Ryan McNeil
I finally open up
For you I would do anything
But you’ve turned off the volume
Just when I’ve begun to sing
Greatness can seem like a Devil’s bargain sometimes.
For the few – the very very very few truly great artists and voices in the world, inspiration and talent swirl inside them before being offered up to the world in sounds and visions that have the power to move, heal, affect, and enlighten. In exchange for this rare gift, they must hand over their presence, their connection, and the one thing that they can never get back: time.
tick, tick…BOOM! is adapted from the musical by Jonathan Larson (who would follow it by writing RENT). It is loosely based on his own life and experiences; a life that would eventually be cut short at age 35.
This is a story within a story as we watch a performance of the musical “tick, tick…BOOM!” which is a retelling of Larson (played by Andrew Garfield) trying to write and workshop his previous show, “Superbia”.
Larson’s story is one of bohemian idealism and creative toil. By day, the man is a ball of warmth and energy living a life of sweet squalour in The Village, working as a waiter at the Moonlight Diner, and trying to be a good partner to the woman he loves – Susan (Alexandra Shipp). He is also trying to be a giving best friend to the man he has known for 22 year, Michael (Robin de Jesús).
By night, though, Jonathan toils away at his true calling – music. He is chest-deep in the workshop of his newest and most ambitious production; a futuristic rock opera about a society consumed with personal electronics and fleeting fame (can you imagine!).
Approaching his 30th birthday, Larson has become consumed by time. He sees what his contemporaries did when they were the same age, and sees a health crisis sweeping his country and robbing it of so many young and talented voices. He is feverishly trying to complete his show and produce something good enough to land the attention of people with power and influence.
But at what cost? How long can he keep pulling in loose bills and pocket change at the diner? How long before the AIDS crisis creeps so close to home that it shatters the heart needed to create? How long before he runs out of chances to produce “the next great thing”? And how long before a loving partner can no longer play second fiddle to a work of art?
tick, tick…BOOM! is an unabashed overdose of life, love, music, and creativity. It doesn’t wear it’s heart on its sleeve so much as it decides that the sleeves would distract from the heart and tears them off with aplomb.
No, really – this film is singing full-throat at every moment.
Anything less would betray the person at the centre of the story, and the actor charged with the part seems to get that. Jonathan Larson was the soul who made an entire generation of theatre geeks write “No Day But Today” on the whites of their Chucks. He wrote what he knew, wrote what he believed, and this story is the embodiment of his vision becoming his calling.
Yes, it certainly could have been told with more subtlety and nuance; but that was never what he was about. Larson was a man who believed in inviting every person orphaned in the city to a grand feast on holidays in a crappy apartment, and writing charming little songs about the sugar dispenser. Dialing this film down to something subtler would never do. Doing so would ask its questions politely, respectfully, and that would betray their urgency.
Larson was a man fixated with time…with its passing, with not wasting it, and with never having enough.
What’s interesting is the way the film doesn’t entirely romanticize Larson’s fixation (or even obsession) with his work. When one loses themself in work the way that Larson does – be it work that has greater meaning or work that just seems like it does – there is a cost. Relationships will weather and fray, sometimes beyond repair.
tick, tick…BOOM! goes out of its way to show the cost Larson’s work takes from his relationships with Susan and Michael. It’s a warning call that time and energy devoted to our loved ones is both precious and fleeting. If we begin to sap it – even in the name of something profound – the relationship may rot beyond salvation.
How does one square themselves with the concept of time? How does one get anything accomplished knowing that this monumental and unstoppable force surrounds their every thought and action? It’s almost a given that none of us will have as much as we desire, but what are we to make of those who genuinely weren’t given “enough”. On the one hand, they got “more than some”, but on the other hand they surely thought they had “more”.
If they didn’t – if they knew that they had just one more year, or even as much as five – would they still do what they did? Perhaps that’s the silver lining; the blessing in the curse. If someone like Jonathan Larson knew that he only had x number of days left, he might have chosen to be selfish and spend them with the people around him he clearly loved so dear.
Instead, Larson – and other geniuses before and since – used that time to leave the whole world something beautiful. He left work that would inspire multitudes and defy the finite nature of time itself.
tick, tick…BOOM! is his prayer, his plea, and his proclamation – realized just in time.
“No, really – this film is singing full-throat at every moment.”
Couldn’t write this on my review because of deadlines but I listened to Jonathan Larson’s and Raul Esparza’s version of the songs and while Larson and Esparza glide through the songs Garfield makes you know that he worked hard to reach those high notes and he reaches them. Five stars.