By MEGHAN O’CONNOR
Staff Writer
Movie musicals have always been very popular so it’s no surprise that just in time for Valentine’s Day another one has arrived on our doorsteps. Enter ‘The Last Five Years,’ adapted from the Off- Broadway musical of the same name, written by Jason Robert Brown. While this movie is only in limited release, it is also available on iTunes to buy, which is the route I personally took to view it. Anna Kendrick of ‘Pitch Perfect’ fame and newcomer to the screen Jeremy Jordan play the two main characters Kathy and Jamie who are showing you their love story from both their own perspectives.
The story of Kathy and Jamie’s story is told in a very interesting way. Both Kathy and Jamie are telling their love story. However Kathy is telling their story backwards, from their divorce to the moment they first got together, whereas Jamie is telling their story from the moment they first got together to when they got divorced. Their story-telling meets up when both characters get to the point of their proposal/ wedding day halfway through the movie, though its only for a brief moment then both Kathy and Jamie go their separate ways again for the rest of the movie.
Anna Kendrick does a fantastic job at playing Kathy, hitting all the emotions perfectly that the character is feeling and expressing them just as perfectly. Kathy is a twenty something who is a theater actress. It’s clear as soon as the movie opens up that Kathy is devastated about that fact that her marriage is ending. Staring into space looking completely numb, she sings “Jamie is over and Jamie is gone. Jamie’s decided it’s time to move on. Jamie has new dreams he’s dreaming upon and I’m still hurting.” She starts telling their story from her perspective and it’s clear to see Kathy completely loved Jamie, but couldn’t stand the fact that he was becoming more and more successful in his dream career than she was. While she loved him she couldn’t stop resenting him for this and in turn, it causes more problems in their marriage. She becomes clingy, demanding, and at times much too overdramatic about things.
Watching their marriage crumble through Kathy’s eyes is at times very painful especially because the viewer can see the mistakes she is making while it is very obvious that she thinks she is doing nothing wrong. However, something else that we see through Kathy’s eyes is her obvious devotion and love for Jamie when they started out. She stands by him through all of his work parties and is clearly proud of his success at first. She is amazed by him and wants nothing more to be his wife and she gets exactly that, though in the end that was clearly not enough for her.
While this is all going on we are also seeing Jamie’s perspective. Jeremy Jordan plays Jamie exactly how he is supposed to be played, he makes the viewer love him for his idealism on love and his boyish charm. Yet at the same time as his story goes on, he changes and the viewer finds themselves being hurt almost more than Kathy has been because they have grown to like him as well. Jamie is completely smitten with Kathy when their relationship starts and as if things couldn’t get any better his writing career starts taking off almost instantly. Life couldn’t get better for Jamie, in fact it’s so perfect he proposes to Kathy.
From there, the audience sees Jamie continuously trying to make Kathy happy and cheer her up when she comes home bitter and crabby from temp jobs she can’t stand. He tries over and over to make her happy and finally he decides to throw in the towel. Not by leaving the marriage, at least not yet. Instead he makes poorer and poorer decisions so by the end of his re-telling of their love story the viewer has gone from feeling giddy about Jamie to feeling disgusted by him.
By the end of the movie it’s clear to see that it’s not just Kathy or just Jamie who failed the marriage but that it took both of them making mistakes and giving up to make their love story end. If this movie musical had a message it would be that it takes both people messing up and giving up to make a relationship fail. After sitting through an hour and half of both people giving their perspective of the same event, the viewer almost feels as if they’ve been the rope in a tug of war game between Kathy and Jamie. Both characters are practically begging you to see it from their side and to side with them, begging you to think that they’re the one who made the right choices.
I have to say that I loved this movie. Being a huge fan of the musical, I had been waiting for this movie for a very long time and finally seeing it made all of the years of waiting worth it. However, not everyone has seen or knows about this musical and I must say that this movie was not made for the average every day viewer. This was a big mistake in my opinion on the director’s part. If you didn’t know how the timing and perspectives worked there were times that you would’ve been completely lost. I had been watching this movie with someone who was not familiar with ‘The Last Five Years’ and there were moments were we actually had to pause the movie so I could explain some things.
Plot points could also be lost because of how the timing and perspectives worked in the movie. After Kathy and Jamie are married the movie still goes forward with Jamie and Kathy at different points in their love affair but the only way to tell when they’re actually married in the movie is to look at their left hands and notice rings for the most part. The confusion could take away from the emotional reactions that the viewer should be having at certain points in the story.
‘The Last Five Years’ has a lot of positives but also some negatives, no musical to movie adaptation will ever be perfect. The performances from both Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan were superb and captivating. Overall I truly think that ‘The Last Five Years’ is a movie musical that grabs a hold of you emotionally and won’t let go until you have cried at least once.
