La La Land is a delightful cinematic experience
Just like Jacques Demy's "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", Bob Fosse's "All That Jazz", Lars von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark" and even Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge", Damien Chazelle's "La La Land" (2016, USA) is a musical film unlike any other. You may be averse to watching characters sing and dance onscreen, but "La La Land" is such a singular experience: its rapturous, vibrant and charming energy leaps off the screen. As in the 31-year-old director's breakout film "Whiplash", the very first scene - a traffic jam in a Los Angeles freeway where the motorists join together in a song-and-dance number, done in one long tracking shot - hooks you right away in the film's world, from which there's no letting go already. The so-called magic of cinema has never been more apparent than in "La La Land".
But don't let appearances deceive you: the film's ebullience doesn't mean that it's something lifted from a fairy tale. On the contrary. Being on the same spirit as the Demy film, "La La Land"'s central story is pretty much grounded on reality and has a bittersweet tone to it. Mia (Emma Stone, Venice best actress winner for the film) is a down-on-her-luck aspiring actress, working as a barista in a coffeeshop on a Warner Bros studio lot in LA, where she gets face-to-face with some of Hollywood's popular celebrities every now and then. While Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is likewise a neither-here-nor-there struggling jazz piano player in some nightclub. The two meet, fall in love and have a relationship. And you thought this would get any sweeter and lovelier, right? However, problems come along the way, causing for the couple to eventually part ways. The bottomline of the conflict is that the pursuit of their respective dreams puts a toll on their relationship. Or perhaps, it's the other way around.
Thus, while the film works as a joyous and loving ode to cinema and moviemaking, it also dispenses with the artificial and sugar-coated world of the classic Hollywood musicals by grounding itself on a relationship whose dynamics could likely be the same as everyone else's. Gosling and Stone could be the most unlikely pair to star in a musical, as they're really not known to possess powerful singing vocals and skillful dancing steps (but then, were Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo, Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor?), but the manner they express those lyrics perfectly communicate to us the strength and vulnerability, the longings and aspirations, the joy and melancholy of their characters. Who would've thought that the two could be so adept at expressing hurt and sadness through music? Chazelle himself mentioned in an interview that it wasn't his intention to get professional singers and dancers for the major roles, as they would be more likely concerned with the technical precision of the production numbers than with the nuances of their characters. For this latter aspect, he believes that it's something that a true-blue actor could do best.
The young director just found the perfect pair in Gosling and Stone. Moreover, their relationship isn't the kind patterned along the lines of the "happy-ever-after" and "always-on-cloud-nine" type. Rather, it's something that's brave enough to toy around the idea of what could have been, of those who got away. This is poignantly encapsulated in a montage towards the end of what Mia and Sebastian could have gone through had their relationship worked out entirely for the best. In this sense, the musical number is something like the kind seen in "Dancer in the Dark" - a way of imagining a better reality. An escapist fare, so to speak, in such a manner that it becomes a self-reflexive analysis of musicals being an escapist form of entertainment. In the context of Mia's and Sebastian's could-have-been beautiful relationship, it's not that we don't want happy love stories, it's just that we are also attracted to the kind that portray such stories as not entirely bed of roses.
Chazelle also pointed out that with "La La Land", he aims to embrace both tradition (of musicals) and modernity (in the way of depicting a relationship). Or said in another way, while we may have already seen all the tricks and tropes of one of cinema's beloved genres, "La La Land" feels like you've only seen something of this kind for the first time. For one, the musical numbers are almost always done in one long take, with no cutaways or inserts, showing the exhaustiveness and harmony of the choreography, which makes for a delightful cinematic experience. Not even the choreography in "All That Jazz" has done something like this. Every frame simply oozes with the director's affection for cinema and music. "La La Land", on its own, may not bring about a rebirth of musicals, but it can serve as a loving reminder of an era when viewers became enamored by all the singing and dancing onscreen, either as a way of escape or to be simply dazzled by them.
(Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone talk about jazz in this scene from Damien Chazelle's "La La Land")
But don't let appearances deceive you: the film's ebullience doesn't mean that it's something lifted from a fairy tale. On the contrary. Being on the same spirit as the Demy film, "La La Land"'s central story is pretty much grounded on reality and has a bittersweet tone to it. Mia (Emma Stone, Venice best actress winner for the film) is a down-on-her-luck aspiring actress, working as a barista in a coffeeshop on a Warner Bros studio lot in LA, where she gets face-to-face with some of Hollywood's popular celebrities every now and then. While Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is likewise a neither-here-nor-there struggling jazz piano player in some nightclub. The two meet, fall in love and have a relationship. And you thought this would get any sweeter and lovelier, right? However, problems come along the way, causing for the couple to eventually part ways. The bottomline of the conflict is that the pursuit of their respective dreams puts a toll on their relationship. Or perhaps, it's the other way around.
Thus, while the film works as a joyous and loving ode to cinema and moviemaking, it also dispenses with the artificial and sugar-coated world of the classic Hollywood musicals by grounding itself on a relationship whose dynamics could likely be the same as everyone else's. Gosling and Stone could be the most unlikely pair to star in a musical, as they're really not known to possess powerful singing vocals and skillful dancing steps (but then, were Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo, Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor?), but the manner they express those lyrics perfectly communicate to us the strength and vulnerability, the longings and aspirations, the joy and melancholy of their characters. Who would've thought that the two could be so adept at expressing hurt and sadness through music? Chazelle himself mentioned in an interview that it wasn't his intention to get professional singers and dancers for the major roles, as they would be more likely concerned with the technical precision of the production numbers than with the nuances of their characters. For this latter aspect, he believes that it's something that a true-blue actor could do best.
The young director just found the perfect pair in Gosling and Stone. Moreover, their relationship isn't the kind patterned along the lines of the "happy-ever-after" and "always-on-cloud-nine" type. Rather, it's something that's brave enough to toy around the idea of what could have been, of those who got away. This is poignantly encapsulated in a montage towards the end of what Mia and Sebastian could have gone through had their relationship worked out entirely for the best. In this sense, the musical number is something like the kind seen in "Dancer in the Dark" - a way of imagining a better reality. An escapist fare, so to speak, in such a manner that it becomes a self-reflexive analysis of musicals being an escapist form of entertainment. In the context of Mia's and Sebastian's could-have-been beautiful relationship, it's not that we don't want happy love stories, it's just that we are also attracted to the kind that portray such stories as not entirely bed of roses.
Chazelle also pointed out that with "La La Land", he aims to embrace both tradition (of musicals) and modernity (in the way of depicting a relationship). Or said in another way, while we may have already seen all the tricks and tropes of one of cinema's beloved genres, "La La Land" feels like you've only seen something of this kind for the first time. For one, the musical numbers are almost always done in one long take, with no cutaways or inserts, showing the exhaustiveness and harmony of the choreography, which makes for a delightful cinematic experience. Not even the choreography in "All That Jazz" has done something like this. Every frame simply oozes with the director's affection for cinema and music. "La La Land", on its own, may not bring about a rebirth of musicals, but it can serve as a loving reminder of an era when viewers became enamored by all the singing and dancing onscreen, either as a way of escape or to be simply dazzled by them.
(Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone talk about jazz in this scene from Damien Chazelle's "La La Land")
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