La La Land (2016)

Walk and Talk (and Dance and Sing)
or
"It's a Classic Rope-a-Dope" (Nostalgia EVERYBODY Likes!)

I'm not sure when the smile first hit my face during La La Land. Maybe it was the vintage Summit Entertainment logo that leads it off (but probably not—lengthy studio logo's have been a pet peeve of mine, lately). Maybe it was the cherry "Filmed in Cinemascope" card that followed. That was a funny touch and not in the snarky Quentin Tarantino crowing way.

But, I know it was during the opening production number, "Another Day in the Sun," filmed on an L.A. overpass in a simulated traffic jam that more than a few times made me gasp at the intricacy and energy of the thing, filmed in a fluid camera movement that dipped and dived and scurried and followed not just the movement but the verve of the sequence in an elegant, not too-showy way. Yeah, it moves, but at the behest of the action on-screen and the pace of the music that pops and shimmies, runs together and doesn't let up, not for a moment, not for a breath. It's one of those moments where you just try to take it all in, rather than wonder how the hell they did it. That it comes out of a mundane situation, stuck in traffic on a highway slab, individuals cocooned in their vehicles, bubbled in their own little sonic environments and private performances, until it bursts, becomes communal and celebratory and as one, makes the sequence a lovely, rich evocation of the private dreams of Los Angeles emerging into the light.

That smile didn't leave my face until the MPAA PG-13 rating ("For coarse language") card came up at the very end.

Sophomore films are always tough for new directors. They either hone their craft or flame out, their reach exceeding their grasp, indulgence acting like gravity. Damien Chazelle started his feature career with Whiplash, which garnered much attention (and a deserved acting Oscar for J.K.Simmons). Looking at that one, you could see the attention to the performances—especially from Teller and Simmons—but, you could also see how Chazelle zeroed in on the music (the movie revolved around a college jazz band) and the way Chazelle designed those music sequences showed a devotion to enhancing the music visually, putting emphasis on rhythm and transition with his shot composition and their movement in each shot. At the time, I remarked that Chazelle would make a very good music video director, with his concentration on the life of the song, not the participants. 

A very good music video director, but La La Land (and Whiplash) reveals him to be so much more. After that rousing opening, Chazelle segues seamlessly to the story at hand, where Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) are stuck in the same traffic jam, him right behind her, in an upside down version of "meeting cute:" they're both stuck in the traffic and she's a bit slower in her reactions than he is, and he peels off and past her, flipping her "the  bird" which she responds to in kind. He's a jazz musician-composer, with a taste for classic jazz—you can tell because he's busy in his car rewinding and listening to old cassettes, and one of his few prized furnishings is a cast-away stool Hoagy Carmichael threw away ("Really?" says his sister "What if Miles Davis pissed on it?"). Mia's an actress, but she's working as a barista at a coffee shop on the Warner Brothers lot as her "day-job." She encounters Sebastian again after a Hollywood party proves disastrous, when he's playing a Christmas gig at a bar where his obstinance over the play-set gets him fired. These two keep meeting at the wrong place at the wrong time. But, L.A. is a place where you keep running into people.

Another encounter—another industry party—throws them into each other's orbits again and this also does not go well, albeit with a little more depth than a throw-away "dick" move, and they actually have a conversation where they reveal that (really) their compatibility would only depend on their being the last people on Earth. But, it is a musical and it is a fantasy version of L.A., so they end up spending far more time together than they might wish. 

 

I feel a song coming on...

So, let's look at that. First off, the song is all dialog, operetta-style, or the way Astaire and Rogers did "A Fine Romance" in their movie Swing Time (with the sarcastic tone of that song), more akin to the dialog-songs of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg where every-day language just happened to have a rhythm and a background score. The singing is not full-throated emoting-to-the-wings artifice, but conversational and thin and...untrained. The dancing is a bit sloppy, but endearing despite that and seems to fit character and mood, even emulating body-language and the emotion it reveals. This is not Gene Kelly's athletic bounding enthusiasm version of "Gotta Dance!" It is far more casual and ambling (much like the music)—my impression was that Gosling could have done all his dancing with his hands in his pockets. Ultimately, you know that the two, while seemingly at odds, will get together because they are in sync in an unconscious and conscious way, which is the very core and underlying artistic message of dance, isn't it?

There is obvious chemistry between Stone and Gosling—this is, after all, their third movie together and that pairing yields good results in the films Crazy, Stupid Love and, less so, in Gangster Squad. Their enthusiastic un-professionalism in their songs in La La Land endears you to them. They are unrealistic people struggling with realism, dreamers unsatisfied with their waking lives and finding some comfort in each other, and continue striving for the dream. The dream's the thing in La La Land and down-to-Earth "things" like love, relationships and family just aren't good enough. Why settle for a simple life in a town that can manufacture fantasy? A city that only sleeps with dreams of its own making?

And the movie frames that dream by being extraordinarily cinematic in the telling of the story of their lives...by doing what movies do at their most basic level—by focusing our attention. It is choreographed and art-directed to a high-gloss perfection with a color palette right out of Vertigo (the shimmering soft greens and roseate reds of emotion), the slo-mo anticipation of hope that seems to manifest as snow in the air (in L.A.?), the light design that, right on cue, dims and highlights the intended object of importance, along with "old-time" silent-movie iris transitions anticipate where the director wants us to concentrate when he starts a scene. We are force-fed where the movie takes us and what the film-makers want us to see and feel. Movies are a carefully-plotted dance. 

And the director always leads.

1) The green glow of desire from La La Land (above) and Vertigo (below)

2) When hope flourishes, snow flurries...

3) When Mia goes to the old Rialto Theater to meet Sebastian for a showing of Rebel Without a Cause...
for some reason, she enters from the front!
(and they're showing the film's preview before the film)

4) A meeting at the Hayden Planetarium (also from Rebel...) turns into a
zero-g dance among the stars.

The movie lopes along on the base-line of its music (composed by Justin Hurwitz, who also worked on Whiplash), which varies from East Coast versions of salsa, Broadway, and one, "City of Stars," feels like it could have been written by Ennio Morricone, late of the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns. It is energized by the dance sequences, which while not as precise as Kelly or Astaire and Rogers, still have a joy and verve to them, whatever style people fall into...and it does feel like they're falling into them.

I am no fan of musicals. Not that I have a problem with the form, but in the way they are presented, most of the time. Musicals have an imposed artificiality to them—but then, so do stage-plays and movies. They're at their best when the illusion is convincing and the music interludes are organic and not imposed because, well, the production needs a song right about here and the foot-tapping will wake people up. But, this movie's story plants everyone in L.A. with the idea that it's a fantasy-factory, despite the evidence of hard work and tough luck. Out of that springs a love story, but there are rivals for affection—that being a sustainable career that answers the needs of their inner creativity and passion. With such drive, it makes relationships vulnerable and, frankly, unsustainable (ever wonder why there's so much divorce in show business, aside from the constant rejection, gypsy-like existence, and moth-like attention to bright objects?). I like that. It sets things apart from the convolutions of the "happily-ever-after-at-all-costs" sappiness of the golden-age musicals that were so sugary they set my teeth on edge. No, this has the mature sensibilities of the "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" European school, with a distinctly American swing. And I like that La La Land doesn't end with "they-lived-happily-ever-after," but with living with the satisfaction of the experience, and with memory the catalyst to inspire.

I can live with that, happily ever after.

After its initial splash, and after its many winnings of Golden Globe Awards from the Hollywood Foreign Press, La La Land has received a bit of a back-lash—it's a trifle, a bon-bon, a light-weight film in a year of so many more "important" movies. Maybe. I don't find it trifling, though. After a dispiriting year of reality as well as a dispiriting movie-year, La La Land managed to cheer me without being too saccharine about it (I'm always suspicious of that in movies). There's a profound sense of regret to it that is...well, profound. And it's stuck with me after seeing a slew of "important" movies that left me depressed and disappointed.

La La Land does not depress or disappoint. It thrills. It amazes. It reminds one of why one goes to the movies and the rich legacy of movies in general from which it has culled for its inspiration. And that's not a waste, whatever the outcome. It is time well spent.

Yeah, it's fun. But, there's so much hard work to make it look so free-wheelin' easy.