La La Land Film Review

Ga Ga over La La? A Full-Impact Dazzlement that Charms and Commends Classical Cinema...

Ever since its first teaser trailer that appeared many months ago and its inception at the Venice Film Festival, Damien Chazelle's latest feature of La La Land had been spouted and received by avid film-goers as a film that could dazzle in the Awards Season scene. Indeed, with it upholding a focused contextualisation that see's two aspiring entertainers trying to 'make it' in a modern and undermining backdrop of Los Angeles as well as maintaining dance/musical numbers that charmingly hallmark cinema's golden age of 1930's Hollywood, it's no surprise to see that La La Land has peoples heads turning; since it swept the board at The Golden Globes and is being hailed as a revival piece of a bygone genre. While critics and audiences alike have taken the opportunity to wrongly state how such a film has 'revived' an outmoded filmic typing, Chazelle's latest filmic rhapsody certainly breathes new life into cinema's ever-evolving love affair with not only spellbinding song and dance, but filled with abstraction, fluidity and an irresistible excess of heart.

Centralised in the place of many peoples hopes and dreams, La La Land focuses its story efforts on the perspectives of Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress who works as a part-time barista who serves lattes to film stars in-between auditions, and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a dedicated jazz musician who plays the piano in bars and dreams of opening a jazz bar of his own, who both entrancingly meet in a city known for destroying wish-fulfilled desires. With continual and highly-performed musical/dance numbers that play throughout the course of the narrative, will compromise tempt the stark-lovers to pursue grander opportunities? Or will both Mia and Sebastian follow to their own hearts content?...

As highlighted in the introduction, from its flaunting of the "Presented in the CinemaScope" that transpires into a grandeur opening of a multicultural chorus twirling and pirouetting across the bonnets of cars on a gridlocked motorway, it's not surprise Damien Chazelle's La La Land seizes our viewing gaze at first glance and welcomes us, old and new audiences alike, to the recurrence of cinema's past and lauded era of Hollywood's 'Golden-Age'. Certainly, the sudden charming outbursts of 'City of Stars' and 'Another Day of Sun' song and dance routines, performed delightfully by both Stone and Gosling, do create a rhapsody that embarks in providing a rich euphoria that not only has this profound sense of familiarity that viewers will perceive intrinsically, but also possesses and balances this modernised perspective that interestingly grounds La La Land into a state of undermining intimacy. Indeed, while Chazelle's second musical may look like the world melodic lovers dream about, in its undergrowth, it daringly correlates the glimmering glee of expected dance/singing routines with this realistic understanding of cruelty  that can come out of one's beloved desires; creating a unique sense of reliability that other famed musicals don't provide. With the implementation of a modern backdrop and the use of technology that imposes on the characters story-path, this subtle sense of grounded modernism definitely lends to a distinctive emotionalism towards the characters that's never fully expressed in a typical musical and bolsters the splendid continuation of cinema's love-affair with song and dance, rather than 'reviving' it like many critics and avid film-watchers have already stated and hailed. For those who state that La La Land is a song/dance feature that brings 'new-life' to an already 'washed-out genre', is frankly over-the-top to say the least. Along with Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rogue back in 2001, you only have to look as far as John Carney's trilogy of Once, Begin Again and Sing Street and Disney's 'New-Wave' of animations in Tangled, Frozen and Moana to observe that the 'musical' genre, is far from extinct. Along with the use of a motif that emphasises an intimate and grounded urban dystopia, it has to be mentioned that Chazelle executes in providing fluid and well-choreographed dance segments that is consistently shown throughout thanks to the active cinematography. Shooting the much trademarked and detailed dance/music routines in what seems to be shot in one-continuous take, La La Land, in similar vain to Whiplash, displays exquisite visual nimbleness through the lens of the camera swooping and weaving itself around the performances in a wondrous mode of means. 

In addition to the film appetising our eyes to the accustomed cinematic approaches that were ever-noticeable within the classical strain of Hollywood musicals, La La Land also, subtly, exploits contextualisation structuring from modern musicals that have equally charmed their way to peoples vivid imaginations. Specifically, when watching this rhapsody filled with sonorous sound and vibrant colours, their is a potent resemblance to John Carney's up-beat song & dance tale of Begin Again. Just how the characters of Gretta and Dan intertwine with one another through musical gesture in Begin Again, similarly, this is also how the characters of Mia and Sebastian in La La Land convene and mingles with the same theme that Carney addresses, in terms of ambitious entertainers becoming tantalised by the natural corporate side of performing and inherently dismissing their passion. It's certainly a perspective to consider when watching this award-centric film. While it does attune with classical means of story-telling in having a fairly predictable narrative progression and formal techniques of traditional musicals, with figures bursting into a sudden dance number that magically transpire into set-pieces of 'magic' (with silhouette and animated sequences), this feature again, retains a discrete distinctiveness of modernism and heartbreak; essentially understanding the cruelty that can come out of someone trying to achieve what they want the most. 

While La La Land doesn't shy away from announcing itself as a contemporary harmonious flick filled with riveting sequences that are complemented well with the slick movement of the sweeping camera, it wouldn't have had the balance approach of relatable intimacy if it wasn't for the performances that both Emma Stone, as Mia, and Ryan Gosling as Sebastian display charmingly. Gosling, in particular,  is consistently terrific in exhibiting enthusiasm in a role that entails a cool swagger mixed in with typical sardonic wit, especially whenever he's with Mia. At the start of the film, when his sister worries about his living demeanour, Sebastian simply replies, "I wanna be on the ropes. I'm just letting life think it has me and then, before you know it, BAM. It's a classic rope-a-dope." His delivery of these 'spontaneous' verses of dialogue lines couldn't have been done better and it's easy to see why Gosling was chosen to be placed as the main male lead of this film. But more than that, Gosling captures a real emotional intensity at the films breaking points, more specifically in the climactic scenes, where he manages to convey such convincing emotion without saying so much as a whisper.  It would be criminal, if Emma Stone's contribution wasn't to be mentioned who equally provides emotional highs & lows in a career defining performance and shows the acting community, how to perfectly 'act' upon acting in the films frame. What's made better of Goslings and Stone's performances, who have worked together in past films of Crazy Stupid Love and Gangster Squad, is their convincing chemistry that they have with one another as it binds all the formal tactics, that Chazelle has executed, perfectly well. 

Despite the inevitability that cinema, in this day-and-age, is taken up mostly by reboots, sequels and never-ending superhero films that dominate the Box Office, watching Damien Chazelle's current musical flick of La La Land is for sure refreshing and is like being awake during a wondrous dream. With it's clever moulding of implementing classical cinematic tactics that audiences will familiarise themselves with and a grounded relate-ability  that is deployed distinctively compared to many other modern musicals, La La Land charms its way into the viewing-gaze of its spectators with a bravado of song and dance sequences that linger in your mind long after watching. It'll certainly be interesting to see, whether we see more films like this in the near-future; features that boldly 'commend' classical era's of film in a contemporary fashion... Non the less, Kudos!

And with that, it's time for me to end. As always everyone, thank you for reading my latest and first film review of 2017 in Damien Chazelle's La La Land and I hope you've all enjoyed the read!! 😊. If anyone has an opinion on either my review or on the film itself, please feel free to drop a comment down below. Next week, instead of providing you a film review, I will instead be presenting to you a review of Netflix's latest series and reboot of Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events, which was an interesting watch to say the least!! 😏. Once again, thank you to everyone for reading this week's Blog and I'll see you all next week!! Have a nice day and weekend!! Adieu!! 😀✌😎😜.

8.5/10 - Alex Rabbitte.