'Tick, tick ... BOOM!': A remarkable Netflix musical featuring Andrew Garfield's best performance yet

Hollywood's interest in musical cinema is set to resurface in the coming weeks, as 'Cyrano' and 'West Side Story' will soon hit theaters , two titles that are sounding strongly for the next Oscars. Before we can see 'tick, tick ... BOOM!' , the first feature film directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda that arrives on Netflix this Friday, November 19, after an ephemeral passage through a very small number of Spanish cinemas.

Adaptation of a theatrical musical by Jonathan Larson , also responsible for the much more acclaimed 'Rent', 'tick, tick ... BOOM!' is a film that explores the creative process and the extent to which it can consume authors. He does it in a more than remarkable way and using the best performance that Andrew Garfield to date.

Garfield's absolute prominence

The most basic way to see the film is as a vehicle for the showcase of Garfield, who gives himself body and soul giving life to Larson. From the first moment he transmits that passion for creativity that has led him to spend almost a decade preparing a musical that he sees as the litmus test to know if it is destined to succeed on Broadway.

This leads to the film being marked at all times by a certain sense of urgency , that there is a very specific deadline to fulfill your dreams before you end up condemned to an existence that is surely much more comfortable, but also mediocre and far from any real creativity. , something well reflected in the film when the protagonist accepts out of necessity a job that goes totally against who he is.

For this reason, Garfield dominates all the sequences of 'tick, tick ... BOOM!', Something to some extent understandable because the original musical was born as a rock monologue performed alone by Larson. It was not until the death of its author when a revision of the work was made to give it a more traditional structure and a greater number of actors, but always with Jonathan as the undisputed protagonist.

One consequence of this is that there is a certain egomaniacal element in 'tick, tick ... BOOM!', But always being a direct consequence of that creative process that, while giving life to the protagonist, also prevents him in more than one occasion to see beyond that overflowing passion.

That stubbornness clashes with his fluid way of being to some extent, as if he's caught up in an obsession with who he should be instead of taking advantage of who he really is. All of this reaches its climax in one of the most fascinating sequences of the entire show in which the protagonist visits a swimming pool.

Many virtues and some snags

An unbeatable culmination of everything that had marked the film until then, but also a great example of that 'tick, tick ... BOOM!' It tends to reach much greater heights when the intimate comes to the fore , either with the protagonist finally giving the elusive inspiration or when the more emotional side of the story is given more weight, like that sequence with Garfield accompanied only by a piano after finding out something particularly dramatic. Of course, when it comes to your relationship, the thing never ends up reaching as high as it should.

That is something that is also noticeable in musical numbers, perhaps because 'tick, tick ... BOOM!' There are not exactly many moments of astonishing the viewer with a torrent of visuals and emotions, of leaving the viewer disarmed by the spectacle that has just happened before their eyes. There is something - I am thinking above all of one that happens in the protagonist's workplace - but whoever approaches her mainly looking for that is going to end up somewhat disappointed.

Miranda seems to want to partly compensate for this through a somewhat vibrant rhythm, as if it were a song in which the rhythm can never stop and which does not find real relief until there is barely an hour to perform the work. With this I do not want to mislead you, it is not something exaggerated, but it is perceived from the first moment through the montage or the visual energy that it tries to give to the film -although in the second point perhaps it ends up being something more conventional than usual. desirable in the treatment of images-, using a fairly successful narrative structure -and much more marked during the first minutes- for what it seeks to enhance.

encanto pelicula completa en español latino ver encanto