Reviews
La La Land
(London Film Festival)
Director: Damien Chazelle
Genre: Drama, Musical, Comedy
Run Time: 126 mins
Set in modern day Hollywood, where self-consciousness and
snark are the currency du jour, La La Land is the glorious ode to thinking big
and beautiful that the world desperately needed.
Emma Stone’s Mia is an aspiring and (inevitably) struggling
actress. Between dispiriting auditions, she keeps running into Gosling’s Seb
who is trying to make a living as a jazz pianist with equally mixed success. As
they fall for one another, it’s clear that Seb is passionate about his craft,
arguably to a fault, with Mia being a more archetypal dreamer of Hollywood
stardom. This is where Stone proves to be the picture’s MVP, as her charisma
lifts the character above the material. How their ambitions and affections
interact, through countless spontaneuous sequences of graceful creativity, is
where the film elucidates poignant moments of emotion and truth.
The genius of Damien Chazelle’s direction is how adept he is
at staging the ups and downs of the story. He approaches familiar dance numbers
with a verve and passion that’s as infectious as it is thrilling, before
bringing you back down to reality in Seb’s crumby apartment. At 31, you would
expect him to have only mastered a few cinematic instruments, but it’s
astounding to see how effortlessly he conducts the whole orchestra. Sit back
and he’ll put on one hell of a show.
Gosling and Stone are a wonderful on-screen couple. We’ve
seen them before in Crazy, Stupid, Love
and Gangster Squad, but they really
soar under the warm Los Angeles skies. We go into the film knowing they will
get together, and Chazelle has a lot of fun with those expectations. The director
and producers have said that when they set off on the long road of this
project, before the release of the acclaimed Whiplash, they had envisioned the two actors in the roles knowing
that they would never be secured. “See,” one said in the Q&A. “Dreams do
come true.”
The musical genre is not something I usually enjoy. It has
been many, many years since an original Hollywood musical – they (literally)
don’t make them like this anymore. Chazelle’s Cinemascope masterpiece feels
like it was destined for the silver screen, not adapted or manufactured to fit
it. The songs feel like a progression of the characters, not the other way
around. Mia and Seb are grounded in reality just enough, until they’ve earned
the right to float off into the stars.
In an early scene, Seb abandons the regular Christmas
jingles for a wonderful jazz piece, prompting J.K. Simmons’ restaurant boss to ask
if he’s from a different planet; no doubt Damien Chazelle has had that reaction
before. This film is soaked in Golden Age Hollywood, but feels
completely fresh in a sea of contemporary American cynicism. It seems fitting
that Stone’s character provides the crescendo monologue fiercely explaining it’s ok
to reach for the stars and lauding the ones who follow their dreams; an
antidote to her soul-crushing tirade in Birdman.
When February and the Dolby theatre comes around, I have a feeling these
two films will have few things in common.
La La Land is released in the UK on 13 January.
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