tick, tick … BOOM! (2021 | USA | 115 minutes | Lin Manuel Miranda)
When we first encounter Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson — on a small unadorned stage, hunched behind a piano, in the throes of performing his one-man musical — someone unfamiliar with the real composer/playwright could be forgiven that the actor was overplaying his theatricality. The trademark pile of overgrown curly hair. The twitchy, broad, lightning-quick expressions that play to the last row. A voice and attitude bursting with a self-assuredness to cover a deep longing to be adored. If you don’t buy it right away, grainy video playing over the end credits will confirm to those with no memories of their own of the 1990s that rather than an exaggeration, Garfield’s portrayal is uncannily accurate. It’s an amazingly rich and well studied performance that anchors a movie musical that’s a love letter to a time, place, and an artist with enduring influence.
Larson’s show, supported by a live band, guest vocalists, and brimming with pop bangers is a memoir. It’s a story about being days away from turning the big 3-0 in the year 1990 just as he’s on the precipice of presenting another musical — a sci-fi rock musical that he’s spent eight years polishing — at Playwright’s Horizon. It’s his life’s work and he’s still a key song short, which is obviously very stressful. Spoilers for history, but neither the show that Larson’s writing, nor the one that he’s performing in this film will be the one that will eventually chisel his name in Broadway history. That one, Rent, comes later, years after the action of this musical memoir, and tragically, after Larson’s own life was cut short by an aortic dissection at age 35.
One could worry that a movie made from “minor Larson” might undercut the appeal of this film adaptation, but instead, it allows it to exist as a generous time capsule of 1990s New York City and a vibrant recollection of a talented artist on the brink. Larson lives in a downtown loft crowded with keyboards, sagging bookshelves, an original Mac with its tiny screen, and frequent parties that draw from a diverse and thriving up-and-coming arts scene. His soon-to-be ex-roommate is a failed actor on an upward trajectory in advertising (Robin de Jesús); his girlfriend is a modern dancer who’s ready for a more stable career outside the city (Alexandra Shipp). As he approaches his birthday he worries that he, too will become a waiter with a hobby rather than a budding artist who pays the bills by waiting tables at a lively SoHo diner. Larson makes a big deal of his looming third decade, but 1990 is a time when so many of his friends were dying from AIDS that he can be forgiven for attaching extra significance to the impending birthday.
It’s an odd coincidence that Lin Manuel Miranda is directing another Broadway superstar’s early work onto the big screen in the same year that Jon M. Chu made a splashy, technicolor, film version of his “less famous” In the Heights. But the opportunity to make his film direction debut on the basis of Larson’s work turned out to be an outstanding fit. Miranda has an incredible eye for the nature of making art: the sleepless nights staring at a blank page, the consummation with a project to the often-cruel exclusion of ones dearest friends, the coiled energy of a creator on the verge of a breakthrough. He captures the hungry solipsistic energy of a one man memoir, yes, but he also has the confidence to dial back into a realistic mode whenever the action cuts from the stage production to the real world. The structure makes room for Garfield to give a highly modulated performance as Larson. The theatricality is always there, whether he’s hosting a soiree, pitching his show to would-be producers, dealing with annoyed customers at the diner, or learning that his girlfriend wants to move to the Berkshires, but the volume is well-calibrated. We can see why he’s both beloved and infinitely frustrating to his friends.
I often argue that sometimes a musical should remain a musical and that filmed versions are better served by filmed renditions of the original casts (gratifyingly, the characters make the same article while watching the exceptional recording of Sunday in the Park with George on public television). But here, Miranda has mined the territory of a stage show and turned it into something that shines as a film. It may help that the original production of tick, tick … BOOM! was remixed a few times before it made it to an Off-Broadway production in 2001, freeing Miranda to take his own creative liberties with the production, re-ordering and restructuring the order of songs and storylines to allow this work to stand on its own terms. It’s exceptionally composed, with doses of the feeling of a stage show, stretches of deeply grounded realism, well-timed bursts of movie magic.
Miranda’s instincts for when to burst into song are exceptional, and one can only imagine well-earned via his own creative experiences. Like the best musical theater, rather than being showy for their own sake, these flights of fancy serve to communicate feelings that couldn’t otherwise be expressed without song. He translates the anxiety of staging a show for the first time, an artist’s ability to see beyond a bare set and rehearsal room to a fully-realized spectacle, the frustrating search for inspiration, and the way that a songwriter retreats to a piano to process the revelation of tragic news. One scene, where a swimming pool morphs into a musical score borders on corny, but can be excused given how good the rest of the production is. From dapper friends dancing on the walls of a fancy apartment to celebrate success, a series of flashbacks evoked on an empty amphitheater stage, to a dazzling centerpiece chock full of Broadway Easter eggs that reflects the desire of a composer to bring beautiful order from chaos, it’s a film that makes the most of the medium at every turn.
The title refers to Larson’s anxiety over a looming deadline and the sound design incorporates the ticking clock literally and figuratively. We’re both aware of bigger things on his horizon, but Garfield’s performance never allows us to sell short the urgency of his present moment. Although his agent is mostly absent (a terrific Judith Light), any questions that we might have about his talent and the quality of what seems like a silly futuristic musical are answered, in part, by the in-film endorsement of theater god Stephen Sondheim. So, we do know that he’s onto something, and as the ticking gets louder, everything from his wardrobe (chunky sweaters, big warm scarf), social scene of struggling artists, and increasing awareness of AIDS activism hint at the fragments that will influence his masterpiece yet to come.
Lin Manuel Miranda’s attributes Larson’s work as a personal inspiration, with attendance at performances of Rent and tick, tick … BOOM! as milestones that sparked his career. His film version is both a tribute to an artist that shaped his outlook and a celebration of the struggle to make the most of one’s available time. It would be easy to shortchange this transitory period and focus on the big success, but he’s aware that these trenches are rich territory for drama. With deep affection and packed with an outstanding cast pulled liberally from Broadway veterans, he captures this timeless cycle and elevates it with personal and historical specificity. The clock eventually strikes, Jon celebrates his birthday, disappointment and sadness give way to inspiration, the work continues, the art endures. It’s a tremendous document of a time, place, a feeling, and a towering talent who wasn’t with us long enough. Like those American Playhouse recordings of now-classic performances, we’re lucky to have it.
tick, tick … BOOM! is available in theaters and on Netflix beginning November 19th
(Header image, credit: Macall Polay via Netflix)