Andrew Garfield in the ticking sound, the ticking sound...boom!

For his directorial debut, composing legend Lin Manuel Miranda would choose a musical adapted from a musical about making musicals, which seems somewhat appropriate. However, despite the plot of his movie, tick, tick...boom! It may make you dizzy-or explode, depending on the situation-if you pay too much attention, don't be afraid, because Lin Manuel and his talented actors use soft rock and roll, catchy lyrics and fascinating, straightforward. Choreography makes it easy for you to enter the program. The end result may be that the film is a bit too self-referential for everyone except the most loyal Broadway audience, but it still tells a story with Andrew Garfield as the emotional core. The touching story, with the best performance of his career.

Tick, tick...boom! Adapted from Broadway composer Jonathan Larson’s co-man musical. Larson is best known for the smash hit musical "Rent", although the film adapted from his little-known work is miles away from the crumbling film that failed to replicate the original success in 2005. But the original work was a personal work (although it was autobiographical), so the experienced stage screenwriter Steven Levinson (Dear Evan Hansen, film). 

Garfield and director Lin Manuel Miranda (R)

In the original drama, a guy who is about to turn 30 years old staggered through the crisis of a quarter of his life. Because his ambition to become a successful Broadway producer did not take off, he had to continue to live in a half-baked sordid life. Dirty. Empty pizza boxes and soaked ramen containers are on the NoHo trail on the sixth floor where some cockroaches are infested. But it was 1990, so NoHo is simply called the "dead zone between SoHo and Greenwich Village." The AIDS crisis is still raging in New York City, and theater tickets are only $50. Lin Manuel and Levenson added all these details and more details to create a world richer than the original world, even if it feels a little outdated.

Garfield plays the leading role, Larson himself, because he is making Superbia, one of his last failed works. Surrounding him is his supportive girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Ship), who neglected her criminally; his ambitious good friend Michael (Robin de Jesus), in 1990 Fighting with many of the problems faced by gay men in New York in 2009; his unresponsive agent Rosa (Judith Wright); occasionally, Stephen Sondheim (Bradley Whitford) lends a helping hand, Inspiring. 

However, as in real life, the star of this show is undoubtedly Larson, as Garfield portrayed in the most effective performance of his career. All in all, Larson is manic. He is obsessive, self-involved, depressed, emotional, inspired, angry, and determined. Garfield hits all these notes and navigates between them quickly and dexterously, while playing almost all the soft rock and hard rock tunes of the original musical. The talented Vanessa Hudgens (Vanessa Hudgens) provided him a great help, she played the young Broadway actress Karesa Johnson (Karessa Johnson), she performed Larson in the studio and in actual performances. s work. Garfield has an enviable task, and that is to make compassion an inherently selfish character that is very bad for most of the people around him. Of course, Larson is a Bohemian. He is a well-meaning young liberal. He sympathizes with AIDS patients, oppressed people and anti-corporatists. This helps us. Still, for those who don't understand Larson's life, he is not a naturally likable character. The main achievement of Garfield is that he makes you like him very, very much.

(LR) Robin de Jesus, MJ Rodriguez and Ben Levi Ross

At different points, tick, tick...boom! Looking through the mirror is a bit too much, too self-referential, and too high a supply of oneself. Most viewers only know about one of Larson's work-"Rent"-so Miranda felt it necessary to keep mentioning that musical. These include the iconic "talking" of the answering machine, the naming of the main character "Roger", repeated depictions of HIV-positive gay men, and perhaps the most interesting but also the most annoying is the broadcast of three homeless tramps The scene of strolling through the streets of New York is composed of three original stars (Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin and Wilson Heredia) who opened on Broadway. The circularly quoted string does not end there. For a number, the Sunday song that Garfield/Larson and his colleagues sang at the Moon Dance Restaurant. Lin Manuel assembled as many Broadway celebrities as he answered the phone, including himself and Babe New. Voss and others. After a while, you will feel uneasy that not everyone will definitely welcome these celebrations, which are full of self-reference, internal jokes, and blinking moments. For some viewers, trying to open one layer of the movie may feel frustrated, only to find that, like a nested Russian doll, there is nothing more than another musical reference waiting.

When it comes to craftsmanship (except for the Larson soundtrack), the highest honor goes to editor Andrew Weisblum (a visual effects editor graduated from Chicago) and photographer Alice Brooks. For the former, the most difficult task is to show self-control, not to turn a show designed to focus on a specific character for a long time into a schizophrenia composed of editing and imitation. Weisblum's editing is mostly silent and therefore very effective. As for the latter, Brooks had to struggle with the narrow space in Larson's world, as well as the constant back and forth between Larson on the stage-performing ticking, ticking...Boom! ——And Larson's real life, which means that the camera is constantly switching between natural light and stage light. Therefore, Brooks' work provides a stable foundation for Miranda's endless Broadway self-citations.

In the end, it is hard to deny the fascinating nature of the stories of artists who are determined, struggling, and successful—even if they have paid a high price for their own survival. It is undeniable that the songs Larson composed for this single show effectively conveyed his own insecurity, his own tenacity and his own emotions. It’s hard to deny that Garfield took all these elements in his heart and turned them into his own elements, and, perhaps in his career, this may be the first time in his career that he injected personal emotions into them, all of them All pieced together to provide one of the best male performances. That year.

Tick, tick...boom! It has been shown in some theaters and will start to play on Netflix on November 19th.

All photos are provided and copyrighted by Netflix. Photographer: McCall Polaf.