be more mortal than the rest: a limb always comes suddenly and for completely different reasons, be it AIDS, a brick or a ruptured aorta. Until then, the clock in my head pulsates with opportunities that there is a chance not to miss: tick-tock, tick-tock.
This article was sponsored by Ed Ammerlaan
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