COMPOSER OF RENT STRUGGLED FOR SUCCESS

GARFIELD SINGS, CRIES IN FILM ABOUT A PLAY

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Andrew Garfield creates a biopic character that shifts from real to imagined to the real within the imagined.

Garfield plays the protagonist in director Lin-Manual Miranda’s musical about the life of Broadway composer Johnathan Larson in Tick, Tick… Boom! (2021).

Larson is captured out and about and in and out of New York City trying to become a successful theatre composer.

Garfield portrays Larson as a young talent distracted from success by his day job working as a waiter in a New York diner, as well as a host of other real world challenges, as he struggles to create within a competitive talent market.

Garfield sings the show tunes his character is in the process of composing, and then acts the transition scenes from which his character drew inspiration for the compositions.

The director shifts to the real life inspiration for his songs, such as a relationship and the struggle to pay daily living expenses while getting a lot of rejection for the work for which he has a real passion.

Larson’s own determination is one of the few shining lights during several years of rejection from the industry that keeps his creativity productive.

Friends drop out of theatre and take more certain income bearing opportunities. Friends of friends die of AIDs. Robin de Jesus portrays Michael as the personification of all the distractions: a close admiring friend who drops out of theatre for a lucrative advertising job, finding success just as he gets diagnosed with AIDs.

Garfield even does a good job showing despondency while riding the subway when he really needs to be getting focused on composing another song.

Garfield portrays Larson scrapping for the production funds for an extra band member, and struggling through the creative process with the myriad of interruptions.

Of course, the movie is almost meaningless unless you understand that the protagonist eventually developed the most successful run on Broadway, Rent (1996). Rent ran on Broadway for 12 years.

Alexandra Shipp does a good job singing and acting as Susan, the love interest. Susan loves Jonathan, but she must move on in her career after a job offer requires her to relocate outside of New York. Susan is torn, but Jonathan is too focused on his fast approaching workshop that will introduce his composing to influential Broadway producers.

Susan eventually gives up on the relationship when she realizes Jonathan cares more about his play than his relationship with her.

The film is about the plays Larson wrote before he became successful. 

Miranda shifts the camera about at first, initially making the narrative difficult to follow other than for the scenes shear entertainment value of talented people singing with their hearts on their shirt sleeves. But when you realize the film is about a documentary about the life that inspired the development of Larson’s plays, everything falls into place and begins to make a bit of movie sense with a real movie narrative. 

Larson’s plays initially were satyrs about suburbia for the MTV Generation, until he came up with the idea for Rent, which was inspired by the life he led coming up with the idea for Rent.

Miranda has a great overall vision, using Larson’s life struggle as a narrative device, as if the scenes occur in real time as Larson develops the plays.

Tick, Tick… Boom! is a Netflix Original film streaming only on Netflix.