A JOYOUS EVENT
LA LA LAND. With Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone. Directed by Damien Chazelle Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone go into their moves here, it’s as pleasurable to accept them in such roles as it once might have been to embrace, say, Gene Kelly and Shirley MacLaine.
Their meeting takes place on the freeway. Actress Mia (Stone) works in a cute café on the Warner Brothers’ lot (they should open it for real) and has been on a grinding run of fruitless auditions; she’s “someone just waiting to be found”, as she puts it in a plaintive song.
A skilled pianist, Sebastian (Gosling) is fed up with providing tinkling background music at bars and restaurants (JK Simmons fires him from one gig); he’s a jazz freak, loves Miles Davis and swing bands, hangs at The Lighthouse down at the beach and is convinced that he’s “a phoenix rising from he ashes”.
In other words, these two are like thousands of others in Hollywood, treading water but hoping to make it in spite of the odds.
Played out across the four seasons (albeit in different years), their romance begins bumpily. Seb, as he comes to be called, is downright rude to Mia at a springtime pool party, even though she could not look more splendid, quite like a brilliant sunflower, in a perfect yellow dress.
Later, when he can no longer kid himself about his feelings for her, an enchanting musical sequence has them strolling and singing in the Hollywood Hills from one street lamp to another backdropped by a glorious vista.
In just one of countless aesthetic decisions that have gone into making the film the sophisticated confection that it is, many of the musical numbers have been shot at magic hour, which both softens and intensifies the colours, as well as the beauty and romanticism of the mostly real-world Los Angeles settings.
The city has rarely looked this gorgeous in films, a credit to the director’s romantic imagination as well as to the technical expertise of Swedish cinematographer Linus Sandgren (American Hustle), who has superbly composed the movie’s constant movement in the ultra-widescreen 2.52 x 1 aspect ratio.
Once they are a couple, things become, in a word, complicated. Realising the long odds against Mia’s breaking through as an actress, Seb urges her to write something of her own to perform, which she buckles down to do. Paradoxically, he goes commercial, joining a successful band fronted by Keith (John Legend) that is constantly on tour, dictating long separations.
A lengthy postscript, set five years later, features a fantasy dance sequence (a frequent motif of old musicals). But while aiming for poignance, the film loses some of its edge in this final stretch and arguably overstays its welcome by perhaps 10 minutes; bringing it in at under two hours would have been advisable.
All the same, for Chazelle to be able to pull this off the way he has is something close to remarkable. The director’s feel for a classic but, for all intents and purposes, discarded genre format is instinctive and intense; he really knows how to stage and frame dance and lyrical movement, to transition smoothly from conventional to musical scenes, to turn naturalistic settings into alluring fantasy backdrops for set pieces and to breathe new life into what many would consider cobwebbed cliches.
The helmer shares his leading man’s preference for bygone styles, and it remains to be seen whether or not the charm and persuasiveness of the film’s look and performances are enough to disarm sceptical young audiences who have rarely, if ever, been exposed to the conventions Chazelle employs so enthusiastically and skilfully.
Happily, the two leads are in sync with his objectives. Sebastian has a certain gruff impatience and short temper born of creative frustration, but the concern and love he feels for Mia doesn’t take long to well up. Gosling may not be a trained dancer or musician, but his moves are appealingly his own and months of piano practice have given him convincing style on the keyboards.
Stone is simply a joy as the eternally aspiring actress it’s hard to believe is being passed over. Emotionally alive and able to shift gears on a dime, Stone is all the more convincing in this context as she has the kind of looks that would have been appealing in any era, particularly the 1930s and 1950s.
Many of the old Hollywood neighbourhoods and establishments so selectively used here are meant to summon up meaningful movie memories: a date to see a revival screening of Rebel Without a Cause at the (defunct) Rialto Theatre in Pasadena immediately segues into a visit to the planetarium at the Griffith Observatory. – Hollywood Reporter
Prepare to swoon in this musical delight filmed in a confection of glorious images in which LA rarely looked so good