La La Land (2016)
La La Land (2016)
Written and Directed by Damien Chazelle
Rated PG-13
I think it is safe to say that I am not taking a liking to writer-director Damien Chazelle. His previous film Whiplash was one I simply hated for trying to make me sympathize with a terrible teacher and his deplorable methods while simultaneously not giving me a compelling reason why the protagonist finds being a jazz drummer a worthwhile goal to pursue (or just not giving me a compelling protagonist to begin with). Still, it was Chazelle’s debut feature and I was thus willing to give him another chance. His most recent film La La Land is a musical and that’s neat since I have enjoyed some musicals in the past such as Singing in the Rain, Fiddler on the Roof, Guys and Dolls and so on. I have to admit that I am by no means an expert on movie musicals or its biggest fan but I’m not above enjoying them. Sadly, I watched La La Land frustrated and confused as to what it really was trying to be.
Ryan Gosling plays Sebastian, a struggling jazz pianist who falls for an aspiring actress name Mia (Emma Stone) and together they go together in Hollywood to find ways to make their dreams come true. Sebastian wants to open a jazz club that plays pure jazz because he believes it is dying and Mia wants to be actress and is encouraged to write a one person play of her own and make her own way up due to many unsuccessful auditions. At the most basic level, the film is basically about the usual “folly of dreamers,” “dreams of fame and glory,” “reaching for the stars” concept mixed with the young love kind of romance that one usually associates with the golden era of Hollywood musicals. But much to my dismay, the film tries to be a kind of golden era of Hollywood film combined with a kind of modern day version of the “seeking fame and fortune” story. It tries to have it both ways and the end result comes off rather ho hum as opposed to magical as it has been frequently described.
What do I mean? The movie opens with an out of nowhere song and dance number on a LA freeway that has nothing to do with the main plot or involve the principal characters. I couldn’t remember the tune or what the song was about. All I was thinking about by the time the opening number ended was that this number shouldn’t be in the movie. I say this based purely on my own experience with musicals since usually opening numbers involve the main protagonists and help get the plot rolling through song and dance. I didn’t see the opening of La La Land as being anything more than something to show off.
The other musical numbers (there are about 5 total if I recall correctly) are well shot and I suppose the vocal and dance performances are good but they came off as charmless to me. By that I mean it looks like a musical at times but it doesn’t have the feeling of a great or even a good one. All I saw was two beautiful people in a film about trying to make it big in Hollywood or in the music business (which is closely associated with Hollywood). One might say that there were lot of musicals from the 50’s and 60’s had plenty of beautiful people singing and dancing and trying to make it in show business to one degree or another and so this is just another one of those. That’s true, but La La Land takes place in modern Hollywood. I personally can’t wrap my mind around the concept of being a classical Hollywood type musical set in modern times. Trying to play up in certain respects the innocent boy or girl with a dream of making it big in today’s Hollywood (especially given how much harsher and depraved it has become since the 50’s and 60’s) is something I personally can’t get behind.
After the all the beginning numbers, the film kind of takes a long detour and presents a standard realistic drama about the ups and downs of being in Hollywood and trying to get somewhere. This is a long period in the film where there are no songs or major musical numbers and all we get are scene after scene of uneventful drama and struggles involving our two protagonists. By the time it reached the point where we inevitably have the two characters break up for reasons I won’t spoil, I kept checking the clock on my phone wondering when the film was going to end. I know a lot of musicals have periods of straight forward dialog with no musical accompaniment, but this was baffling to me. Why didn’t the movie just go all the way with it and express the feelings in the scenes with song and dance? Isn’t that what musicals from the golden era of Hollywood traditionally did? Did I miss something here? And before anyone regurgitates the usual reply of “Well you see you can’t have a musical that is all singing” may I humbly suggest you watch Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. That was musical where all the dialogue in the film was sung and still managed to deliver drama, music and visuals more memorable that anything in La La Land (and by the way, La La Land took plenty of inspiration from Demy so don’t dismiss this recommendation as being as me sounding contrarian or going with the trite adage of “all old movies are better”).
The performances are fine from everyone in the cast and it is technically proficient but once again, as Whiplash demonstrated, I care not for either one if I’m not involved in the narrative. One of the more annoying things about the film was at the very beginning where it states that the film was shot in Cinemascope. Ok…so what? The Conqueror (that movie from 1956 starring John Wayne as Genghis Kahn) was shot in that format too but that doesn’t make it good. Plus, I saw it in a standard theater projected digitally so that distinction doesn’t do me any good unless I watch it in one of the few places around the country that show it on the true film stock on the right screen.
Another annoying thing I heard about the film was that director Damien Chazelle was an innovator, at least according to Peter Travers of Rolling Stone Magazine in his top 20 best films of 2016 where he placed La La Land as the best film of the year. Really?! According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, innovation is the act or process of introducing new ideas, devices or methods. What is in this film that hasn’t been done before? What movie musical in the past hasn’t had singing and dancing numbers, bright lighting, ravishing music (well the score and songs in La La Land are anything but ravishing; they are mediocre at best), stories of the ups and downs of seeking fame or love or other related themes, or its use of cinemascope? I hate to sound cynical here but where exactly is the innovation in a film that is essentially trying to be a throwback to what has been done before? I hope the word “innovative” doesn’t become one of those increasingly meaningless critical buzzwords like “game changer” or “masterpiece” that are used to sell award season films.
By now Chazelle’s well-made but wildly overpraised film sold tickets like hot cakes and won truckloads of I feel undeserved accolades and was the shortest lived Best Picture Oscar winner in history. That tends to happen when you peddle gimmicks. This is a film that does cause me to wonder about something though. In recent years, we have had musicals brought to the big screen like Les Miserables or Into the Woods with average critical praise and mixed response from the general public. So when they see something like La La Land come by they treat is as if this could change water into wine. As far as I'm concerned, all it does is change water into Hawaiian Punch.
