Romantic Sweet

Rating: 6/10 (6 November 2017)

When I wanted to see «La La Land» in a movie theater, I found no company to go with and I let it pass. I asked my friends and they answered, "It's pretty, but not like the musicals of the past." Then it won 261 awards and 193 nominations according to IMDb.com and I stopped asking... I finally saw it two days ago and I understood them. Yes, by parts it's pretty, but the problem, in my opinion, is that it tries to be like old musicals and that format changed, evolved, because the world changed and the perception and appreciation of art advanced, and because shows became more eclectic and media stuff (as illustrated by that 2001 spawn called «Moulin Rouge!»). The naive (and perhaps a bit silly) world of «Top Hat», «Meet Me in St. Louis» and «Finian's Rainbow» no longer exists; and people care very little for products as «West Side Story» or «The Sound of Music» that solved their sociological, economic and ideological issues with someone singing «Somewhere» or «Climb Ev'ry Mountain».
I felt it since the film began, when car drivers stuck in a traffic jam and under a hot sun, sing a little song that, in the harsh reality, would translate into insults, curses and maybe blows. However, I followed the game and began to like it, the more so when the plot antagonized two realities, two personalities with two very different goals. Ryan Gosling plays the pianist Sebastian, a musician who is trying to rescue forms of cultural expression from oblivion or extinction, anguished because jazz is dying and he does not have a space of his own to practice it and spread it. Emma Stone is Mia, a girl who is after that old aspiration of actors since the early 20th century, who lined up to enter the "factory of dreams" (or nightmares, you name it) that is the cinema of Los Angeles - which is not the same as the cinema of New York or Texas.
Immediately, my identification was with Sebastian, although as a theater person I understood Mia. However, it did not take too long before the character disappointed me: Mia has no assistance to stage her show and only gives one performance of her monologue because the opening night was not what she expected and returns home. I have seen openings with fewer people than those who went to see her. In addition, to make matters worse, in one of the most unlikely dramatic (and ridiculous) turns of the plot, some producers propose her to make a film about her ideas. Of course, this may happen, no one denies it, but director-screenwriter Damien Chazelle does not let us see what she did on stage, so we can say, "Sure, such a good actress deserves that opportunity." But no, we must imagine that the monologue was great, although, truthfully, at that point of the movie Mia has not shown any trait of genius.
To be fair, Sebastian does not either, but his character has conviction, strength and determination, and he has his great "commercial moment" before Mia's, when he plays with a standard band a bad song in front of an entranced crowd shouting and dancing to the tune. Luckily, the pianist reacts and says, "No, this is not my thing". Count the awards that Emma Stone won, and those Ryan Gosling got and you will know this world goes only wants «The Voice» and «American Idol»... All in all, I admit that Mia's option is valid, there are many people who want to be the art world and have families. To the effect, the presence of Tom Everett Scott, a nice actor who plays her husband, helps a lot, but Chazelle (and Stone and Gosling in their performances) insinuate sadness and regret for what could have been but was not, as each followed their dreams.
In short, this central conflict between art and personal fulfillment is adorned with musical numbers tinged with romanticism that work very well (those that my friends call "pretty") or are very cheesy (like the dance by the stars in the Observatory Griffith) and overloaded with special effects. I guess many miss the expertise of Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire when dancing, or the voices of Julie Andrews and Mary Martin. But the earth trembles and the hurricane is coming, so nobody has time for the la-la-la of this romantic comfit.