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| Jeremy Jordan & Anna Kendrick, The Last Five Years |
When I wrote my review of Into the Woods, I thought a lot
about adapting stage shows to film – and whether or not the musical genre, in
particular, is next-to-impossible to translate to the big screen. If something is
written with the stage in mind, sometimes it can be hard to open it up on film –
and sometimes opening it up breaks the fragile reality created on stage.
Stage plays can suffer the move from stage to screen because
plays are often static – a couple of scene changes or a small number of fixed
sets. August: Osage County presented a large ensemble family drama on one set,
but the film insisted on opening things up – and an odd tonal shift. God of
Carnage benefited from the claustrophobia of one set; a film in one location is
anathema to the form, but then the tension of the story can be lost.
Musicals, by their very nature, are theatrical. Singing the
story isn’t natural, but it’s no more odd on stage than minimalist sets or a
curtain or seeing a show in the round. This is not to say musicals can’t work
on film, but as musicals have evolved, they are playing more and more with
stage conventions – making the translation to film much more difficult.
The film version of Into the Woods struggled with a massive
change in tone from Act 1 to Act 2. The film eschews the act break, obviously,
but into trying to streamline the two parts into one whole, the shift is jarring
– it doesn’t feel like a new chapter, it feels like a sudden left turn. Even
some of the humour that works so beautifully on stage seemed to be missing in
the film – a lot of the time it just felt like a joke played on stage just
wouldn’t work the same in close up on a giant screen.
Today I watched the film version of another of my favourite
musicals, The Last Five Years. In most ways, it survives the move from the stage
to cinema. In many ways, it elevates the material – making a very rich film,
indeed.
Like Into the Woods, I’ve seen three productions of The Last Five Years
– though I missed the Off-Broadway revival, and all three versions I’ve seen
have been from amateur theatre companies. Though with varying definitions of
what constitutes amateur. Just quickly: one production had a great Jamie, one
production had a great Cathy and one production had an awful director. If we
take it as written that Jason Robert Brown’s book, lyrics and score are
stunning – and they really are – the show obviously relies on the other three
pieces for it to work.
The Last Five Years is the story of Jamie and Cathy – their five
year relationship, from beginning to end. Cathy’s songs tell their relationship
from end to beginning. Alternating between Cathy’s songs are Jamie’s, which
tell their relationship from beginning to end. They meet at the middle, when
Jamie proposes and the two get married.
The film doesn’t struggle with the theatrical conceit of
dual timelines, nor does it try to explain it. It just is how it is. It took me
a few times of listening to the original Off-Broadway score to really
appreciate how well-structured the show is and how everything fits
chronologically. And when you have time and the inclination to think about it,
it works – but the film (and the best stage productions) knows that you don’t
need to understand how it all fits together, to realise it’s just about how
these two characters are going in different directions.
On stage, the two actors are rarely on stage together. In
the film, they are often singing to each other. My fear was that where the
stage show isolates the two characters, seeing them together might rob the
story of its power. It’s almost the opposite; the way the scenes are staged, we
still see how isolated the characters become to each other, even when they are
in the same room. There are scenes where it’s even more powerful than the stage
version, because we can see how Cathy and Jamie really aren’t listening to each
other.
In looking at Into the Woods, I was struck by the fact the
film had some very well-staged songs – and some that were awful. Many of them
were pedestrian. They might have been well sung, but they didn’t necessarily
feel like great moments of film. Into the Woods might have been opened up, but
it doesn’t transcend its stage origins.
The Last Five Years feels like one coherent piece. There are
a couple of songs where I think the staging gets in the way, but most of them
are strong – and the use of film language by director Richard LaGravenese,
elevates the whole piece.
Where minimalism works on stage, the fact that the
director puts the show solidly into reality is a bonus. Where Cathy writes
letters from Ohio in the theatre, in the film, she and Jamie Skype. This is
partly due to the change in time since the show was first produced in 2002. But
obviously Skype is much more visual. (There are a couple important letters
still in the film – one of which bookends the film, the other appears as a
post-it note.)
A lot of film musicals seems to fetishise the singing, over
making it visually interesting. The film version of Les Miserables took this to
the extreme – live singing on set, extreme close-ups on mouths. LaGravenese
knows that we can listen to the lyrics, without having to see the actors mouth
it. While I think the song “Shiksa Goddess” is a little bit too over-cooked
with visual flair, remembering that we are watching actors means that Jamie can
interact with Cathy without being bound by the fact the next lyric is coming
along.
This happens throughout the film. LaGravenese isn’t worried
about the audience, he trusts them. In some ways, because we are seeing things
happening, we don’t need to hear every lyric. It’s fun to hear Cathy think/sing
“why is the director staring at his crotch” – and this is one of those times
where it’s also funny to see it. But early in the film when Cathy sings about “sitting
on this pier”, it seems oddly heavy-handed to actually have them sitting on the
pier.
Some lyrics have been changed because the references are
dated. Some have been changed just to excise a few uses of the word “fuck”. On
stage, there is very little dialogue. On film, there’s still very little
dialogue – but the additional dialogue fits with the piece and most times even
enhances it. Perhaps allowing LaGravenese to script the film meant he could
break it open in a way that composer and creator Jason Robert Brown might not have
been able to; sometimes you’re too close to your original conception. And Brown
directed the recent Off-Broadway revival, so I’m glad the film got fresh eyes
that enhanced the piece.
I haven’t even talked about the actors yet. And where to
begin? The thing about a two-hander stage show is that both characters need to
be equally strong and both actors up to the challenge. And a match for each
other. The thing about the story of The Last Five Years is that every time I
see it or listen to the score, I appreciate different things about each
character. If you wanted to particularly analyse whether Jamie or Cathy is most
at fault of their relationship breakdown, I could give you a dozen reasons from
both sides of the arguement. Sometimes I come away thinking Jamie is the
problem. Sometimes I think it’s Cathy. Seeing it on stage, your perception
could change every night. Film seems like it might be a bit more fixed.
I’ve only watched the film once so far, but I cannot imagine
a more perfect match than Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan. I went in expecting
that Kendrick would be adorable and Jordan would be a bit jerky – because those
are the parts I have seen them play so well before. I was worried that I would
automatically side with Cathy over Jamie. And while who is at fault isn’t actually
the point of the story, it’s part of what makes the show so rich. Sometimes you
sympathise with him more than her. Or her over him.
A lot of people will talk about Kendrick claiming the mantle
she has been working toward her entire career. And they aren’t wrong. She gives
a layered performance in Cathy that is quite stunning. Sure, she relies on her
charm and cheeriness in a few scenes, but there are dramatic depths here that I
never expected to see. Not that I didn’t expect her to be a great Cathy, but
she found moments that I had never seen in the character before. It may not be
surprising that Kendrick shone, but it is surprising that she has made Cathy
her own. This is a performance for the ages.
But the whole thing cannot hold together without an equally
stunning performance from Jordan. If Kendrick claims a mantle she’s been
striving toward, Jordan strides in and takes the seat alongside her. Not that
he does it effortlessly. Not that the jerky self-confidence he’s shown in other
roles allows him to slide easily into the role of Jamie. The character is I
think harder to pin down; he shifts all over the place. Jordan does everything
he’s supposed to and then does more. He’s a revelation, particularly with the
song “Nobody Needs to Know” – it’s devastating.
I could probably break down this film from scene to scene,
moment to moment and talk about all the choices they made – the director and
his two stars. I could talk about costumes and sets. I could talk about musical
orchestration and sound design. (Seriously, one of the great moments is when
Cathy snaps her compact shut, just before one audition – another moment where the
sounds of reality creep in, where in lesser hands we would have only focused on
the song she was singing and the music underneath.)
Here’s the thing – if there’s a particularly high degree of
difficulty in moving a stage musical to film, that’s probably more likely to
happen with a two-act blockbuster than it is a two-hand, one-act chamber piece.
The Last Five Years has all the songs from the stage show and it still runs
only 90 minutes. There’s no “unnatural” break to fix or forget. There are two
characters and their two stories and five years of their lives.
If Jamie is “Moving Too Fast” and Cathy is “Climbing Up
Hill,” the film is neither - effortlessly bringing us into their world.
If Into the Woods was not good and not bad, but just nice,
The Last Five Years broke my heart but kept me happy. See, I’m smiling.
