La La Land, 2016.
Directed by Damien Chazelle
Starring Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, Finn Whitrock, and J.K. Simmons.
SYNOPSIS:
Dreams are chased and love is found in Damien Chazelle’s ode to Hollywood musicals and celluloid magic.
On paper, La La Land, reads like it’s going to be my favourite movie of all time. While I’m still digesting this wonderful, hopeful homage to the classic period of the Hollywood musical, I can imagine a time when it may very well end up being just that. Damien Chazelle’s sophomore effort follows 2014’s superb, equally Jazz inspired Whiplash, and is built from a list of my very most loved cinematic components. It’s an L.A story; a musical, a romantic comedy with a heavy emphasis on the romantic. It’s inspirational, poignant, drenched in optimism and nostalgia. The only way it could be better designed for my personal taste would be to include 25% Batman.
This is Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone’s third collaboration, and at this point their on-screen chemistry is very natural. The vast majority of the running time is devoted to their simple story. Seb is an aspiring musician wanting to open a bar that respects the history and tradition of pure jazz. Mia is a barista and wannabe actress, struggling through many a catastrophic audition. After a classic meet-cute and a tap-dance date at a Hollywood schmooze party, they navigate the troubled waters of falling in love whilst pursuing their respective destinies.
Damien Chazelle harkens back to the very best of the American musical, where characters break into song at appropriate times, driving the plot forward. His camera waltzes around the cast elegantly as a dancing participant. The songs themselves are fantastic, memorable and classy.
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been more engaged or moved watching a film in a theatre. The final ten minutes began a sustained period of bawling that didn’t subside until long after the end credits and I was back outside in daylight, my wife wondering what’s wrong with me. I tried to explain to her how transcendent my personal experience was, and I quickly realised my profound reaction to this monolith of American cinema was perhaps purely a personal one. The ending was almost as affecting for me as the rapturous joy I experienced watching the end of It’s a Wonderful Life for the first time. I won’t do anything to spoil it here. As the credits rolled I quickly launched to my feet clapping wildly, with the manliest of tears streaming down my face in awe of what I’d just witnessed.
But what launches these intense reactions from audiences? I remember with clarity recently a screening of the Muppets Most Wanted. A fun but flawed film by most measures. I remember being moved to tears during the opening musical number then too, again with my embarrassed wife, ‘why are you crying?’ she asked… I replied ‘Just LOOK at how happy they are!’ I replied as if she was insane to deny the power of singing affable puppets. Am I just too easy to manipulate?
But this feels clearly different, and not just simple emotional manipulation for weak-hearted fools like myself. In honesty, my eyes became glassy two hours prior to my embarrassing display; the virtuoso opening scene and eventual song takes place on the L.A freeway, and culminates with choreographed dancers atop and around stationary cars, while the rush hour traffic crawls by in the distance. With musicals, often by default your mind is constricted to the limits of a room, a theatre stage; but in La La Land’s opening number in the city air, the world is immediately built as free and open, endless dancers stretched as far as the eye can see. It is breathtaking, wide-screen cinematic glory.
It very successfully conveys the pains and yearnings of first deep love, the thrilling heart pangs of seeing and feeling the deepest, instinctual, primordial and human of emotions for the first time. Yes, La La Land is moving. Corny or schmaltzy? It walks a fine fine line, but it earns all of its tugged emotional reactions through thrillingly executed direction of complicated material, and superb performances from its game two leads who deliver performances that no doubt will earn them statues, or at least nominations this coming awards season. Emma Stone has the edge over Gosling both as a singer and emoter throughout, there are two scenes in particular that bookend the film that perfectly illustrate the depth of Stone’s range. Gosling of course is no slouch, and could happily coast on pure charisma alone.
La La land is far more than saccharine surface. It has a rich visual language and is bursting with iconography that demands multiple viewings and readings. It’s offers commentary on Hollywood, not just its white-washed past but its diverse hopeful future. It’s an attack on modern cynicism and a call to reach for the most outlandish of goals and the pursuit of happiness. It will be remembered as one of the GREAT American films. Damien Chazelle has restored genuine magic back to cinema. There is love and there are dreams, and in La La Land you can’t have both.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★/ Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Mark Bartlett – Follow me on Twitter
Originally published October 23, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
