The Last Five Years (2014)
Based on Jason Robert Brown’s 2001 play “The Last Five Years”
OK, OK – I’m cheating a little bit with this one. Though it’s adapted from what is technically a musical, I had to include The Last Five Years, the story of creative couple Jamie Wellerstein (Jeremy Jordan), a Jewish novelist, and actress Cathy Hiatt (Anna Kendrick). Its told in reverse chronological order from Cathy’s perspective, starting at the end of the couple’s five-year marriage, and in chronological order from Jamie’s, beginning at, well, the beginning. At only one point in the film do we see Cathy and Jamie actually interact; the rest is the bittersweet tale of a relationship splintered. The Last Five Years is sharp and sometimes sour; it hits you in the exact place the present hurts, then leads you into an exuberant remembrance of the highs of the past. It is, in many ways, how we all look back on our lives: with a certain lens, in a certain manner highlighting certain memories we cannot shake from our heartstrings.
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