Tumgik
#last five years anna kendrick
katebeckets · 3 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
GET TO KNOW ME  ✰ [2/10] Musicals ⤷ The Last 5 Years (2001)
"Maybe your heart's completely swayed but your head can't follow through."
137 notes · View notes
mattivoda · 4 months
Text
This post isn’t targeted towards this person in particular but I see this same sort of tiktok come up on my timeline every couple of months and it feels me with a very specific RAGE because of how wrong it is about the core message of this show.
For those who don’t know, the music from the TikTok comes from the musical The Last Five Years, made by Jason Robert Brown. It originally opened in Chicago in 2001, then making its way to Broadway in 2002 after great reviews from critics and audiences.
the elevator pitch of the show is simple; a writer exploding with success (Jamie) and a struggling actress (Kathy) and the rise and fall of their marriage.
Normally this would be a pretty basic musical, right? However the true genius comes from one key part of its storytelling: the order at which the story is shown to you.
Jamie performs his side of the story in chronological order, from the start of the relationship ending with their divorce. Kathy, however, tells her story flipped; starting with their divorce and ending when Kathy first meets Jamie.
The two actors almost never interact on-stage, singing solo songs for every single song except for the act one ending song The Next Ten Minutes, where Jamie proposes and the two marry.
Now you might be asking: why is this important to the story? and which character was supposed to be the “bad guy” in the marriage?
If you delve into the story and look at the way the story depicts both characters’ perspectives on what happened then an obvious fact becomes clear:
Jamie is an asshole and was the main problem in the marriage. You aren’t, and never were supposed to side with him.
Throughout the show, Jamie is shown to be obsessed with his own fame, gloating about how he seems to only be able to exponentially succeed in his writing. His obsession makes him blind to the struggles of his wife, even going as far as deluding himself into thinking his wife’s struggles is simply her being jealous of his success. By the end of the show, Jamie cheats on Kathy and proceeds to blame her for not allowing him privacy.
THAT’S why the storytelling of The Last Five Years is so compelling. By only showing these characters seperate from each other, it forces us to become familiar with Jamie and Kathy as individuals rather than a couple. It allows us to see Jamie’s douchebaggery up-close and personal, with the entire first act highlighting this glaring detail and allowing us to see the consequences of this as his marriage devolve in the second act. Just the simple fact that Jamie’s story is chronological creates a beautiful dichotomy between Kathy’s frustrations, sadness and abandonment and Jamie’s cocky, happy-go-lucky success story.
Before I finish writing this and go to bed, i’d like to say I don’t blame those who hold this view for thinking this about The Last Five Years for one reason only; the only way they got to see it was the movie version.
the film adaption of The Last Five Years (2014) decided that the reason the musical worked was because “interesting timeline go brrr” and decided to keep the original timeline, but instead had both characters constantly interacting.
Instead of having this abstract deconstruction of these two characters, with both Kathy and Jamie monologuing their personal thoughts and emotions separately, they mash together and create this weird, realistic depiction of a breakup. The performances from Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan were amazing, don’t get me wrong, but these choices in the adaption rip the emotion and soul out of its inspiration and sell the corpse for $20 a viewing.
Jamie and Kathy’s marriage is a cautionary tale about what happens when you don’t listen and understand your partner. It is not a desperate attempt of a composer to appear in the right about his marriage and it shouldn’t be a sloppy retelling of a failed marriage with a quirky form of storytelling. Please please PLEASE if you agree with this original TikTok’s message just know you are so UNBELIEVABLY wrong.
tldr; you are not supposed to side with Jamie!!!! he is in the wrong!!!! that’s the whole point of the musical!!!!! don’t watch the movie it sucks and is innacurate!!!!!!! RAHHHHHHHHHHHH
117 notes · View notes
rodrikstark · 11 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
There are so many lives I want to share with you.
247 notes · View notes
143bc · 6 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
86 notes · View notes
becabeale143 · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Here comes the bride 🌹❤️
51 notes · View notes
icklewolfiekins · 1 year
Text
songs from musicals that are the same but also one of them is a good person and one of them is my personal enemy something something anyway it’s Hard to Be the Bard from Something Rotten and Moving Too Fast from The Last Five Years have such similar energy??
67 notes · View notes
silentauthor96 · 9 months
Text
Me *showing up to a party 20 years late with iced lemonade, ready to start fights*: ok so we all agree Jamie is clearly the villain in The Last Five Years, right?
48 notes · View notes
thatnerdinthecorner · 2 months
Text
Reason I HAte Jamie No. 46849
'If I hadn't believed in you I wouldn't have loved you at all' from If I Didn't Believe In You
so much of this show is Cathy thinking about her insecurities. Jamie is so successful and she isn't, and throughout the show we get her talent confused with her insecurity: in Climbing Uphill we see her unsuccessful audition and how terribly it goes, and we as an audience are supposed to think she's a bad actress/singer, but she spends the summer touring, and we know that this is something that she does regularly:
'Is it just that you're disappointed To be touring again for the summer?'
Touring isn't a bad job for an actor. It's not Broadway, it's not her dream, but it's a good job and it takes work and talent. Jason Robert Brown got sued by his ex, and consequently had to change parts of the show because it was too close to the reality of their marriage. In other words, the writer is Jamie, the entire show is told by Jamie, and even the songs from Cathy's perspective are written and told by Jamie. Given everything else in the show, I'm not particularly inclined to trust Jamie's account if he's the one telling us that she's bad at her job.
In If I Didn't Believe In You Cathy doesn't want to go to one of Jamie's work parties. She's feeling frustrated about her own career and doesn't feel like spending the evening faking it to appease Jamie's colleagues. So Jamie digs into that. The entire song is very manipulative, but with these lines it fits into a continued theme throughout the show of saying that because Cathy hasn't managed to reach the pinnacle of an incredibly competitive field that she is automatically bad at her job and completely unskilled. Which we know isn't true, because otherwise she wouldn't be touring.
When Jamie says:
'If I hadn't believed in you I wouldn't have loved you at all'
what he's really saying is if I didn't think you would be successful, I wouldn't love you. But because her success is constantly conflated with her talent, when Jamie is talking about her success, he's also talking about her talent, so he's also saying that his love for her is dependent on her being talented, which he is measuring by her success.
Also, for the rest of the song Jamie says 'If I didn't believe in you' not 'hadn't'. I'm probably simplifying this a lot, but in this context, 'Didn't' works in the past and the conditional present tense. 'Hadn't' works in the past and conditional past tense. When Jamie switches to 'hadn't' at the end, he's saying that his belief in her is in the past tense. When Jamie says 'I wouldn't have loved you' that's in past tense too. His belief in her, and his love for her, which are intrinsically tied, are both in the past tense, because she has failed, because she is untalented. The song ends with him confirming all of her worst insecurities and saying he no longer loves her, and the next and final line is:
'Now why don't you put on your dress and we'll go, okay? Cathy? Can we do that, please? Please?'
In other words, the last few lines of this song is Jamie saying telling his wife yes, you're right, you don't have a good job, and you'll never get a better one, you'll never be successful, because you're not talented, and I don't love you anymore, because I only loved you because I thought that you could be successful one day, so why don't you just shut up, stop whining and do as I say, and come to my party to celebrate me and my work and my success.
I hate this man more that I can say.
9 notes · View notes
fangirlfreak08 · 4 months
Text
I’m watching the last five years and I HAVE NEVER HATED A FICTIONAL MAN MORE
7 notes · View notes
begging-for-rain · 6 months
Text
you know what makes me crazy I’m sorry can I say this you know what makes me nuts? the fact that we could be together, HERE together, sharing our night spending our time but you are gonna choose someone else to be with. no, you ARE, yes Jamie that’s EXACTLY what you’re doing; you could be here with me or there with them, as usual GUESS which you pick! no Jamie you DO NOT have to go to ANOTHER party with the same twenty jerks you ALREADY know you could stay with your wife on her FUCKING BIRTHDAY and you could, god forbid, even see my show. and I know in your soul it must drive you crazy that you won’t get to play with your little girlfriends NO I’m not, no I’m not! and the point is, Jamie, that you can’t spend a single day that’s not about YOU and YOU and NOTHING but you, marvellous novelist you, isn’t he WONDERFUL just twenty eight the saviour of writing. you and you and nothing BUT YOU, miles and piles of YOU
Tumblr media
8 notes · View notes
whatevertheywant · 1 year
Text
What she says: I'm fine
What she means:
You know what makes me crazy?
I'm sorry, can I say this?
You know what makes me nuts?
The fact that we could be together here together
Sharing our night, spending our time
And you are gonna choose someone else to be with no, you are
Yes, Jamie, that's exactly what you're doing
You could be here with me or be there with them
As usual, guess which you pick!
No, Jamie, you do not have to go to another party
With the same twenty jerks you already know
You could stay with your wife on her fucking birthday
And you could, God forbid, even see my show
And I know in your soul it must drive you crazy
That you won't get to play with your little girlfriends
37 notes · View notes
Photo
Tumblr media
Title: The Last Five Years
Rating: PG-13
Director: Richard LaGravenese
Cast: Anna Kendrick, Jeremy Jordan, Natalie Knepp, Bettina Bresnan, Marceline Hugot, Rafael Sardina, Allison Macri, Alan Simpson, Nic Novicki, Tamara Mintz, Cassandra Inman
Release year: 2014
Genres: romance, drama, comedy
Blurb: In New York, a struggling actress and a successful writer relive their failed marriage from two perspectives.
18 notes · View notes
characters4comfort · 10 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Where they meet in the middle.
15 notes · View notes
rodrikstark · 1 year
Text
my favorite part of The Last Five Years is how 75% of the songs make me feel like someone just punched me in the face, ripped a gaping hole in my chest, made hollow a part of my soul, etc.
25 notes · View notes
143bc · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Anna Kendrick | The Last 5 Years
30 notes · View notes
becabeale143 · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
52 notes · View notes