"City of Stars, are you shining just for me?"
La La Land is a joyous filmgoing experience, a musical brimming with optimism that never becomes treacly, ably directed by Whiplash's Damien Chazelle and featuring fantastic performances by leads Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
It's an homage to a bygone era of Hollywood musicals while also refreshing the genre, a love letter to Los Angeles while also representing the city's many flaws, and an ode to dreamers while also exploring the costs that come with exploring your dreams. The film's strengths are in these dichotomies, which Chazelle deftly explores in a tight script that slips between gloriously saturated and surrealist musical sequences and raw human experiences.
Like its title, La La Land takes a stereotype about the Los Angeles experience that most natives would find cringeworthy and spins it into something lovely. The film follows two dreamers who came to the city to follow their passion of the arts: Mia (Stone) wants to be an actress, while Sebastian (Gosling) one day hopes to open a jazz club. Both are struggling to see those dreams realized when they meet; she has found no success in auditions and is getting by working as a barista on the Warner Bros. lot, and he begrudgingly plays piano stints at bars and restaurants that don't allow him to showcase his talent. The two meet and fall in love, both pushing each other to find the successes they dream of while also butting heads about where to find value in their successes.
The music of La La Land is where the film finds its heart, and for all that it's in the style of Hollywood's heyday of musicals in the '50s, La La Land doesn't feel dated thanks to composer Justin Hurwitz's talented song writing and the fact Stone and Gosling don't come off like honed Broadway stars (despite Stone filming this following a successful run as the lead in Cabaret on Broadway). For all that both leads deliver fantastic musical performances, they still feel a bit rough around the edges, so when they transition into a perfectly choreographed song and dance number or suddenly start dancing around in the air in the Griffith Observatory, they still feel grounded as real people.
Emma Stone in La La Land
Stone in particular is a standout as Mia, imbuing the character with grace and vulnerability as she weathers the curveballs her quest for success levels at her. Their work together in Crazy, Stupid, Love and Gangster Squad already established their chemistry, and Stone and Gosling align on every level in La La Land, whether it's from an impressively choreographed musical sequence in the Hollywood Hills as they sing and dance to "A Lovely Night" or whether they're weathering a fight as their characters' successes threaten to tear their relationship apart. The two bring the feel of classic Hollywood movie stars to the film, which has a dreamy, timeless aesthetic even though it's set in the present.
Chazelle has said that La La Land drew from his own experiences as a filmmaker coming to Los Angeles and struggling to break out, and as much as the movie sometimes dips into fairy tale-like situations, the movie works as well as it does because it's coming from someone who understands the city where its set. LA isn't as glamorous as New York City or Paris, and as much as it's a city of dreamers, it's also a city housing countless broken dreams. That Chazelle and his composer and collaborator Justin Hurwitz are able to walk this fine line is where the movie draws its strength.
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in La La Land
That's best showcased in La La Land's ambitious opening sequence, which is set on LA's Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange which connects the 105 freeway to the 110. It offers a gorgeous view of downtown Los Angeles, which drivers likely aren't focused on as its always bogged down with stop-and-go traffic. In a single-take musical sequence featuring hundreds of performers, drivers climb out of their traffic-stopped car and sing the optimistic anthem "Another Day of Sun" about pursuing their dreams in the City of Angels, before climbing back into their cars and once again whaling on their horns. Mia and Sebastian are introduced after the musical sequence concludes, but it still perfectly captures the dichotomy they're facing of pursuing their dreams in a city where countless others are chasing similarly high aspirations, and where the odds are stacked against them.
But despite La La Land working on a deeper level for someone who knows the city, the film does a good enough job establishing the personality and contradictions of Los Angeles that it works on a universal level. It balances stereotypes leveled against the city (all the way to that "La La Land" title) with the quirks that make it special that work in a broad sense, and the conflicts that Mia and Sebastian face about when to settle and what qualifies as a successful life aren't limited to people who live in LA. Interestingly, Chazelle's initial idea had the film set in Boston, where he went to school with Hurwitz at Harvard, before he shifted it to Los Angeles upon his move to the West Coast.
Ryan Gosling in La La Land
La La Land perfectly sticks the landing with its conclusion, too. For all that its romantic premise and Los Angeles love story risked veering into overwhelming sentimentality, the film finds its ending in an incredibly human way. The movie finds balance in the whimsy of pursuing your life goals and the reality of living a fulfilling life, and doesn't try to portray a fairy tale. Instead, it's a love letter to those who dare to follow their dreams through and to the city that's built up and shattered so many of them.
The Verdict
La La Land is an ambitious premise that breaths new life into the classic Hollywood musical while also serving as a love letter to the people who chase their dreams in Los Angeles. It's a testament to Chazelle's tight script and execution of his vision through his directing that the movie works as well as it does, and Hurwitz's fantastic music is the heart of the story. While both its leads are great, Stone in particular shines as Mia. La La Land is a joyous film that doesn't veer too far into treacly sentimentality, and is worthy of the accolades it is sure to receive.
Editors' Choice
→
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire