La La Land, 2016.
Directed by Damien Chazelle.
Starring Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Rosemarie DeWitt, J.K. Simmons, and John Legend.
SYNOPSIS:
Mia is an aspiring actress working as a barista on the Warner Bros. lot. Sebastian is a musician who harbours dreams of opening his own jazz club. The two meet and fall head over heels in love, only for dreams and ambitions to get in the way.
Is it too much to ask for a movie to simply make us feel good? Apparently not as far as the glorious La La Land is concerned. In this era of self-consciously gritty and overblown blockbusters, in waltzes Damien Chazelle’s vibrant homage to the classic movie musical, one whose emotional acuity and storytelling parameters couldn’t be better defined, and whose jubilant spirit is ultimately impossible to resist.
Combining the Technicolor majesty and sweep of Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with the contemporary, lightly cynical snap of Gosling/Stone pair-up Crazy Stupid Love, the movie dances along a very tricky line between loving pastiche and emotionally engaging drama. That it succeeds is largely down to Chazelle, a filmmaker who knows how to rein in his cine-literate enthusiasms before they become tiresome.
And what treasures does Chazelle have on offer, beginning with the thunderous and jaw-dropping Busby Berkeley throwback ‘Another Day of Sun’. As Los Angeles commuters throw themselves out of their cars with wild abandon on a freeway, the camera swooping down and deliriously drunk on energy, it becomes an overture of sorts, an indication of the movie’s (broadly) optimistic and celebratory air.
In fact where Chazelle triumphs is in his careful placement of the songs themselves, ensuring that they exist to enhance the central Seb/Mia romance rather than exist as emptily self-conscious homage. Working with composer Justin Hurwitz and lyricists Pasek & Paul, the filmmaker utilises both the songs and accompanying underscore to thread us through a deliberate and carefully plotted journey.
From the giddy, meet cute flirting of ‘A Lovely Night’, whose golden hour, toe-tapping air is the most explicit throwback to the heyday of Astaire and Rogers, to the mellow intimacy of Gosling/Stone duet ‘City of Stars’, indicating the deeper connection shared by the two characters, the tone of the music is as emotionally diverse as it is delightful. Devoid of the overblown, sung-through approach of Les Miserables, the movie is more akin to Singin’ in the Rain in that the characters and story back up the style.
In direct contrast to his emotionally gruelling Whiplash, the jazz drumming drama that won J.K. Simmons an Oscar (and who appears briefly here), Chazelle conducts a more optimistic, celebratory approach in which there’s no threat of lasting psychological damage to either the characters or the audience. That said, the film’s observation of personal compromise is no less acute; it’s just modulated into a less savage, more bittersweet air, grounding the movie’s stylised fantasy in the recognisable messiness of everyday life. This is a film smart enough to recognise life as a soaring symphony of highs and lows, in which every crescendo must by necessity be countered with a sobering diminuendo.
It of course helps enormously that Chazelle has two massively charismatic stars to sell all these complexities. Not only possessed of the requisite good looks and charm needed to pull in a mass audience, Gosling and Stone are also perceptive, alert performers, allowing us to register every honest flicker of emotion without ever seeming contrived. It also helps to have stars who sweat and toil for our entertainment: not only do they hoof and sing for our pleasure (both have something of a childhood background in this area); Gosling also learned his jazz piano chops in three months, a remarkable achievement that unsurprisingly wowed co-star John Legend (whose own self-penned number ‘Start a Fire’ plays a key role in Seb’s character development). Not to be outdone, Stone’s pitch-perfect rendering of the pain and anguish of the audition process, where subtlety of emotion is roundly trashed by casting directors on iPhones or people walking in unannounced, is palpably believable.
In many ways the casting of the movie embodies its success: easy on the eye and supremely enjoyable yet bristling with hidden complexities and truths that transcend mere surface depth. By paying attention to both the broad strokes and individual beats, Chazelle, along with his stars and the combined efforts of the entire crew, has composed a movie that wants nothing more than to make us sincerely happy. Given the current climate, this is more important than ever before.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Sean Wilson is a film reviewer, soundtrack enthusiast and avid tea drinker. If all three can be combined at the same time, all is good with the world.
Originally published January 17, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
