"a love letter to Los Angeles"

Rating: 8/10 (19 February 2017)

I have the fortune/misfortune of my best friend living in the USA so she sees everything before me and often says, "You must go and see this." I had to go and see this. Aside from the fact that the Gosling-Stone combo is golden, and individually they are brilliant, I had the recommendation from Stateside. I am biased, in that I very much admire Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, and I love all things Los Angeles and oldy-worldy Hollywood, but someone told me before I went that LLL isn't set in the Golden Age of Hollywood – the 1940s – its set in modern day Hollyweird. Shocker! What did this mean? From the opening scene, I had a stupid grin on my face, and it only left when I was crying. Such is the emotional roller-coaster of this film. It is the golden years of Hollywood because it transports you to another world, where singing and dancing are normal and love is forever and two people are star-crossed to be together, and it's sunny and people wear bright colours and pretty dresses, and proper suits still. It's a Hollywood where Gosling and Stone shine, and are playing characters that seem so natural to them, the fact that Ryan had to learn to play piano like that for the film defies belief. It's a beautiful film, a love song to Los Angeles, but also a stark portrait of Hollywood as well; the competition, the broken dreams, the fakery, the traffic jams, and the disappointment.
Two wannabes – Stone, an aspiring actress, and Gosling, an aspiring jazz musician meet by chance and are wildly unsuitable for each other. But it works. Both are smitten, and motivated to chase the other, and each pushes the other with their dreams. It is beautiful, endearing, but also gut wrenchingly sad and challenging. These people knew exactly what they wanted from life and they bared all (figuratively) and went for it. What is in my life that is like that? What dreams do I have, did I have? I thought about it for days afterwards, that and the beautiful and haunting musical refrain.
The music is wonderful, John Legend is a Legend and seeing him in the film was icing on the cake, and Gosling's piano playing is just beautiful. The sets and locations, whether the back lot at Universal or whichever Studio it was, The Griffith Observatory, or out on the road, were all perfect and costume, and Direction, all the ducks were lined up in a row to be brilliant. So many homages to past Hollywood films, little in jokes, which I didn't get but read about, so much depth, and twists for once a Hollywood film without a Hollywood ending, but it was more Hollywood because of that. I loved it. I get why some people didn't, those without the childlike suspension of disbelief and inability to see fantasy and imagine another world, or see metaphor; seems you either adore it or say "Meh!" I'm not sure it is worthy of all the Oscar nods, if I'm being honest. Yes, it was dancing and singing and fantasy and real life and Hollywood and period and modern and all things to all Los Angeles, but it wasn't taxing or a stretch for these actors. But perhaps it was the nod to things past, the feelings it engendered, the emotional roller-coaster, what films are meant to be about, the story within the story within the film, the film as story and as narration, which makes it more than the sum of its parts, and the bareness and frankness of the characters. I think it is one of those films that will be studied, to peel back the onion layers of Director Damien Chazelle's vision. Go see for yourself.