Entertaining...and Moving

Rating: 9/10 (30 January 2017)

The decision to either abandon one's dream of success in the arts, or to compromise one's own artistic vision and modify a dream to conform to someone else's, is a heartbreaking and emotionally traumatic moment in the life of a performer. And it is during that transitional moment in the lives of two performers—an actress and a jazz pianist—that the movie La La Land occurs. How the two reach that decision, how they visualize it—and most importantly, whether or not they can survive it together, as a couple—forms the plot of the picture.
And what a picture La La Land turns out to be—a 128-minute swirling, colorful explosion of a movie, equally brimming with elation and heartbreak, drama and comedy, but all filled with singing, playing, and dancing not in movies sincewell, maybe ever. Comparisons to 1985's A Chorus Line or 2002's Chicago or even 1933's 42nd Street are inadequate. And to measure the film against 1952's classic Singin' in the Rain, often considered the best musical ever made, is just simply inappropriate.
La La Land stands on its own--it is its own unique, exhilarating self. Even for those of us who don't enjoy musicals, La La Land is an inspiration, because more than about art or music or performance, it's about life itself. You think you've had a bad day? Take a look at these poor unfortunate souls as they realize they might have squandered their entire lives on a dream no more substantial than a Land of Lollipops and Cotton Candy, Somewhere Over a Rainbow.
Just after the movie screen opens up and widens to reveal the picture will be presented in glorious CinemaScope, the widest and largest film presentation available, and in vibrant and breathtaking Technicolor, the very first scene takes place on a steamy day in a traffic jam outside Los Angeles. One single, frustrated driver exits her car and begins to tentatively sing a song about how she's remaining optimistic despite the misery of the day.
That solitary driver is soon joined by another driver, and then another, and another, until moments later the entire freeway is filled with a breathtakingly entertaining musical production piece involving hundreds of drivers, all performing an optimistic song to a driving tempo while displaying spectacular synchronized jumps and whirls and high-steps in a variety of dance styles. It's a tough act to followbut as Al Jolson said in 1927's The Jazz Singer, Hollywood's very first musical, "You ain't seen nuthin' yet!" Nominally the stars of La La Land are the vibrant and lovely Emma Stone as Mia, an aspiring actress, and the laconic, handsome Ryan Gosling as Sebastian, a jazz pianist performing for tips in a lunchtime restaurant. Stone and Gosling also teamed effectively earlier in their careers, in supporting roles in the 2011 comedy Crazy, Stupid Love, starring Steve Carell and Julianne Moore.
In La La Land, Stone's Mia is a young actress toiling as a waitress at an upscale coffee shop. Mia accepts the slights, low tips, and casual cruelties of both customers and co-workers with an indefatigable sense of optimism while religiously attending auditions for acting roles, when she can find them. She believes in her dream, and is aggressively pursuing the opportunity that will vindicate her vision and show that all her effort has been worthwhile.
Emma Stone with her luminescent eyes and expressive smile opens her heart, and shares with the audience nuances of every tiny triumph and discouraging failure—her feelings quickly become ours, until we're praying for her success almost as much as she is.
Gosling as Sebastian, the jazz pianist, turns in a less effecting performance than Stone, but that might be a subjective point—some viewers simply don't quite comprehend the actor's performance method: Gosling often appears inarticulate, murmuring his dialogue while looking downward or away from the other character, then looking up to assess the impact of his lines, followed by a wistful smile, as if the actor's recalling a sweet memory from long ago. Gosling is effective in his role as Sebastian, but some of that success is earned as a result of the belief Mia places in him—we trust her trust.
Both Gosling and Stone, however, dazzle in their musical scenes—their singing and dancing are impressive, and at times exhilarating. The canny viewer will notice, however, that often the dancing is presented in very small segments of two of three seconds duration, edited together to create the illusion of one continuous performance. It's a trick of Tom Cross' expert editing, but it works beautifully: Stone and Gosling are not Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, but watching them dancing together you'll hardly notice the distinction.
But the real star of La La Land is writer and director Damien Chazelle, who also delivered the inspiring and challenging Whiplash in 2014. Plainly sufficiently inspired by music to largely build his movies around it, Chazelle is also canny enough to appreciate that the non-musical sequences are equally important to the overall success of the picture.
Also enormously impressive is Justin Hurwitz' music—words, lyrics, and orchestrations. If the ballad The Fools Who Dream doesn't draw a tear from the viewer's eye, call a cardiologist, quick. The song is delivered by Stone toward the end of the picture, during the audition that will make or break her career. And the wistful delicacy of Stone's performance of the song nicely summarizes the emotion of every man or woman who knows the feeling of making a decision based on their heart rather than their mind.
Plainly, La La Land is a movie made by people who love movies, for people who love movies. Proceed with caution: See this picture only if you want to be moved as deeply as you want to be entertained.