4 extraordinary-nostalgic-musical-romances out of 4
If the common cinematic sensibility is that films need to be dark, brooding, and melancholy to truly move an audience, then Damien Chazelle’s sophomore feature La La Land is a challenge to this notion.
The story is cheerfully simple to the point of being cliché—indeed, it’s a tale as old as time. Two artists meet and fall in love, only to ultimately struggle as their relationship is tested by the strains of romance and their work. It’s a story that’s been done to death—and done much better—by the early Hollywood musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. However, over the course of its brisk 128-minute runtime, the film—also written by Chazelle—argues that things like romanticism, nostalgia, and cliché need not be treated as the harbingers of narrative obsolescence.
In short, La La Land is precisely the palette cleanser that modern Hollywood has needed in the wake of the undying trend of studio reboots, remakes, and sequels.
Ironically, due to its use of classical Hollywood musical conventions—big band scores; slow, sultry string ensembles; melancholic woodwinds; and actors who actually sing and dance—La La Land is closer to a comic book movie than it is to a standalone piece of “fresh” film. That is to say, Chazelle takes no shame in paying homage and tribute to almost every great musical from the past 70 years. Easter eggs, winks, and nods to older Hollywood properties fill every pore of La La Land in a way that films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe have yet to even remotely broach.
Take, for instance, the scene where Ryan Gosling’s struggling jazz pianist Sebastian walks Emma Stone’s wannabe actress Mia to her car. As they walk along a Los Angeles valley, the streetlights turn on and a groggy daytime city wakes up to embrace the night. Seb slowly starts crooning, Mia soon joins him, and next thing you know, the two of them break out into an intricately choreographed tap number while simultaneously bemoaning the fact that the two have no chemistry at all. The scene is a direct homage to Gene Kelly’s solo tap sequence in Singin’ in the Rain, with the exceptions that Seb and Mia aren’t singing in the rain and that they don’t yet know that—from where they’re standing—the sun is shining all over the place.
Of course, what adds to the aforementioned La La Land number—indeed, what makes most of the film’s sequences stunning—is that Chazelle’s direction introduces almost no cuts into the process.For almost all of the film’s performances—save a few notable and necessary exceptions—Stone and Gosling sing and dance in a single glorious take. Further, instead of gloating about the use of a cinematic effect that is increasingly being employed as a parlour trick, Chazelle’s camera ensures that the audience pays attention to nothing but the actors onscreen. Much of La La Land’s direction relies on this kind of sleight-of-hand—stealing the audience’s focus from their surroundings and capturing attention in a way that only live musical theatre really can.
I speak with nothing but admiration when I say that La La Land is the kind of film that carries itself with the same sense of dignity and pride as those classic Hollywood adaptations of live theatre, like West Side Story, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music.
What, then, of La La Land’s other filmic qualities? It’s already been said that the story is nostalgic and its characters even more so. It’s true that Stone and Gosling are no Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but the two actors bring their usual chemistry and camaraderie to this film, and no effort has been spared to convince audiences that the duo are a capable musical act.
The film’s editing is minimalistic, sparing, and clever.Further, Linus Sandgren’s dazzling work as the film’s cinematographer lovingly mixes cheerful, sunny Los Angeles yellows with the film’s primary colour palette of reds, blues, and greens.
However, praise goes to Justin Hurwitz for his work on the film’s score, and musical team, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, for their work crafting each song’s lyrics.
I began by arguing that La La Land is a counterargument to the proposition that melancholia makes moving pictures. Hurwitz, Pasek, and Paul inject a necessary vitality turning a story about struggle into entertainment that is consistently entertaining and endlessly optimistic.
After all, what else would one expect of a film titled after a place out of touch with reality?
Photo courtesy of Summit Entertainment.