Movie Review—La La Land

La La Land

by Peter J. O’Connell                  

La La Land. Released: Dec. 2016. Runtime: 128 mins. MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some language.

When movies began to talk, in the late 1920s, they also began to sing and dance. Soon musicals became one of the most popular and notable types of film—from Busby Berkeley’s extravaganzas and Rogers/Astaire in the 1930s, to the wonderful Gene Kelly and Judy Garland in the 1940s and early 1950s, to the magnificent screen versions of Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Loewe Broadway hits in the 1950s and 1960s. But then that well of melody and movement seemed to pretty much dry up on the screen for several decades—except in some delightful animated features. But now we have from La La Land La La Land, written and directed by Damien Chazelle, which marvelously brings the musical back to lilting life, with some beloved traditions intact and lots of smart innovations.

Mia (Emma Stone) is an aspiring actress working in a coffee shop on film studio grounds. Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is a jazz pianist who longs to run his own club featuring traditional jazz but instead is stuck in a conventional restaurant playing Christmas carols. Yes, Christmas carols, for the movie has a “seasonal” structure and begins in “Winter.” Of course, as it’s L.A., all the seasons are pretty much the same weatherwise, but the real seasons that the film is dealing with are the “seasons” of the characters’ relationship and the emotional weather of same.

In the tradition of romantic comedy, Mia and Sebastian “meet cute.” They’re each caught in their cars in a mammoth traffic jam high up on one of L.A.’s spaghetti of superhighways. But, as in many romantic comedies, Mia and Sebastian’s meeting cute is more a “meeting cranky.” They feel irritation at first sight rather than love. Sebastian is hot under the collar because Mia’s car is blocking his, and he honks angrily. In return, Mia “flips him the bird.”

In the meantime the other drivers have gotten out of their cars and engaged in a massive, spectacularly synchronized song and dance routine. This is one of the ways that music functions in the movie, as a metaphor for what people are feeling or hoping for—in this case, freedom from the constrictions of life in the congested city. The other way that music functions is diegetic; characters who are performers perform.

As winter becomes spring and spring becomes summer, Mia and Sebastian, both frustrated in their efforts to fulfill their dreams, come across each other several times. As they do, irritation turns to attraction. They do a delightful dance routine together one night at a spot overlooking the city. Later still, one evening they have an ecstatic encounter in the planetarium of the Griffith Observatory, where they literally ascend into “the heavens” there, joining the stars in the drama of burgeoning romance—and their career hopes (to become “stars”).

Of course, the course of true love never does run smooth, as a dramatist once wrote. Mia is at first indifferent to the type of music that Sebastian loves and urges him to be more practical. But over time she becomes fond of his type of music and, ironically, criticizes him for finally joining (to make money to start a club) a more pop-oriented group headed by one of his friends (John Ledger). Irritated at her, as he was at their first encounter, Sebastian makes some hurtful remarks about Mia’s lack of success in acting.

The cycle of Mia and Sebastian’s relationship heads toward “Winter” again. Can their love affair survive the stresses put on it by their career struggles? Can they soar into the heavens again together, or will they walk alone down La La Land’s boulevard of broken dreams?

The movie’s answers are surprising, and the combination of song and dance, humor and poignancy with which it delivers these answers is engaging. The production design, cinematography (it’s even in 1950s-style CinemaScope!), and performances that Damien Chazelle has presided over deserve a hearty round of applause. Particularly appealing is Emma Stone, a transcendentally talented young star. And Ryan Gosling is fine, too. At one point Sebastian says: “This is the dream! It’s conflict, and it’s compromise, and it’s very, very exciting!” So is La La Land!