La La Land Review
Based on La La Land cleaning up tonight at the Golden Globes, I thought it would make sense to post this review earlier than originally planned.
To start, I need to make an embarrassing admission: I’m a big fan of rom coms. As I’ve aged and matured, I would assert my film preferences have been refined but I still have a soft spot for a nice mindless love story.
During this holiday season, there were a ton of movies that sparked my interest including Rogue One, The Arrival and Moana. Yet somehow when I returned home for some time off, I ended up in the 11:40 am matinee showing of La La Land. How you ask? The answer is quite simple: when your mother tells you what movie she wants to see, you accept no questions asked.
From the first number to its close, La La Land had the typical features of a traditional, old-time musical romance film, but with a distinctly modern take. To set the scene for the audience, the movie opens to a crowded, traffic-filled overpass when suddenly driver after driver abandon their cars to join in the opening song and dance. As the performance continues, the camera angle pans outward to show the epic LA skyline which one then assumes is where the movie’s title originates (more to come on this). Upon completion of the first song, we meet Mia (Emma Stone) an aspiring actress aka every barista in LA who is practicing her lines during the traffic standstill in her (typical-for-California) Prius while Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) a jazz-obsessed pianist, lays on his horn in his retro convertible to get her moving again.
Before I get too deep into my analysis of the film and the potential meaning I took from it, one quick cool element of this film that I referred to above is Sebastian’s deep passion for jazz. He can be viewed as one of the last young martyr’s for jazz and his ultimate goal is to open a club in Los Angeles. At one point, he describes jazz in great detail to the novice fan through a live demonstration and walks through the many intricacies of the dying genre. In a future post, I plan to discover a jazz club myself and view a performance with this newfound appreciation.
After brief introductions into Mia and Sebastian’s lives, we watch as the two run into each other by seeming happenstance. Pretty quickly you can sense the mutual attraction and after Emma ditches her stiff of a boyfriend, the two start to fall hard for each other.
Neither Gosling nor Stone are known for their singing and I’m going to go out on a limb and say this flick won’t land them another gig soon for their pipes. With that being said, I thought the shotty singing at times made them each feel in a way more genuine and real. Their dancing, however, did impress me especially since when I think of Emma Stone, I immediately recall some of her early awkward cinematic encounters like in Superbad when she took a punch from an overserved Jonah Hill. Oh yeah, and tonight as she accidentally almost kissed the director before he could kiss his wife.
Later on in the story, Sebastian runs into an old college friend (John Legend) that invites him to join his band. Luckily for the pair of lovebirds, we only hear the legendary Legend sing a couple of short tunes otherwise their underwhelming singing would have been far more prominent.
Near the end of the film, Mia is given an audition of a lifetime and Gosling is able to give her the news during a time when it appears the two of them won’t make it. After her tryout, the two of them sit and discuss what their future together (or apart) looks like. At this point it becomes clear that for the two of them to live out their career aspirations, their relationship will need to end. Gosling will need to continue touring with the band while Stone will need to dedicate herself to the upcoming film.
This realization had me conflicted as a viewer because part of me wanted everything to work out like it always does and for them to end up together. The other part of me was hoping for a more realistic ending in which the two go their separate ways to follow the amazing opportunities in front of them.
At this point in the film, the true meaning of the title becomes clear as we see two alternate endings. The first involves Mia with another, in my opinion, stuffy man who eventually stumble upon Sebastian’s jazz club. The other, filmed in an old-fashion style to force viewers to see this dated view of the world is often a “La La Land”, illustrates what life would have looked like for the pair had Sebastian abandoned his dream to stay with Mia. In the end, the two sacrifice their love to reach once unimaginable professional goals.
If you’ve made it this far, more power to you. If you’ve skipped down to the bottom, I understand. The synopsis of my review is as followed:
- The dancing and singing will brighten your day
- The story maintains some typical romantic musical themes while breaking away in a major way by not having the protagonists end up together
- Jazz is a genre worth reexamining, more to come soon…
