I've been stumbling upon Lin's work more than i have been looking to. He has been doing stuff that gets promoted, awarded and so on. Here's apparently his first directed effort. I think i will look consciously for more of his stuff, because he works his things with a special care for narrative drive, for placement of the viewer in and outside the frame, and that's something that back at the beginning of the century was thriving and present in all oscar-worthy films, but that Iron Man and his thugs have wiped out of the mainstream. Shame on Marvel.
I had watched Encanto a few months ago, and enjoyed the effort to build a house as a character, and as a manipulator/creator of stories. Here the game is different. The narrative thread is conducted by our actor performing an autobiographical musical, that replicates an actual one, by Larson, in real life. Already we have several shades of story here. A musical performed onscreen, based on a real music performed in real life. This story carries us into the story of the life of the performer. That story is shot in the film, as a complement to the story being told on stage. Inside that story being told, our main character is writing yet another musical, which gets to be built and performed inside this story. So we have Larson's real story, mirrored by Garfield performing Larson performing himself. Nested on that performance we have the flashbacks to Larson's life, struggling and composing (and performing) another musical, ficcional. This is great storytelling.
Musicals have always had the obvious possibility for enhancing performance and breaking walls. Some of them did contribute to completely new forms of storytelling, full of life and power (Red Shoes, Singing in the Rain, Moulin Rouge). At the same time, due to their comercial appeal and relatively high costs associated with producing it, most of the musicals are usually overproduced and highly conservative in their approach to music, storytelling and cinema. After the breakthrough of Moulin Rouge (copied mostly in style but hardly in terms of narrative) not much has been done, and actually films like La La Land or the recent Spielberg thing are kind of the Wynton Marsalis of cinema: lush and extremely well executed, but smelling like past, and not in a good way.
So i welcome this film. It did not move me, the source story is endearing (also because of Larson's premature death) but it didn't change me. Garfield doesn't seem to be up to this multi-layered parts, and i don't carry images out of this film. But the structuring of it is really clever, and i hope Lin will go on doing mainstream stuff. I will look forward to it.
I had watched Encanto a few months ago, and enjoyed the effort to build a house as a character, and as a manipulator/creator of stories. Here the game is different. The narrative thread is conducted by our actor performing an autobiographical musical, that replicates an actual one, by Larson, in real life. Already we have several shades of story here. A musical performed onscreen, based on a real music performed in real life. This story carries us into the story of the life of the performer. That story is shot in the film, as a complement to the story being told on stage. Inside that story being told, our main character is writing yet another musical, which gets to be built and performed inside this story. So we have Larson's real story, mirrored by Garfield performing Larson performing himself. Nested on that performance we have the flashbacks to Larson's life, struggling and composing (and performing) another musical, ficcional. This is great storytelling.
Musicals have always had the obvious possibility for enhancing performance and breaking walls. Some of them did contribute to completely new forms of storytelling, full of life and power (Red Shoes, Singing in the Rain, Moulin Rouge). At the same time, due to their comercial appeal and relatively high costs associated with producing it, most of the musicals are usually overproduced and highly conservative in their approach to music, storytelling and cinema. After the breakthrough of Moulin Rouge (copied mostly in style but hardly in terms of narrative) not much has been done, and actually films like La La Land or the recent Spielberg thing are kind of the Wynton Marsalis of cinema: lush and extremely well executed, but smelling like past, and not in a good way.
So i welcome this film. It did not move me, the source story is endearing (also because of Larson's premature death) but it didn't change me. Garfield doesn't seem to be up to this multi-layered parts, and i don't carry images out of this film. But the structuring of it is really clever, and i hope Lin will go on doing mainstream stuff. I will look forward to it.