Review 400: La La Land

La La Land is a beautifully made, tastefully told, gorgeously filmed musical film, a magnificent love letter to old Hollywood. 

Amongst the bustling, sunny, film and music fueled, party driven, nostalgic atmosphere of modern LA, Mia Dolan (Emma Stone) an aspiring actress who serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian Wilder (Ryan Gosling) a dedicated but struggling musician who scrapes by playing cocktail piano gigs in dingy bars are drawn together by their common desire to do what they love. But as success begins to catch on, they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their of their love affair and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threat to rip them apart.

The film opens with a loud canon blast with the number "Another Day of Sun", a large ensemble number that we don't see for the rest of the film. Cars are stuck on a notoriously gridlocked LA freeway when the drivers spontaneously break into song. Using the car radios as a building tapestry to build into a full blown musical number   Writer/Director Damien Chazelle expertly captures the feeling that we're all dreamers that live in a bit of a bubble universe, especially when you're stuck in bad traffic for the better part of an hour. Each person had their own dream; each person lives their own song, we all live in our own musical universe. We each have our own musical movie inside of us whether we think it or not. 

In a lot of ways La La Land is very much like an old 1930's MGM musical, extravagant, loads of lively, energy-filled musical numbers, two big stars and despite being made on a low budget, it looks very well made. I really liked the setting of the movie. It very much has the sensibilities of the films that it's paying homage to but it’s very much set in modern times just infused with a sense of nostalgia and an atmosphere that harkens back to the days of Old/Classic Hollywood when the MGM musicals ruled the movie world, to the days of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly. The larger world is very much the world of a musical, the stuff that isn’t bright and poppy is still heightened and has an element of fantasy even when the performances remain grounded. It walks a very fine line so the characters of Mia and Sebastian don't feel like they've stepped out of a time machine. 

What La La Land does very well thematically and stylistically is show the contrast between reality and dreams. What you have and what you want. The musical numbers are very set in an idealised world where nothing can possibly go wrong.  giving you the sense that you've traveled back in time even though it's still contemporary. 

La La Land shows us that there are two types of dreams: Ambitions and Wishes. Chazelle focuses the majority of the film on the ambitions of Mia and Sebastian who are willing to devote everything they have to said ambitions in the hope that they can achieve success. They work and overcome adversities, jump the hurdles and come one step closer to achieving those dreams.
Chazelle takes an unusually optimistic approach to looking at ambitions but even if it's not possible for everyone ambitions are possible to achieve. It's about using dreams and fantasy to comment on reality and articulate what it feels like to fall in love, to be heartbroken, to have a dream and to follow a dream as we clearly see through Mia and Sebastian's relationship and how it threatens their own 
What isn't possible to achieve are wishes: Hopes for the impossible to come true and the past to change.

As Sebastian and Mia slowly learn over the course of the film, Sacrifice is a key component towards making ones dream a reality: If he wants to succeed and play the music he wants in the long run, Sebastian needs to use his musical talents to make music that he's isn't all that passionate about.
Meanwhile, Mia is in a position where she doesn't seem to be doing anything substantial to stand out. Instead, she just exists.
Eventually they have to sacrifice their relationship to achieve their dreams, but without one and another, their dreams feel incomplete. Ultimately, they're both happily ensconced in the life that they always dreamed of, so, in the end, they gave each other a gift and it lasted forever. 

Watching this film I was reminded somewhat of Damien Chazelle's last film, Whiplash which at first may seem like an odd comparison but narratively they're both similar as they're about following your dreams. Both Mia and Sebastian want different things in the entertainment industry, Mia is an aspiring actress and Sebastian is a passionate but struggling Jazz musician but because of their related interests and due to the fact that they're both aspiring in their respective fields they bond with each other and share in each others passions and support each however when they're relationship is unfortunately what gets in the way of pursuing their passions and prevents them from fulfilling their dreams. We believe their relationship because Chazelle takes the time to develop their romance and at no point does it feel rushed or contrived and as a result we care about these two aspiring entertainers and want they're them to make their dreams come true but at the same time we want their relationship to work out in the end.

Damien Chazelle's direction is elegant, giving . The scenery is breathing, the cinematography is gorgeous and captures the modern and nostalgic feel of LA by making great use of lighting as well as gorgeous sunsets to give film an almost dream-like quality with beautiful wide shots to frame and capture that old fashioned Hollywood musical vibe but with a modern twist. The locations are simply gorgeous, 

The costumes are magnificent, using them as an expressionist tool and the colours of the costumes as an expressionist tool. Mia in particular starts off wearing lots of vibrant colours and there's a girlishness to them, as the film continues, she becomes more mature and the colours start to matter less; they become more desaturated to the point where she's staring in this one-woman show and she's wearing black and white.

Sebastian, on the other hand, because he's a little bit older than Mia, has a more casual look that he's been wearing for a while and it's not necessarily trendy or what every other man walking down the street wears. It's something that he's developed and curated. He buys quality not quantity. 

the score by Justin Hurwitz is beautiful, the songs by Hurwitz, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are superbly catchy, in particular the opening musical number "Another Day of Sun"  the production design is exquisite turning present day LA into a gorgeous dreamlike utopia where anything is possible with an eclectic and dazzling array of colours ranging from bright blues, deep purples, warm oranges and reds and extravagant yellows to with sets like the Planetarium that Mia and Sebastian visit to old fashioned Muirals that they skip around this fantasy of LA and their life that could be. Even Mia’s bedroom has a lifesize Ingrid Bergman across the wall. The props are excellently crafted, the make up is rich and beautifully detailed and the effect of the closing epilogue is both exhilarating and sad.

The acting is tremendous, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are fabulous in their roles.
Mia and Sebastian are stuck with what they have. But they also dream. Despite the films old fashioned sensibilities, they don't feel old fashioned, they feel modern, like people we know with their own hopes, ambitions and 
Their lives are dominated by thinking about and hoping that their dreams will come true. Yet they don't really do much to make their dreams reality. Mia goes to as many auditions as humanly possible but she's just one of the many faceless in a sea of aspiring actresses.
On the other hand, Sebastian does as many gigs as he can trying to make enough money so that he can pursue his dream of opening a jazz club. But at the same time, he's unwilling to sacrifice anything  to get that dream.

Rosemarie DeWitt, Sonoya Mizuno, J. K. Simmons and Finn Wittrock round out the small cast in but pivotal roles  Simmons, in particular, is only in one scene in the ending fantasy but he brings a genuine  to it.

La La Land is a fabulous dream, 5/5.

The Anonymous Critic.