I’ve been meaning to see this since I first heard it existed (in movie form; I don’t follow musical theatre enough to know the play), so I’m really glad to have the push to get to it. I’m a big fan of movie musicals, especially ones confident enough to maintain wall-to-wall singing and a small scale, both of which The Last Five Years does.
The last five years cover the relationship of Jamie and Cathy, respectively an aspiring writer and an aspiring actress who meet in New York, fall in love and then gradually grow further apart. It’s no spoiler to say how it ends up, since the opening line of the film is “Jamie is gone.” The structure tells the stories both directions – Cathy’s point of view going backwards, from breakup to courtship, and Jamie’s going forwards. If this structure sounds somewhat familiar, you may have seen Blue Valentine, with Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams’ characters undergoing a similar relationship trajectory with a similar dual structure. But this time, there’s music!
I’ll confess, Blue Valentine hit me pretty hard, and The Last Five Years didn’t hit me as hard – probably in part because I saw Blue Valentine first, but also because The Last Five Years honestly isn’t quite as devastating. Oh, it’s devastating, Jamie and Cathy aren’t really AS mean to each other as the characters in Blue Valentine, plus there’s no kid involved, plus the wall-to-wall singing, as poignant and visceral as the songs often are (both musically and lyrically), kind of softens it a bit.