Even if it becomes a “classic” that is admired for decades or centuries, a work of art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The way in which we experience it is shaped by context – cultural, political, economic, technological, philosophical and otherwise, both of the time at which it was created and the moment at which it was revealed to us. I might have liked La La Land less, had seeing it not been the last escapist thing that I did at the end of a year that I, like so many, was eager to escape. This retro tribute to the Golden Age of the Hollywood musical – a pile of fluff leavened with a dab of Millennial cynicism on the subject of romance versus careerism – was utterly perfect for that application.
I might have liked it more, however, had I not just rewatched a clip of a celebrated song-and-dance routine from Singin’ in the Rain (“Good Morning”) that was all over social media in the wake of the demise of Debbie Reynolds. While La La Land opens with a blockbuster musical number (“Another Day of Sun”) in which dozens of incredibly athletic dancers spill out of cars stuck in a traffic jam on a Los Angeles freeway overpass and proceed to wow us with their choreographed parkour moves, it soon hones its focus onto the two leads, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. Both act with soulful conviction, and they have great chemistry together; but as hoofers, neither one would have survived being wedged between two old pros like Donald O’Connor and Gene Kelly.
Their singing is adequate, and emotionally on point, but doesn’t rise to great heights either – with the exception of one number, “Audition,” in which Stone isn’t quite pitch-perfect but manages to belt admirably well. Though it’s a waltz, it has the defiant, anthemic quality of songs like “Cabaret” or “What I Did for Love,” and may leave you with half a tear in your eye. And that leads us to the heart of La La Land’s winning formula: good songs. Really good songs, courtesy of Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Lyrically, they’re not complex enough to bear much dissection, but Hurwitz knows how to spin a mighty earworm. “City of Stars,” in particular, seems poised to nearly become as ubiquitous over the next few months as “Let It Go” was in the year following the release of Frozen. And more than anything else, of course, it’s great songs that make a great musical.
Surprisingly, director Damien Chazelle’s original concept for La La Land – a student film from his Harvard days, titled Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench and developed with then-classmate Hurwitz – was set in Boston. It wasn’t until they adapted it into one of those paeans-to-itself that Hollywood loves so much that they were able to find backers. (The critical and commercial success of Chazelle’s 2014 project, Whiplash, didn’t hurt either.)
Stone plays a wannabe actress/playwright who works as a barista in a coffeeshop on the Warner Brothers lot and keeps getting humiliated at casting calls; Gosling a mean pianist who dreams of opening a nightclub catering to the tastes of jazz purists like himself. They meet cute (giving each other the bird in the opening traffic jam), keep running into and grating on each other, until, predictably, the swoony lights of Tinseltown at dusk prompt them to dance, sing and fall in love. Conflicting ambitions soon create romantic complications. Yeah, we’ve been here before, many times – but not lately; not in the old-school Hollywood musical mode. La La Land is the sort of product that people have in mind who ask, wistfully, “Why don’t they make movies like that anymore?”
Like the glittery musicals that were so beloved by stressed-out Americans during the Great Depression, La La Land makes for a pleasurable, at moments even rapturous couple of hours of cinematic diversion from life’s harsh realities. It will undoubtedly win a passel of Oscars – likely even Best Picture, even though it’s far from the past year’s most impressive piece of filmcraft. See it, enjoy it, and then get back to reality, because there’s a lot of work left to be done. It’s okay to keep humming “City of Stars” while you’re doing it.
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