Music plays, and the world disappears. It’s a feeling – the liberating power of music – that’s made visual more than once in La La Land, the room going dark to shine a spotlight on the singer or player, an intense connection that transcends mere reality. Nor is it only music. A film unspools, and the world disappears. Two lovers’ eyes meet, and the world disappears. All that matters is each other – and their love, of course.
That last bit is crucial in this wondrously lavish, brilliantly controlled movie, a romantic drama with songs and a Hollywood setting (‘La La Land’ is a nickname for Los Angeles). Love itself, like music or film, is subtly separate from the lovers themselves. “Why do you say ‘romantic’ like it’s a dirty word?” asks Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), whose love affair with Mia (Emma Stone) forms the backbone of the film – and La La Land is grandly romantic, a film where a couple dance in a park like Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in The Band Wagon, a film where four girls in primary-coloured dresses strut on the street against a pink LA sunset, yet it’s mostly romantic in the general, not the particular. Even in its more carefree first half it’s about capital-L Love, its two characters (the supporting roles are almost non-existent) acting out roles as if caught in something bigger than themselves.
That sounds like a flaw, but in fact it’s the film’s greatest asset – though only because writer-director Damien Chazelle (who made Whiplash two years ago) makes the surface pleasures so irresistible. We open on a traffic jam – an LA hallmark – that rapidly transforms into a musical number; trapped drivers get out to sing, dance and finally climb on the roofs of their cars in a soaring crescendo (the whole scene shot, stunningly, in a single take), at which point the film’s title drops like an exclamation mark. Timing is everything, and the timing is exquisite here. There’s a point where a caption reading “SUMMER” is obviously about to appear (the film is divided into five sections, the changing seasons reflecting the couple’s relationship) – and you know it’s coming, but the precise timing of its arrival still made me smile.
This is an artificial movie, and indeed that’s the point. When we first see Mia, she’s talking on her phone – but in fact she isn’t, she’s a wannabe actress and the one-sided dialogue is a piece she’s practising for an audition. Later we see her at the actual audition – and the camera moves closer as her eyes fill with tears, but of course the tears aren’t real. So what’s real? Well, the coffee stain on her dress is real. Unpaid bills are real (and “not romantic”). A couple’s arguments are probably real. Above all, creative work is real: maybe not the dream but the work itself, the constant striving, the insane commitment that comes from trying to produce something great (this was also the subject of Whiplash). Art is one such creation – Mia pours her soul into a one-woman show; Sebastian is a jazz purist, his dream being to open a club harking back to the great days of jazz – and of course love is another. Lovers get caught up in a grand romantic project, and usually fail. It’s too hard; it “hurts too much”.
La La Land is surprisingly unsentimental – though also very sentimental. It’s a great film because it does the impossible, managing to wallow in the beautiful artifice of Hollywood musicals while also keeping its distance. It’s not mired in nostalgia, and in fact makes it clear that pining for the old days of picture palaces and 35mm film is a dead end. It’s being released over Christmas but in fact it’s only Christmassy in two ways, both of them incidental. One scene is admittedly set during the festive season, even though it involves Sebastian losing his job (“It’s Christmas,” he pleads; “Yeah, I see the decorations,” replies J.K. Simmons as his flint-hearted boss). More ingeniously, the ending riffs on the ending of perhaps the most famous film about Jesus. I won’t name names, but you know the one; all that’s missing is a final “It is accomplished”.
That may seem a weird comparison, but in fact passion (like Passion) is key here. In a world where ‘serious’ films are increasingly judged on relevance and socio-political messages, the dazzling La La Land makes the case – very movingly – for Art in itself, Art as a labour of love (and Love as a work of art, expressed in those blithe romantic songs and dances). There are quibbles one could mention, above all that the songs might’ve been better; unlike Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, one of the few other musicals to have achieved a similar alchemy (a shop awning reads ‘Papapluies’, echoing the French title of Demy’s masterpiece), you won’t come out of La La Land humming the melodies – but you may well come out cheering the sentiments. “Here’s to the ones who dream / Foolish as they may seem…” Indeed.
DIRECTED BY Damien Chazelle
STARRING Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Rosemarie De Witt
US 2016 128 mins