Beautiful, Stunning, and Not What You'd Expect...

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2016)

Fresh off of his smash hit, "Whiplash," writer/director Damien Chazelle has returned with another original in the throwback musical-for-the-screen, "La La Land." The film follows the two protagonists: Mia (Emma Stone), a barista who struggles to make it as an actress in Hollywood, and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a jazz pianist who was fired from his previous steady work and has struggled to move on both professionally and personally ever since.
*Light spoilers to follow, with heavy spoilers later.*
The plot follows Mia and Sebastian as they experience a series of chance meetings: a traffic jam on the interstate, Mia finding him playing in a night club, a party Mia attends where Sebastian also happens to be playing, etc. "It probably means something," Sebastian remarks. "Probably not," Mia replies. The two then sing a song about how there is no spark of romantic interest between them, despite the audience and each other knowing that is false.
The film is a dizzying array of technicolor and from the studio logos to the final roll, you can tell you're in a film that is meant as a love letter to the Golden Age of Hollywood. On a technical level, the craft is so tightly wound that aficionados will likely lose their grip on the narrative as they're swept into the beautiful sights, sounds, camera-work, and stage blocking that can sometimes be distracting in their virtuosity.
Consider, for instance, the film's opening shot. We pan from beautiful blue clouds into a sea of unnamed singers, dancers, and, yes, even musicians and BMX bikers as they sing about their experience moving to California hoping to "make it." Some viewers may be so distracted by the level of technical skill on display in this opening scene that they may not realize that it doesn't even establish the film's plot, only its mood and setting.
In terms of casting, the film is pitch perfect. Stone & Gosling have excellent chemistry and in a film that relies heavily on visual storytelling, Chazelle struck gold landing two leads with expressive faces, emotive range, and who are both in the prime of their careers.
*Heavy spoilers ahead*
After a series of cliché setups, we arrive at the film's core: the film is a love story. But the love story is not simply between Mia and Sebastian; it is also a love story between Modern Cinema and the Golden Age of Hollywood. The film sweeps you away on a current of whimsy, but if you pause a moment to reflect on the course of the narrative you will find that the waters are not so deep after all. The film shows Mia living with three housemates, all who are vying for stardom as she is. Why should we care for her success any more than theirs? And for Sebastian, he presents himself as a loner and a hermit with self-destructive tendencies: why should we sympathize with this character?
The best reason that the film provides is that the two characters are played by the films leads: Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. And be warned: how you answer this question will largely determine whether you like this movie.
For my final take on this film, I would suggest that disliking based on the premise of inadequate justification for investment in the romance plot is to miss the point. The point isn't whether you care about Mia & Sebastian; the point is that Mia & Sebastian's lives symbolize the cinema of old coming into the Modern Age. One subplot involves Sebastian's dream to open a night club where he picks the music. Co-star John Legend asks the rhetorical question that gets to the heart of the film: "How are you gonna be a revolutionary if you're such a traditionalist? You hold onto the past, but jazz is about the future." If you substitute "cinema" for jazz, I think you get the heart of the film's message.
And here is where I will hold out several examples to illuminate my point on this subject: the film subverts expectations at many turns. As I was leaving the theater, I noted that something negative follows nearly every musical number (with very few exceptions). At the end of the opening number, they're still in a traffic jam; after a breathtakingly staged dance at a party, Mia's car is towed; after Mia sings "Audition" near the film's end, that signals the end of her relationship with Sebastian.
The film closes with a journey five years into the future. Mia has married another man and is raising a child, Sebastian has started his nightclub. Unsurprisingly, a chance happening causes their paths to cross yet again. Sebastian spots Mia in the crowd and plays a piece that (if not actually, then certainly in the film) is so beautiful that it transports he and Mia into a fantasy world where all of the negative things that they've encountered together hadn't existed. It's beautiful, fantastic, and everything you'd expect in a storybook ending.
But this isn't a storybook ending. The film closes with Mia & Sebastian exchanging knowing glances from opposite ends of the nightclub and Mia leaving with her husband. Just like in the case of new jazz, this musical is a new tune played with a lot of familiar notes.
"La La Land" seems like a breath of fresh air because of how beautifully it repackages and then subverts the old tunes we know and love. It is silly to speculate on what direction Chazelle's career will take after this film, but his body of work thus far has demonstrated that it will be both beautiful and emotional.
Thanks for reading.