La La Land

Rating: 10/10 (18 December 2016)

I wonder if I had just stumbled upon this movie, being Damien Chazelle's third as director, not knowing anything or knowing little about it, if I would've liked/loved/fallen head over heels for it more than I did. Because of the state of the independent film scene (and this is one of those mid-way movies like Pulp Fiction, where it has its toes in indie and mainstream Hollywood, the latter if nothing else via its stars and setting), movies like La La Land come backed with the kind of hype that usually would be reserved for, say, a Star Wars movie. It also has to do too with the director's previous, Whiplash, being a ride that gives Emotional Roller-coaster its clichéd status, since it was the announcement of a director (from my generation/exact age group) swinging for the fences. And La La Land, with its major reviews and festival runs, seemed like another one. And it is, ultimately, a great movie. Could it have been better? Hmm.
Sometimes, furthermore, coming right off from seeing as movie and dumping thoughts and feelings out like a raccoon spilling a garbage can at night and scattering the contents is not always "correct" as one might say. It may take another viewing, or a few days, to get more of what I felt about it. But I can say that this is a movie about musicals and musical about movies, and usually these cross and twist like it's a dance out in outer space. Chazelle is also bringing a story that is so familiar - artists in music and performance, close enough as the same thing, who meet, have a little push-and-pull at first (they first meet by the usual serendipity of LA traffic jam) - that it could be criticized as a rehash. Hell, we just had a movie come out a month ago/around this same time, Nocturnal Animals, that, if you look closely, isn't too far off (though the endings are VERY different, which I'll get to what is so gobsmackingly JOYFUL about this movie).
Gosling and Stone first were paired five years ago in Crazy Stupid Love, and I'm sure Chazelle knew this and bet on it being stronger this time around. Though as a nitpick (and it should be mentioned) Gosling can't sing anything exceptional, Stone can and they know how to dance and bond and kiss and bring the romance out in full force. La La Land would be a beautiful exercise in technicalities, of pulling off all of the care-free MOVIE ideas that Chazelle has (seriously, he's about as geeky in his homage as Tarantino - notice the Ingrid Bergman wall- sized poster in Mia's place and other parts, or the whole use of the WB lot), but what makes it a triumph is that the actors work well together and separately. More than well, they find the truth in the clichés that come with artists-trying-to-make-it and sell it as well as Chazelle's script can get them to.
Which, perhaps, is the one thing that keeps me from saying 'OMG THIS IS THE GREATEST MOVIE I've EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE' (which, again, hype) - it takes you so immediately into musical terrain with its opening number in LA traffic that it's jarring to then go back into the 'real' world, more or less. Songs of course happen, but it's a balancing act, and all the while Chazelle's story points for these two is so familiar as far as the 'What Happens When You Follow Your Dreams in Artistic/Corporate America' thing that it goes into what could almost be dangerous terrain - not embracing and finding a truth in cliché, but just being conventional (i.e. how Gosling becomes a piano player in a group John Legend's got, and this takes him away from his actual 'dream' of a jazz club, and then Stone's Mia's dream of being an actress, etc etc so forth and so on).
... And then the final 15 minutes or so happens, where we flash ahead five years to what's happened with these two people who, at one point, went to the same planetarium as in Rebel Without a Cause and dance and go into the stratosphere of the galaxy (I'm reminded of the French New Wave, a lot, by the way, in how much Chazelle embraces post-modern self-consciousness; if Breathless was his Whiplash, is this his, uh, A Woman is a Woman?) And the two of them have changed, more or less, and Gosling plays a song that transports into the 'what if' and it's... I don't have words for it. It's what the movies are about. It's a magical, wonderful 15 minutes that reminded me why I can stand being around people whispering (like I don't hear you, old bastards) and munching popcorn and can be transported into a completely made-up, empathetic landscape.
My first instinct is to go for the typical critical bulls*** of saying 'this is "better" than this' (that is Whiplash vs La La Land), but it doesn't matter. That last fifteen minutes, and many other scenes and Stone's performance and the dancing and the whole color palette and the cinematography (oh man, I don't care if you're verging from homage into rip-off of PT Anderson, it's so delicious for my eyes to look at), confirms that Chazelle is the real deal, a filmmaker with something to say about the human experience, about what it means to chase that unfortunate dragon known as the "dream" of artists and musicians and actors and so on, and at the same time can bring it forward with... soul. It takes a little time, but my instinct is to call this a soulful Hollywood movie first, beautiful homage second.