LaLa Land

Except for its last ten minutes, everything about La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016) is obvious.  For this reason, it's important not to reveal anything about the film's ending; before I attended the movie, I had read a review of the picture in the London Review of Books that described the LaLa Land's concluding reel -- the knowledge imparted by that review cast a powerful light on the proceedings when I saw the movie and, although it didn't spoil things for me, my experience of the film would have been very different if I had not known how it all comes out.  Generally, in these notes, I don't give "spoiler alerts" -- but in the case of a film that operates according to highly traditional conventions until it doesn't, I am going to make an exception for this picture. 

Here are the elements of LaLa Land that are conventional, indeed, disappointingly obvious:  (1) The film is set in Hollywood, a place where dreams are alleged to come true; (2) the movie chronicles a romance between a moody jazz musician (Ryan Gosling) and a barista (a very plain-looking Emma Stone) who imagines herself an actress;  (3) after initially disliking one another, the couple fall in love, singing and dancing in their happiness; (4) both of them are dreamers and the film endorses the rather narcissistic concept that people must follow their dreams in order to be fulfilled; (5) overcoming hardships, both the jazz musician and the would-be actress succeed in achieving their ideals; (6) the seasons of their romance are correlated to the seasons of the year -- a witty device in LA since there are no seasons; (7) the film is a musical, and, like opera, musicals always measure the distance between a world in which passion is given its ideal voice and our world in which romantic love is secondary to other, more quotidian concerns -- this last point is essential to the movie and defines its ultimate tone and meaning. 

Chazelle stages a couple of lavish song-and-dance numbers, including the famous opening sequence during a traffic jam stalled on a ramp above an LA freeway, but the picture generally involves small, half-whispered tunes sung in isolation, or as duets, by the principals.  The music is serviceable but nothing more; the lyrics are credibly witty and well-constructed.  There's not much magnetism between Ryan Gosling, an inert actor who is one of the worst in Hollywood, and his leading lady -- however, there isn't meant to be much charisma associated with this couple; they seem to be too radically different to be plausible as a romantic duo -- they are both dreamers although there dreams turn out to be rather radically different.  The dance sequences don't cheat -- the camera tracks the performers in very long continuous takes.  (Indeed, I think the opening sequence involving the stalled traffic is shot in one continuous take -- shots requiring Gosling to dance, and it seems miraculous that the fellow can hoof it since he can scarcely speak his lines, demonstrate that he's fairly competent; he also seems to be able to play the piano.)  There is none of the crazy, insouciant, surrealism of the great Hollywood spectacle-musicals of the fifties -- for instance, Singin' in the Rain or The Band Wagon.  In those films, the director always carried the song and dance action several steps beyond what the audience could imagine resulting in the viewers feeling a pleasurable frisson of amazement and surprise.  Nothing happens in LaLa Land's dance numbers that you can't see coming; the only exception is a magical, if derivative, sequence at the Griffith Observatory in which the players suddenly become weightless and dance among the stars.  (The scene on the ramp and, later a scene on a mountain overlooking LA, both involve precipitous heights -- I kept waiting for the director to make use of these scary edges and rims, to drop his dancers like cannonballs off the edge of the freeway ramp or to have the lovers roll vertiginously down from the heights over looking the city -- but nothing like this happens.)  Parts of the plot don't make much sense -- the jazz musician seems to play melodious, harmonically pleasing tunes; therefore, it's implausible that his music would be thought too challenging.  There's another problem as well -- a couple of times, the jazz musician has to slum and play with bands that cover pop tunes; those tunes are much better and more memorable, of course, than any of the music in the movie and create a jarring effect -- "I Ran" (Flock of Seagulls) is a much better song than any of the pseudo-Sondheim crooning in the movie; similarly, the funky soul jazz that the hero plays when he "sells out" is more engaging than the expressionistic bebop that we see him performing as a serious artist.  This aspect of the film, unfortunately, invokes memories of the ferocious Sturm und Drang in Martin Scorsese's New York, New York -- that film involved the same conflict, a fanatically pure jazz musician coupled with a woman of more popular esthetic sensibility.  Nothing in La La Land approaches the hectic vehemence of New York, New York, probably a good thing as far as most audiences are concerned. 

Despite my objections to some aspects of La La Land, the movie is entertaining and the story, even if highly formulaic, is appealing.  And the film's final minutes make all the difference emotionally, converting something that is obvious into a film of a greater and more melancholy depth.