Rising upwards and fast into the limelight, Hollywood new-boy Damien Chazelle hits us again with a musical drama, this time of a much glitzier flavour.
His second feature, La La Land, rolls onto the screen with equal the gusto and furore that tail-ended his previous work (2014’s white- knuckle jazz drama, Whiplash). Teaming up again with composer and ex-college bandmate Justin Hurwitz, Chazelle’s portrait of an age once passed, grabs us by the bow tie and pulls us singing and dancing through the romance of its lead duo, Sebastian Wilder (Ryan Gosling) and Mia Dolan (Emma Stone).
Wilder, a struggling jazz musician, is incapable of joining his contemporaries in trawling through a backdrop of classical Hollywood. Here, LA’s imagery is reduced merely to splashed out billboards and pastel murals, Seb finds himself unable to hold down any lasting job. Nothing is just quite cool enough, man. His downbeat and acerbic character becomes an expression of his determined need to do it his own way; to improvise.
Plodding a similar plight, but with a comparably generous spring in her step, Mia works as a barista on the Warner Bros lot. Sneaking out wherever possible to squeeze in testing and tedious auditions, she finds herself in utter turmoil when steaming lattes for the stars that she seeks to join.
After a chance meeting amidst a heavy traffic jam (which, inevitably, breaks out into a musical routine of near farcical proportion), Seb and Mia’s romance couldn’t seem less destined. Their inability to believe in the love that drives their art finds them more often butting heads than pecking cheeks. However, as their entwined interactions become more frequent, along with the rebuttals, the spark between them cannot just simply be denied.
Classical Hollywood callbacks are spooned on thick and fast here. Seb and Mia reflect in abundance the tropes of limelight romances been and gone. None more present than Bogart and Bergman’s, Rick and Ilsa, from 1940’s Casablanca. Mia’s bedside wallpaper towers over her an enormous portrait of Bergman, clearly an idol. As Mia walks Seb on an unannounced tour of her workplace on the movie lot, they both take great charm in noting the balcony where one of Casablanca’s warmest moments was shot. The pair’s recurring musical motif is a direct play on Rick and Ilsa’s, ‘A Kiss is Still a Kiss’, theme, (play it again, Sam).
The film’s musical numbers are a sharp contrast made up of tracks riffing on the freer jazz standards of Armstrong, Ellington, Davis and Gillespie (all as performed by Gosling) set against the overbearing technicolour stylings of the Hollywood golden age. Complete with brightly choreographed dance partnerships, pictures such as Stanley Donen’s, ‘Singing in the Rain’, and Jacques Demy’s, ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ are called instantly to mind.
John Legend continues his screen career with convincing presence as the frontman of photoshoot laden pop super- group, ‘The Messengers’. His invitation for Seb to join the group raises the question of whether he should sacrifice the traditionalist within himself to please those set around him. Joining the band creates fresh conflict between he and Mia as he shelves his artistic integrity in favour of maintaining an image. This serves as an extra layer to a plot that, whilst fluent, can at times run the risk of crossing the line between amusing and cliched.
The film’s flourish and poise do well to mask some weak story points. Some strong characterisations such as an exuding cameo by J. K. Simmons, reprising his role as ballbreaker in-chief, certainly joins the leagues of the film’s better points.
Crowned with two excellent lead performances and ultimately climaxing in a whirlwind of reflection and enchantment, the closing number may be mistaken as the the film’s most touching. However, whilst musically the film is well intact, it is in fact the painted ode to Hollywood, sung loudly throughout, that serves as this movie’s finest song.
Author: Joe, York store
